JOHN ADENLE: PLASTIC INSTALLATIONS

Adenle’s Experience through Experimentation

Adenle John began his teaching career in art in 1996 at Federal College of Education, Osiele, Ogun State, a place he found to be conducive for his many experiments especially in sculpture. One of such experiments of over ten years has resulted in plastic and wood manipulations, installations and adaptations. These years of preoccupation and introspection have been fired by the devastating socio-political changes in the country. As an insightful art teacher, he encourages his students to experiment with unusual materials and to understand art as a means of communication and education.

His background must have been responsible for this approach to teaching. In 1994, Adenle John graduated from Adeyemi College of Education, Ondo with a BA.Ed degree in art Education specialising in Sculpture. He proceeded in 2003 to University of Nigeria, Nsuka for his MA in art education. Presently, Adenle is studying for his PhD. in art therapy in the same University. In his academic and artistic interactions with his students and himself despites the shortcomings of our outdated art curriculum, Adenle has brought to bear his education and experience through his experimentation as a sculptor, an art educator and therapist. Igbaro and Raqib Basorun’s works, in the course of this experimentation, have also inspired the artist.

This ADAPTATIONS is the product of apt and overt conversions of plastics forms and wood surfaces into meaningful visual conceptualization. It is a genre of creating new meaning from older objects. This experimentation also has the value of preserving waste by recycling woods and plastics. Also, he introduces metals and some found objects like plant seeds, bottles, bones etc., as necessary. Initially, he picked up plastics but has caught the fancy of buying automobiles plastics that have suggestive forms and malleable characteristics. The nature of these lifeless materials and media also require that while attempting to breathe life into them, Adenle burns, heats, melts, models, arranges and assembles them together as the case may be.