Artists Alliance Gallery - a landmark
This place sprang up at a time I used to live in Nungua. Almost overnight, there stood this imposing, shapely, colourful structure juxtaposed against the ocean skyline. What was it? Everyone was asking. A hotel? A block of offices? Another church?
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Whatever it was, the new mansion provided a nice backdrop to a beach drive that was rather dull. Whether one was driving at night or day time, the structure was eye-catching. Unknown to me It was officially opened by his Excellency Busumuro Kofi Annan.
Again, little did I know that that structure would later become one of my favourite sites to send student groups to appreciate African arts and culture. By virtue of its very location it also became a landmark as it almost separates La from Teshie as one travels on that stretch.
Artists Alliance Gallery is a market place for original artworks of African Art. Started in 2008, the objective is to provide art connoisseurs with authentic African Art and services of superior value to customers worldwide.
To achieve this, the art house invests to ensure that the artists and artworks presented are authentic, fairly priced and created with high quality materials to ensure their longevity.
What you see when you enter this gallery by the beach is a mosaic of art of all sorts from various characters with varied background. The artists whose works are on display include male and female, young and old, the celebrated and the virtually unknown.
There are three floors of astounding displays of the talent of Ghanaian artists; paintings, carvings, photography, furniture, fabrics, jewelry, and more. There is a full room of kente cloth, two floors of modern paintings, four rooms of antique and replica carvings and masks, Ghanaian coffins, sculptures, etc.
To achieve a holistic artistic space, Artists Alliance has also included the involvement of traditional and pseudo-traditional practitioners of the arts all in an effort to demonstrate the long continuum, from the traditional to the contemporary.
Their business practices are geared towards the establishment of long-term relationships with artists, individual customers, corporate clients, gallery directors, art collectors and patrons.
Actually, the beginning of the Artists Alliance Gallery goes back into the late 60s, when a young lecturer, Ablade Glover, of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana, envisioned a home for the fine arts in Ghana and a launching pad to plant contemporary African Art on the World’s Art Arena.
It started as Glo Art Gallery in 1968 and collapsed in less than five years because, like the absent farmer, Glover was not personally attending to his “crops” due to further studies overseas.
Undeterred he went on together with another art enthusiast to lay the foundation for the Art-Alliance that was caught by the then Ghana’s revolutionary storm thus rendering it a still born.
With the support and encouragement from his wife, Ewurasi, the family embarked upon building an art gallery at Nungua.
The building was completed and opened in March 1993. Then came the local traffic-jam which virtually collapsed the venture. Undaunted, they started making other plans. And this, a three-level building to showcase the finest African art under one roof was born.
Trained in Ghana, Britain and the United States, Professor Glover has accumulated a number of distinctions, which show his importance as an artist and enthusiastic educator on the national and international art scene.
Until 1994 he was Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Art Education and Dean of the College of Art at the University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana. More recently, in 1998, he was awarded the Flagstar Award (top award for Arts in Ghana) by the ACRAG in Ghana; Distinguished AFGRAD Alumni Award by the African-American Institute in New York and he is a Life Fellow of the Royal Society of Art in London.
He is also listed in "Who's Who in the World", "Dictionary of Contemporary International Artists" and "Who's Who in Art and Antiques."
Hmmm!. So much about one art legend and so much about one art house. I can imagine you are now wondering: ‘’but do Ghanaians appreciate and buy art works at all?’’ Based on my interactions with practitioners my answer is ‘’yes, change is coming, small, small.’’
Would you like to join that change? Stop by Artists Alliance Gallery today.
