The Access ART X Prize awards early-career artists from Africa and its Diaspora with opportunities to develop their practices, with the intention of setting them up for the highest levels of success on the global stage. The Prize, formerly open only to emerging Nigerian artists, has evolved to include an additional award that is open to emerging artists from all of Africa and its Diaspora, in a bid to buttress sustainable careers for a wider range of artists.

To conclude her residency at G.A.S. curator Miriam Bettin hosted the first exhibition at the G.A.S. Farm House in Ikise, designed by Papa Omotayo. The show brought together artists and designers whose work with textiles emphasises the fluid, transformative, anti-colonial, emancipatory, and queer-feminist qualities of the medium. The artists shared a dedication to tradition and at times nostalgia that is being reimagined in the context of contemporary discourses and aesthetics.

Artefacts (Re)connecting … Can you sense them? is an exhibition coordinated by Sarafadeen Bello to conclude his residency at G.A.S. Lagos. The mixed media Installation is a visual summary of the experiences and work created by Bello during this period. It questions the state of our archives, the assumed neutrality of the digital, as well as the impacts of 'digital restitution' on the ongoing process of restitution as a whole. Through the work, he interrogates notions around who these digital replicas belong to, who they are relevant for, and what it means more broadly in terms of access.

Guest Artists Space Foundation is recruiting a full-time Communications Assistant. The purpose of the role is to provide key communications and administrative support to Guest Artists Space (G.A.S.) Foundation, Lagos. The successful candidate will be responsible for managing the production of digital content and delivering our digital and social media strategy under the direction of the Residency and Projects Coordinator and the Y.S.F. Communications and Projects Manager in London.

Apocalypse Pantry, is a collaborative project between Mariam Hava Aslam, Tushar Hathiramani and hFACTOR. It is a speculation where perishable crops are made into chutneys and pickles as one way of addressing the precarity of food insecurity. Displayed on an adapted Mai Ruwa cart, it suggests an urban network of food growing and distribution in Lagos.

Calling the Body to attention, is former Guest Projects Digital Resident Yewande YoYo Odunubi’s first solo exhibition. It is a gesture towards (re)centring and (re)claiming the body as an embodied site of archive, communication and imaginings. Sitting on a moment of pause, it reflects on what might constitute a poetics of the body, and the role movement performs as a process and language for enlivening threads of inquiry.

Between the 2nd and 6th of November, we hosted the International Launch of Guest Artists Space Foundation in Nigeria. A group of gallery directors and cultural stakeholders were invited to participate in a dynamic programme of events that offered an insight into the vibrant artistic landscape in Lagos and beyond.

We are thrilled to present to announce Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński as the winner of the African/Diaspora Access ART X Prize 2022/23! Kazeem-Kamiński was presented with the opportunity at a press conference earlier today alongside the winner of the Nigerian Award, Dafe Oboro.

In the lead-up to the second edition of the Sharjah Architecture Triennial, curated by Lagos-based architect Tosin Oshinowo, SAT hosted Scarcity vs Abundance: Adaptability as a Creative Resource in Architecture and Design at G.A.S. Lagos on the 27th October 2022.

Sarafadeen Bello is a design architect, researcher and creative based in Lagos, Nigeria. His works and artistic medium of expression are through text, essays, research, design and installations. His areas of interest operate within the overlapping boundaries of architecture, urban design, theatre, culture, and inclusion as well as the intersection of art and public realm participation.

Earlier this month saw the opening of I See You, a group exhibition of new and recent works at Tiwani Contemporary by Virginia Chihota, Gideon Gomo, Masimba Hwati, Gareth Nyandoro and Portia Zvavahera. Prior to the exhibition’s launch, and as part of an ongoing collaboration with G.A.S. Foundation, Tiwani Contemporary invited participating sculptor Gideon Gomo and painter printmaker Portia Zvavahera to engage in a residency at our Lagos building.