INTERFACE
Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
REVIEW
Samson Kambalu: Holyballism
The Art Exchange, Nottingham
8 October – 8 November
Reviewed by: Michael Forbes
In response to Nietzsche’s declaration that God is Dead and the assumption that God is our source of power and meaning, Samson Kambalu has created a new religion, ‘Holyballism’.
To get his crusade off the ground Kambalu has taken on a full marketing campaign. Creating his own logo, the ‘H’, which symbolises ‘the spark of life’, he has printed T-shirts, baseball caps and posters of the converted creating the logo with their hands.
We are presented with a large bright yellow disc, with red text giving the instructions ‘how to make bread’, flanked by vertical text from The Crucifixion and a skull on a box. Some of the metaphors come easily like the breaking of bread and the giving of life, the disc representing the sun – the sustainer of life on earth, which counterbalances the skull and the death of man, of God, of Christ and elements dying within Kambalu – his Golgotha1.
A series of the Holyballism posters and bible paintings using watercolour paint on the pages of the bible, are reproduced as large digital prints, exhibited in blocks of four. The bible paintings represent Kambalu’s African past – exploring paint as child and religious education, learning the British way. A small photograph of Kambalu, a bookshelf as the backdrop, hangs adjacent to the bible paintings, and shows he is an educated man, grasping his masters to prove it.
In the upper gallery there is a line of eight coloured ‘how to make bread’ discs, each representing a different story – or are they just exploring how the brain responds to colour? Finally we come to the Holyballism Holy Grail, a Holy Ball encased in a glass shrine surrounded by bibles giving the instruction of how to make a holy ball.
Like most religions, Holyballism is on the make: I’ve got the T-shirt to prove it.
1 Golgotha: the common name of the spot where Jesus was crucified. It is interpreted by the evangelists as meaning “the place of a skull”.
Writer detail:
Michael Forbes is an artist/curator.
Venue detail:
New Art Exchange
39-41 Gregory Boulevard, NOTTINGHAM NG7 6BE
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