Idol Speculation

[bright music]

The extraordinary energy in Brixton is undeniable,

and this is infectious.

You just can't miss it.

As well as this incredible history.

There is still a revolutionary spirit.

We found Brixton irresistible.

[upbeat music]

You ready? I'm ready,

as ready as I'll ever be. [pair laughs]

[upbeat music]

My name is Abe Odedina.

I'm an artist, and I live in Brixton, South London.

I'm a Londoner, but made in Nigeria. [laughs]

We've been living in this house for 34 years.

At the best of times, this is a full house.

I share it primarily, all the time, with Sarah,

my wife, who is, I believe, an amazing ceramicist,

and of course, with the wonderful Belle,

and two dachshunds. [upbeat music]

On a good year, I spend a few months with my family

in Salvador in the northeast of Brazil.

[upbeat music]

When we're going back and forth, you're always going home,

so it's always joyful, oddly enough.

We try to do it without any lament,

because after three months,

you're very excited to come to London.

One thing that characterizes our house

is a lack of a vision. [chuckles]

What we've done is to try to make a space

that's comfortable and habitable for us,

because we live and work here.

A house can be a tyranny, you know.

There can be a way in which you're all locked up

in different rooms and somehow you're out of touch,

but this house brings us together.

It's where we live, it's where we make things.

We're making it work, like a tortoise in its shell.

We simply surround ourselves

with the things that we need to live.

We share our life with objects, we all do.

It helps to make this meaningful.

They're, of course, the all important, what I call my,

these ancestral pieces from all over the world.

And these are vital. [upbeat music]

There's something that they communicate so eloquently

about the possibilities of figurative expression.

They somehow communicate so clearly what they're about.

[gentle jazzy music]

I discovered that I'm immune to outside studios.

I just didn't seem to be able to get on with them,

gorgeous things with North Lights and all of that palava,

they just didn't work, the dogs didn't like them.

It was just the coffee's not as good,

the commute, it's just, you know, why bother?

So the studio, it's a shed, okay,

but it's small, but perfectly formed,

because it's perfectly integrated into the house.

The studio is a place of perfect solitude.

It's something, for me,

it's an essential part of making work.

Choosing the much derided four wall polycarbonate sheet

is something that people have missed,

how marvelous this material is.

When it rains, it quadruples the sound of the rain,

and you instantly feel that you're in Nigeria or Salvador.

You feel that you are in the middle of the tropics.

There's also lovely translucent light that comes from it.

I like to see glass on the vertical dimension,

but I don't need to see the sky when I'm indoors.

There's something about that that makes me feel

that you lose that sense of enclosure.

Well I do have the radio on the whole time,

so I'm taking in hard news of the world-

[Radio] Spreading of the mayoral governing model.

It's not that I'm influenced by news story,

but I do not make a special case for a life as an artist.

I just don't feel that.

I feel I'm in the same world as Mick,

who helps me put the paintings up,

or a plumber, where just blokes the make stuff.

I call myself a folk artist.

And I suspect, for lots of people,

that's a controversial title,

but I find it the most generous category.

It covers all my interests,

and it suggests a healthy relationship

with history and the community.

[gentle music]

In my early incarnation, I was an architect,

and a happy architect.

The little shed there, which had been a little studio

for my architectural practice,

and I'd made various bits of furniture from plywood.

The bits of plywood were cannibalized

and made into paintings.

So that was a very elegant bit of recycling, I thought.

[chuckles] The furniture became paintings,

and slowly it became a paint studio.

At the core of my work is somehow

exploring our daily triumphs and tragedies.

My figures are not from nature. They are made up.

They are, I suppose, borrowed from experiences in real life,

people I know, borrowed sources.

And what I try to do is orchestrate these figures

to explore ideas around our common humanity.

[gentle music]

When I'm in the studio, I am lit,

well, I'm not literally in the painting,

but it feels like I'm in the painting because of the size.

Now, it's quite important

that I keep it that way for a while,

and when the painting gets to a particular point,

then I take it into the house

where I have a bit more perspective.

I can look at it from a distance and see how it's going.

But also important not to do that too early,

because if I do that too early,

I get to a point where I'm tweaking things,

I'm just tweaking little things rather than just feeling it

and carrying on with a degree of faith.

But this chap seems all right, the Cowboy Prince.

[gentle music]

When you work every day, and you love it,

you hope to carry this on for as long as possible,

because why would you stop doing something you enjoy?

So the the hope is sheltered in this house,

which reinforces us.

We will carry on making work.

Sarah will carry on making her pots,

and I will carry on making paintings on plywood

for as long as possible.

Ideally, you want to paint until you drop.

Wouldn't that be lovely? [gentle music]