Yinka Ilori presents his ‘Chairman’ exhibition [Kane Hulse]

A RENOWNED artist who staged an exhibition at a community centre a stone’s throw from the Islington estate he grew up on says he hopes to inspire upcoming artists to pursue storytelling through design.

Last week, Yinka Ilori presented Chairman, an exhibition of his body of work with chairs at Walter Sickert Community Centre, next to Market Estate in Essex Road, where he spent most of his childhood and teenage years.

The British-Nigerian artist, who attended St Aloysius’ School, is known for reupholstering and upcycling furniture, large, colourful installations in public and architectural spaces, has designed homeware and other items for huge global brands, and co-designed the 2021 BRIT Awards statuettes.

“Most of my stories that I told within my work have definitely been inspired by my experiences of growing up on the estate, so it felt for me like a natural place to kind of bring the Chairman story.”

Mr Ilori’s work on show at the Walter Sickert Community Centre [MCM x Yinka Ilori Studio]

The exhibition accompanies the release of his first monograph of the same name, which chronicles Mr Ilori’s extensive work capturing stories in the form of chairs.

“In the chairs, there was a heavy conversation around migration, identity, sexuality, race, all these things that really had a huge impact on my upbringing.

“I found there was so much power in storytelling through chairs, and creating a new design language that spoke to my British and my Nigerian heritage.”

After picking up discarded chairs he finds abandoned in skips and bins, Mr Ilori draws on parables from Nigerian folklore and his experiences growing up in a dual-cultural environment to transform them.

“When I drive by, I find it hard to go past without picking it up. It’s like the chair speaks to me,” he said.

“The biggest thing for me in the work is that all the objects that you see have come from a place where they’ve been put in a bin or they’ve been given away or they’ve been unloved.

[MCM x Yinka Ilori Studio]

“And a big part of my work is seeing the beauty in the mundane. So seeing beauty in these chairs and making them look really beautiful in terms of their colours and their upholstery and their stories, they become desirable objects.

“I think if the owners of the chairs saw them now, they might want them back.”

Growing up on the estate in Essex Road, Mr Ilori had no immediate contact with anyone in the fields of art and design.

He added: “At university, I was around other creative thinkers, artists, architects. So that was great. But when I returned home, every day, you know, it did feel quite lonely, because there was no one I could bounce ideas off.

“But I think that we’re in a different time now, I think there’s so many incredible artists and designers that grew up very similar to me. And they’re all kind of within reach on social media, they’re at events, they’re at exhibitions, they’re on Instagram, they’re on TikTok, and all these platforms.

“I wanted to give back to that community and also create an installation that really inspires the next generation of artists, designers and creative thinkers in the estate to give them just the opportunity to feel part of the exhibition, but also to see that they can become a Yinka or any other artist around the world by storytelling.”