The Tim & Carol Gallery of Art opens its doors to A Promise of Memories, this is a gathering of Nigerian art masters and great contemporary forces, where colour, craft, and memory meet. An exhibition that celebrates the power of memory through the timeless rhythm of Nigerian artistry.

Words Ireho Aito | Don’t Keep Your Art in the Finger!

Words Ireho Aito | Don’t Keep Your Art in the Finger!

Something unusual is happening on the mainland. It is not another traffic jam or street concert, but a calm wave of colour and memory. In the quiet neighbourhood of GRA Ikeja, on Oba Dosunmu Street, the usual noise of Lagos slows down where the Tim & Carol Gallery of Art walls are getting ready to tell their stories.

On November 16, 2025, at 2 p.m., the gallery opens its doors to A Promise of Memories — a group exhibition that gathers both Nigerian art masters and great forces of contemporary expression into a single, resonant dialogue.

Here, revered names like Sam Ovraiti, Kunle Adeyemi, Adeola Balogun, Bolaji Ogunwo, and Ayoola Omovo — artists long regarded as masters in their fields — meet great forces such as Saheed Adelakun, Ojo Olaniyi, Djakou Kassi Nathalie, Moses Oghagbon, Abiodun Badejo, Luke Osaro, Bb Babatunde, and Greg Onyeka. Together, they craft a living archive of memory and imagination in a landscape where mastery meets movement, and tradition converses with transformation.

The exhibition spans paintings, mixed media, printworks, ceramics, and sculptures, each work coming with stories of identity, faith, loss, and light. Ovraiti’s brush still hums with lyric nostalgia; Balogun’s sculptural forms command presence; Nathalie’s ceramics curve memory into fragile strength. Around them, the great forces of today extend the language of Nigerian art bold, curious, and beautifully unafraid.

In a city that rarely pauses to remember, A Promise of Memories invites Lagos to do just that, meaning to stop, to feel and listen.

A Promise of Memories is more than exhibition, it is a communion of memory and motion, a reminder that the best of art does not fade with time. It transforms it.