One Off Contemporary Art Gallery Gallery in Nairobi

Hurlingham · Contemporary programme

Editorial Profile

Founded in 1994 by Carol Lees, One Off Contemporary Art Gallery is one of the longest-standing independent spaces devoted to contemporary African art in Kenya. It operates from a verdant compound in Rosslyn, on the northern edge of Nairobi, where a hand-crafted complex of converted domestic and former stable buildings opens onto a two-acre sculpture garden planted with indigenous trees. Its program is built around the exclusive regional representation of around fifteen artists, most of them based in or working from Nairobi, and pairs sustained, long-term commitments to mid-career figures with rotating exhibitions that bring newer positions before local audiences. Painting remains the anchor, shown alongside drawing, sculpture and mixed-media installation, with more recent attention to textile and figurative practice as these circulate through contemporary art in Nairobi.

Artists associated with the gallery include Peterson Kamwathi, Richard Kimathi, Beatrice Wanjiku, Anthony Okello, Florence Wangui, James Mbuthia, Peter Ngugi, Ehoodi Kichapi, Timothy Brooke and Xavier Verhoest, with sculpture projects frequently curated by Marc van Rampelberg. Lees's earlier role in founding the Rahimtulla Museum of Modern Art (RaMoMa) lends the space a direct line into the institutional history of Kenyan art, and it is consistently named among the significant galleries in Nairobi that collectors and researchers treat as a reference point for East African practice. Although its emphasis stays firmly regional, the program has at times hosted international artists—the Canadian painter Lisa Milroy among them—and has been profiled in the international press as a notable address on the city's art map.

Selected Artists

Peterson Kamwathi

Kenyan

PrintmakingDrawingMixed Media
About

Working primarily in printmaking, large-scale charcoal drawing and woodcut, his practice engages political ritual, collective behaviour and the iconography of contemporary Kenyan public life through extended series that function as encapsulated visual archives.

Beatrice Wanjiku

Kenyan

PaintingDrawing
About

Trained at Buruburu Institute of Fine Arts, she works between figuration and abstraction in oil and on paper, probing the human psyche through haunting bodies, straitjacket motifs and questions of existence, conformity and self-erosion.

Richard Kimathi

Kenyan

Painting
About

Trained at Nairobi's Creative Art Centre and Kuona Trust, Kimathi works in oil on canvas with a reductive, caricature-like figuration that quietly addresses Kenyan masculinity, fatherhood, mental health and the dignity of ordinary lives.

Anthony Okello

Kenyan

Painting
About

A graduate of Buruburu Institute of Fine Art, Okello paints densely allegorical oil compositions populated by animal-human figures and recurring masks, drawing on local mythologies to satirise corruption, identity and social pretence in contemporary Kenya.

Peter Ngugi

Kenyan

PaintingSculptureMixed Media
About

Self-taught and originally from Thika, Ngugi works across oil painting and monumental metal sculpture, layering figurative scenes with patterned backdrops, kitenge motifs and AK-47 silhouettes that probe corruption, political theatre and ordinary Kenyan life.

Florence Wangui

Kenyan

DrawingPainting
About

Mentored by Patrick Mukabi at the GoDown Arts Centre after studying zoology, Wangui works in charcoal and oil, moving from acclaimed studies of chickens to intimate figurative portraits that explore femininity, memory and inner emotional life.

James Mbuthia

Kenyan

PaintingMixed Media
About

Self-taught and rooted in the Banana Hill artists' community outside Nairobi, Mbuthia paints luminous, dreamlike pastoral scenes in oil and mixed media, often translating sound into colour through synaesthesia and addressing memory, healing and ecology.

Xavier Verhoest

Belgian

Mixed MediaPaintingPhotography
About

Born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, raised in Belgium and based in Nairobi since 2001, Verhoest works across painting, photography and mixed media, drawing on humanitarian experience to address migration, conflict, memory and the body.

Selected Exhibitions

Bare Knuckles

Solo show2018

Richard Kimathi

About

A solo presentation of oil paintings in which Kimathi probes Kenyan masculinity and male identity, using rows of small, ambiguous figures whose nationality, creed and ideology resist any easy reading.

Painting

Conversation in Silence

Solo show2018

James Mbuthia

About

A presentation of new oil paintings imagining idyllic Kenyan landscapes inhabited by multicoloured figures, drawing on the artist's synaesthetic relationship to birdsong and nature to transmit messages of hope, healing and reconciliation.

Painting

Fishy Business

Solo show2019

Anthony Okello

About

Fifteen oil paintings in which Okello deploys recurrent fish motifs and bloated, suited figures as visual satire, addressing underhanded dealings, corruption and the suspect behaviour of foreign and local actors in Kenyan public life.

Painting

ByCatch

Solo show2021

Florence Wangui

About

Wangui's third solo at the gallery brought together oil paintings and charcoal drawings centred on her sister as model, building intimate portraits that explore femininity, anatomy and inner emotional states with restrained empathy.

PaintingDrawing

Anxiety: My Muse

Solo show2023

Naomi Van Rampelberg

About

A solo exhibition tracing the artist's shift from glass painting to obsessively dotted pen and ink works on paper, alongside a dedicated room of textile pieces exploring repetition, anxiety and the discipline of accumulated mark-making.

DrawingTextile ArtMixed Media

Our Memories Can't Wait (For Palestine)

Solo show2024

Xavier Verhoest

About

A focused presentation of mixed media works on canvas, vinyl, paper and photographs by Verhoest, responding to the conflict in Gaza and Palestine through horizons, sea imagery and meditations on memory, displacement and erasure.

Mixed MediaPaintingPhotography

In Conversation

Solo show2024

Richard Kimathi

About

A solo exhibition presented alongside the launch of a monograph and documentary produced with the Almas Art Foundation, gathering recent oil paintings in which Kimathi extends his quiet meditation on identity, vulnerability and floral motifs.

Painting

Rhythms Within

Solo show2025

James Mbuthia

About

A solo show of recent mixed media paintings continuing the artist's exploration of inner cadence and translated sensory experience, building dreamlike compositions in which sound, landscape and figuration are layered into a single visual field.

Mixed MediaPainting

Gallery Overview

One Off Contemporary Art Gallery
City
Nairobi
Area
Hurlingham
Address
Hurlingham Office Park, 4th Floor, Nairobi, Kenya
Type
Gallery
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