Who We Are
Carol Lees: Director and Curator of One Off Gallery
Kenyan born, with grand parents arriving in the country in 1925, Carol attained a Bachelor of Arts degree from the American College in London in 1990. Following a short stint working in Nairobi for commercial interior designers McNaughton West Design, she opened One Off Gallery in 1994.
In 2000 she co-founded RaMoMA (Rahimtulla Museum of Modern Art) as its first Director, suspending the operations of One Off.
Initially a Ford Foundation funded project, RaMoMA became the leader in its field in East Africa. At the height of its activities it hosted five new exhibitions each month; published Msanii, a quarterly art magazine; had a dedicated children's wing with three full time teaching staff; had fourteen artists teaching art to children in Kenya’s leading referral hospital, Kenyatta National Hospital; held regular artists workshops and established an arts and crafts gift shop.
With her resignation from RaMoMA in 2009, One Off was born again.
In her twenty nine years in the business of Kenyan Art she has:
Curated more than 400 exhibitions
Organized an annual art fair featuring never less than 110 painters and sculptors
Curated in 2004 with Judy Ogana, five exhibitions in New York (Brooklyn Public Library; Five Myles Gallery; Long Island University; Welancora Gallery and Kentler International Drawing Space)
February 2014 saw the first major exhibition of Kenya art supplied by One Off to the Gallery of African Art in Cork Street, London.
With the training of a commercial interior designer and her 29 years in the selling of the art of the region, Carol is uniquely placed to cater to the interests of corporate or private buyers for both investment and pleasure.
Visiting the Gallery:
The One Off Sculpture Garden at #28 Rosslyn Lone Tree Estate Road
Opening Hours: Tuesday through Saturday – 10am to 5pm
Sundays - 12 noon to 5pm
Tickets @ 500/= per head; children free
No picnics and no pets please!
The One Off Sculpture Garden at #28 Rosslyn Lone Tree Estate Road is a work in progress which will doubtless remain so always. It is decidedly unfinished and work on its basic construction is expected to continue. We beg your indulgence.
Begun in April 2019, the garden was born of a desire to supply a ‘salad bowl’ for our visiting Colobus Monkey troop. The subsequent decision to plant 133 indigenous trees and shrubs to encourage birds, bees and butterflies necessitated the felling of 60 Eucalyptus trees. Only a few remnant Eucalyptus trees remain. The final piece in the puzzle came in the form of a financial windfall from environmental enthusiast and art collector,
Vivien Mather. And the project to plant a garden to show sculpture took flight.
Next the team suggested the idea of an inaugural exhibition to Marc Van Rampelberg. Aside from being a loyal friend and supporter of One Off, Marc has a history of collecting art in Kenya dating back to the 80s. At the time he was the in-house curator and long-term gallery partner of Ruth Schaffner, the owner of Gallery Watatu which was the leading gallery in its day. This gave him access to extensive collectables and he was able to acquire some of the most significant works produced in Kenya. Of particular importance are his works sculpted by Samuel Wanjau Sr., which we saw as being essential for any sculptural review. It goes without saying that these are unobtainable now, the artist being deceased. It became evident that any serious show of sculpture from the region would require a number of loaned works from Marc’s collection. Marc also brought his superb taste, design skills, attention to detail and spatial awareness to the project. He was a shoe-in for the task of curator for our first ever sculptural review in the new garden. Thom Ogonga was asked to contextualize the historical event.
In conversation with Marc and Thom we deduced that an exhibition, purely of sculpture on this scale, has never been embarked upon in the region. Marc’s curatorial ethos was to try to be as inclusive as possible and to push the ‘sculptural envelope’ as wide as possible. To this end, the exhibition encompassed traditional forms in wood, stone and metal but it also included ‘the human figure as object’ in the form of a mime artist. It included glass, paper and mosaic. It looked at some two-dimensional works as three-dimensional sculptures. It attempted to include the most significant sculptors working in Kenya today and it tried to reach back to their influences and origins. It also displayed works by some younger artists or less well-known players.
The One Off Sculpture Garden in it's current form will always grow and change. We hope you will drop by to enjoy it and will return often to absorb the atmosphere and the sculptures in the ever-altering garden.