VISIT TO TINY KINGDOM

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 25020, 31 October 1946, Page 3

VISIT TO TINY KINGDOM

AUSTRALIAN ARTIST’S PLAN

(From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, October 9.

A clever Australian artist, Donald Friend, aged 28, is preparing to leave Sydney to resume acquaintance with the native ruler of a little kingdom in British Nigeria, the Ogoga of Ikerre. Ikerre is 400 square miles in area and has a population of 14,000. Friend was in London and Paris as an art student in 1936, and became fascinated with West African art. He decided to see it in its natural surroundings and caught a boat to Lagos, an island off the coast of Nigeria,' where he met Sam, a pidgin-English-speaking negro from Ikerre, who urged “Massa Friend go longa Sam. In Ikerre, much work of aft.” Friend agreed, and on arriving at the palace, sprawling over seven acres, explained through Sam what he wanted. He was given lodgings in a section of the palace, and was provided - with three servants and a farm outside the city. After a month the Jgoga proposed that Friend should become his adviser. Friend accepted, and stayed on (unpaid) for two years. He managed the Ogoga’s relations with the British Government, persuaded the Ogoga to abolish illegal taxes, raised funds , for the Ogoga through the issue of pardons to exiled princes—some paid money and some gave new cars for the privileges of re-entering Ikerre. Dependent on interpreters to start with, Friend soon learned enough of the native language to discuss simple subjects and get off by heart the halfhour ceremony of greeting. The set-up in Ikerre was traditionally democratic; the Ogoga was chosen by the people from the 300 members of the Royal Family, and was deposed if the people went to the palace and shouted for the king by his “civilian” name. The Ogoga was Alowolodu 11. a man in his early thirties, tall and overweight, but capable of physical efforts that amazed the slimmer Friend. In the palace, partly Spanish colonial, partly mud bricks, and tin roofs, the Ogoga kept 300 wives, countless children, and relatives. In this little kingdom. Friend found all the native art he had hoped for. He also found malaria and yellow fever. Five months after the outbreak of the war. he left, returned to Sydney, enlisted, and became an official war artist. This time he will go to Ikerre with another white man— Edgar Kaufman, Director of Design at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Friend said this week he would stay in Africa “until the Old World settled down a bit.” Then he would make a pilgrimage to Europe and study Old Masters once more.