Nigerian born artist and dancer, Damilola Odusote joined Debut Contemporary in 2012, and is set to turn heads with his intricate, illustrative style. From Wednesday 1st August- 1st September 2012 Damilola will be presenting Olympics themed works at the Notting Hill gallery. Inspired by contemporary issues of race, fantasy, fiction and politics, from an un-easy past - his work is a running narrative of his world, conscious and sub conscious His biggest and most illustrious pieces to date are the Automotive Chaos series. A collection of large scaled artworks with meticulously small and detailed comical, ironic and political illustrations of life as he sees it. Take pieces together all multiple plots and meanings to make sense of his chaos.
Born to Nigerian parents, Damilola was fostered by Romany gypsies along with 20 other children in Tilbury, Essex, a town with high unemployment, diminishing opportunities and considerable racism. In spite of this, Damilola was not fazed at his prospects. Being the youngest of 8 siblings, some of which, went on to became Hollywood movie stars (Adewale Akinnouye Agbaje an actor, and former fashion model best known for his roles as Mr Eko on Lost, Simon Adebisi on Oz and Nykwana Wombosi in The Bourne Identity.), poets and lawyers, he took great inspiration and encouragement from their success and believed he too was destine to escape the mundanely accepted routine lifestyle that so many of his peers succumbed to. Damilola was different; he aspired to be creative. From a young age he came into contact with the hardening experience of mindless racism, and whilst strengthening and reinforcing his character, it presented Damilola with a lack of fear and a drive for success.
Damilola moved to London to embark on his career. He graduated from Camberwell College of Arts in 2006, after a series of tragic events took the lives of both foster parents. This led Damilola to stay and work in London, where he made the decision to immerse himself in his creativity and the start of his career. Not before long, Damilola set in motion one of his already established passions and began teaching dance at Pineapple Dance Studios. Starting from the bottom and working his way up, Damilola created avenues and platforms to express his work and so, as his professional dance career blossomed, so did his art.

In 2009, he became the first artist to be commissioned by Next Ltd as they ‘moved from regular graphic designers to an artist’, which led Damilola’s work to be seen on a global scale for the first time. Next described his work as being ‘unique and beautiful’. He continues to build a star studied repertoire, dancing for Mega stars like Mariah Carey, Sade and Plan B, working with major companies like T4, Nike, Nokia, BBC and Sky. Damilola’s Client base is vast, spanning from the likes of the Secretary of the British Egyptian Society, Earl of Bute, Rose Uniacke, The Brewery to name a few.
Having displayed his work worldwide and creating a client base throughout Europe and America, his art became more political and yet more refined. Damilola continues to assimilate different methods of working to portray his message. Damilola uses colour and texture on less complex paintings (cardboard, acrylics, wood etc), as a stepping-stone to the larger Automotive Chaos pieces. Building from his success, he continues to question the preconceptions how life should be.
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