Mallica "Kapo" Reynolds, Be Still, 1970, Larry Wirth Collection, NGJ

This is the first of two posts on Mallica “Kapo” Reynolds. In this segment, we focus on Kapo’s work in the collections of the NGJ. The second post will focus on his biography.

In 1974, when the National Gallery of Jamaica was established and the collections of modern Jamaican art transferred from the Institute of Jamaica, Kapo in terms of numbers was one of the better represented artists. There were five sculptures and seven paintings but the quality was uneven and there had been little attempt at exploring the wide range of Kapo’s iconography, his subject matter. While the fledgling National Gallery went on to acquire two further paintings directly from the artist – the large Orange Paradise and the superb Silent Night, Kapo’s unique treatment of the traditional Christmas nativity scene – it was clear that the very best Kapos of the previous decades resided in private collections. In Jamaica none could rival the collection deposited in the rooms and public spaces of the Stony Hill Hotel, domain of the inveterate Kapo collector, Larry Wirth.

In a 1976 published essay that assessed the National Gallery’s Collection as it stood then, Dr. David Boxer, the newly appointed Director/Curator, described the Kapo holdings in sculpture thus:

Kapo is represented by five lively works but none are of the order of his Angel or the Three Sisters in that very special collection of his work at the Stony Hill Hotel.

An indication of the importance of the Wirth Collection and Boxer’s admiration for the sculptures in particular can be gleaned from the catalogues of two important exhibitions where Kapo was a major contributor: the Commonwealth Institute’s Ten Jamaican Sculptors of 1975, which was curated by Boxer, and the first exhibition of Jamaican Intuitive art, the National Gallery’s own The Intuitive Eye exhibition of 1979. In the Commonwealth Institute showing, four of the six Kapo sculptures were borrowed from the Wirth Collection, while for the The Intuitive Eye no less than twelve of the fourteen Kapo sculptures came from the Wirth collection.

Mallica "Kapo" Reynolds, Sandra and Baby, c1950, Larry Wirth Collection, NGJ

The importance that David Boxer attached to the Wirth collection became further evident when Larry Wirth died and rumours surfaced that the collection would probably be acquired by one of  Kapo’s American supporters, the singer Roberta Flack. Boxer started a campaign to acquire the collection for the National Gallery and thus to preserve it for the Jamaican public.  He knew that he had to act quickly as the very work that he considered the finest in the entire collection, the so-called Angel (titled Winged Moonman by Kapo himself) had already been taken to New York by Roberta Flack.

Dr. Boxer began negotiations with Larry Wirth’s widow, Yvonne, who finally settled on a purchase price of US$450,000. Efforts were made to obtain private sector support and it became clear that it would not be possible to obtain sponsorship for the purchase of more than one or two pieces. Boxer was adamant that the collection should remain intact and decided to go directly to the then Prime Minister, the Hon. Edward Seaga, who was a pioneering supporter of Kapo’s work and a scholar on Revival religions in Jamaica. Mr. Seaga fully supported the effort and approved the Government of Jamaica purchase of the works for the National Gallery.

There was one last hitch that had to be sorted out: Boxer insisted that the Angel had to be included. Mrs. Wirth was given the un-enviable task of retrieving it from Roberta Flack who in the end recognized the importance of keeping the collection together in Jamaica. She returned the work.

The major works of the Larry Wirth Collection have been on view in their own designated gallery within the National Gallery for the past twenty-five years only rarely being disturbed when the gallery was needed for other exhibition projects.

Since the acquisition of the Larry Wirth Collection, six further works have been added to the National Gallery’s Kapo holdings. Four works including the quite unique pair of sculptures The Cripples, and the fine painting Mango Walk entered the collection with the Matalon donation while the Gallery purchased the exquisite Peaceful Quietness from another prominent Kapo collector, Deryck Roberts, shortly before his death in 2003.

The National Gallery is currently in negotiation with the heirs of another major collector of Kapo’s work, to finalize the gift of twenty-five major paintings from that collection. After being shown en bloc as an exhibition in September 2010, the major works will be integrated into a new permanent Kapo Gallery which will provide a comprehensive overview of Kapo’s work, life and cultural significance. It is anticipated that this new gallery will be readied in time for the Kapo Centenary on February 11, 2011.

Mallica "Kapo" Reynolds, Peaceful Quietness, 1969, NGJ Collection

Kapo at his Revival Yard, surrounded by several sculptures from the Larry Wirth Collection, c1983 - Photo: Deryck Roberts

On Tuesday, November 17, the NGJ will open an exhibition of work by Mallica “Kapo” Reynolds from its permanent collection, under the title “Selections from the Kapo Collection”. This exhibition temporarily replaces what used to be known as the Larry Wirth Gallery of Kapo’s work, which is currently closed for refurbishing and will reopen as the Kapo Galleries in early 2011, as was explained in the previous post. Below is a short biographic tribute Kapo, written by the NGJ’s Chief Curator, David Boxer, and starting with an excerpt from an autobiographic account by Kapo from the NGJ archives.

“I was born 1911 the 10th day of February in Byndloss, St. Catherine. My father’s name was David Reynolds, my mother’s name before marriage was Rebecca Morgan. My father married her when I was nine years old. At the age of 12, I received the Spirit of Conversion. I was then reading in Fifth Standard. At the age of 16 I left school; I was not bad at reading. I did not love drawing. Drawing days I used to prefer to go and work in the garden. Before the death of all my sisters and brothers, we all used to play together, go to Church and school. I can remember as far back as my creeping days, and forty years ago when I started as a self-taught artist, scraping on a stone with homemade tools, never having seen before a piece of sculpture in any medium. Then I started working steadfastly without any instruction. Happily for me guiding lights appeared in my life – a number of prominent men who took interest in my work and encouraged me.” — Kapo

Mallica “Kapo” Reynolds, charismatic Zion Revivalist leader, the Patriarch Bishop of the St. Michael Tabernacle, was known to most Jamaicans simply as Kapo, a cultural force who played an indelible role in the defining of Jamaican art – particularly the so-called Intuitive or Self-Taught genre – of the second half of the twentieth century.

Kapo’s brief autobiography above barely covers the essentials. What is missing is the story of how that “encouragement” from “guiding lights” in the fifties and sixties, which included the young cultural researcher and politician Edward Seaga and the hotelier and Director of Tourism John Pringle, bore rare fruit, for Kapo’s instinctive approaches to painting and to sculpture produced in him a truly rounded artist as adept in two dimensional forms (painting and drawing) as he was in three dimensional sculpture. He was also a truly inspired artist, drawing deeply from his immense spiritual resources, which included his own church, the St Michael Tabernacle.

Kapo was born in a rural St. Catherine community some thirty miles from Kingston. At age sixteen he received his first vision and started travelling the countryside preaching. In the early thirties he made his way to Kingston and settled in Trench Town where he established his Zion Revival church. In Trench Town in the mid-forties he began translating his visions and his imaginative transcriptions of biblical events into paintings. Most of these early works, it is said, were lost when they were confiscated by the police as evidence of Obeah practice. By 1950 he had begun to carve, first in stone and then in wood. Much of his works were elemental depictions of his cultural mileu, including portraits of those around him. He was also a fine landscape painter and was fond of depicting the environment of his childhood, the hills andvalleys of St Catherine’s interior. Other works are more spiritual in nature and were clearly inspired by his visions and practice as a Zion Revivalist leader.

While he encountered significant prejudice during his early years, he had by the time of his death in 1989 gained recognition as one of the most significant Jamaican artists of the twentieth century. He had also been recognized as one of the  world’s leading Intuitives, or as they say outside of the Caribbean, “Naïves” or “Primitives.” Early in his career, Seldon Rodman, the well-known critic of Haitian Art, said of Kapo: “As a painter, I find Kapo probably equal to the late Hector Hypolite of Haiti, whom Andre Breton considered the best since Henri Rousseau.” Later, writing in the London press in 1986, Edward Lucie- Smith who praised the emotional force of Kapo’s painting (then on view at the Commonwealth Institute) suggested that as a painter “Kapo deserves comparison not so much with the Haitians who have become more commercialised in recent times, but with the father of the whole genre, the great Henri “Douanier” Rousseau.”

Mallica "Kapo" Reynolds, Happiness in a Mango Walk, 1993, Aaron and Marjorie Matalon Collection, NGJ

This post is about one of the most popular and controversial art works in the NGJ’s permanent collection, Dawn Scott’s “A Cultural Object” (1985). The post is adapted from the doctoral dissertation of NGJ Executive Director Veerle Poupeye (all rights reserved by the author).

Dawn Scott (b1951) is a Jamaican textile artist and interior designer who is best known for her realist batik paintings and, since the 1990s, her innovative store and interior designs for the local and tourist markets. She participated in the NGJ’s 1985 Six Options: Gallery Spaces Transformed exhibition, an exhibition for which six artists were invited to produce installations in the NGJ’s exhibition galleries, and then produced A Cultural Object, her only installation to date. The room-sized work effectively brings the physical and cultural environment of the Kingston inner cities into the “high culture” space of the NGJ. It consists of a spiral-shaped “zinc-fence”, made from recuperated corrugated metal and lumber – the dominant building materials in the local squatter settlements. The surfaces contain the sort of street art, shop signs and graffiti that are commonly seen in Kingston’s inner cities. It starts with a large sign that reads “Culture zone, enter at your own risk,” which spoofs the “PNP (or JLP) zone, enter at your own risk” inscriptions that mark the borders of many political garrison communities. The imagery and graffiti on the walls successively deal with popular music, street food, the rum bar, the beauty culture, the attitudes towards women and sexuality, religion, politics and, at the centre, mental illness and homelessness, which takes the form of the reclining, rag-clad figure of a male street person. At first sight, the installation appears unplanned, much like a squatter settlement, but it is carefully orchestrated: the claustrophobic, trap-like spiral corridor deliberately takes the visitor from amusement to horror, when the shockingly realistic street person in the middle is suddenly seen.

A Cultural Object presents a provocative critique of the forces that, according to Scott, trap poor people into their marginalized socio-economic position, including the escapist nature of much of the popular music, poor dietary habits, self-deprecating beauty practices such as skin-bleaching, socially counterproductive attitudes towards women and sexuality, disempowering religious beliefs, partisan political violence, and, ultimately, mental illness and social alienation. Much of its effect derives from its extreme realism: the street person sculpture in the centre was made from a live cast (although of an artist’s model) and almost every detail of the work was based on something that then existed in Kingston, which Scott had documented photographically.

Already during its original exhibition, A Cultural Object was popular with visitors and elicited strong responses. Most of these were positive but there were some concerns that the work represented Jamaica in a negative light. Despite the objections, the work was acquired for the NGJ collection and reinstalled in a room of its own in the permanent exhibition Jamaican Art 1922-Present. There it remains popular to the present day and schoolchildren still come to the NGJ asking for “the Ghetto,” as it is popularly known.

While A Cultural Object obviously resonates with Jamaican audiences, the public response has always had a sensationalist, anarchic edge. Visitors almost immediately started adding their own graffiti to the walls and while the artist initially accepted this de facto interactivity, the results have been unexpected and often disturbing. Most of the graffiti are simply juvenile – of the “Kilroy was here” variety – but many others are obscene or politically partisan and illustrate exactly those cultural attitudes Scott sought to critique. Even the “street person” sculpture has been vandalized – one of its legs was broken, which sadly mimics the abuse street people sometimes encounter in Jamaica – and the at times unpleasant smell illustrates that some even urinate inside the installation.

A Cultural Object represents an instructive crack in the institutional armor of the NGJ. Elsewhere in the galleries, most visitors spontaneously behave in the disciplined and reverential manner that is the norm in museums. Somehow, the material and cultural ambiance of A Cultural Object suspends this disciplinary environment, in a way that reminds of how the presence of graffiti, broken windows, and derelict buildings contributes to social breakdown in urban environments, as has been observed in cities such as New York and, for that matter, Kingston. Tellingly, this breakdown does not spill over into the adjoining galleries, which maintain the decorum of a traditional “high art” museum environment – the graffiti literally stop at the edge of A Cultural Object’s gallery space. Powerful and popular as it is, A Cultural Object raises questions about artists’ ability to direct audience responses and, thereby, the effectiveness of social criticism in contemporary art. It is nonetheless a fascinating social and cultural experiment.

Dawn Scott – A Cultural Object (1985) – detail of the political graffiti

John Dunkley, Banana Plantation (c1945)

While we have temporarily closed the Early Intuitives gallery, to facilitate the next phase of the re-installation of our permanent collection, we present a post on one of the three artists featured in that gallery, John Dunkley (the others are David Miller Senior and Junior). The first part of this post is excerpted from what his widow Cassie Dunkley wrote in 1948, on the first anniversary of her husband’s death, when a commemorative exhibition was held at the Institute of Jamaica. It narrates Dunkley’s early and obviously quite adventurous life as a young Jamaican migrant worker and sailor, followed by his years in Kingston as a struggling artist. The the second part is adapted from a biographical entry written for the Dictionary of Black Artists by NGJ Chief Curator, Dr. David Boxer.  John Dunkley was born in Savanna-la-Mar on December 10, 1891 and died in Kingston on February 17, 1947.

John Dunkley’s life as an artist, as told by his widow Cassie

“His father, who was in Panama, sent for him so he travelled out. Unlucky for him his father died and was buried the day before he landed. Although he was deprived of his father’s wealth, Dunkley was not discouraged and started to earn a livelihood for himself. He travelled from Panama to Colon to Costa Rica, Chiriqui David and thence to Camaguey […] He started out for California to study dentistry when a revolution took place and he lost all of his belongings, money, clothing etc., only his life was spared. He ran for miles in woodland tearing off clothes and shoes until he was left in rags. He was lucky, as being a Free-Mason he was able to give the Mason’s distress sign and it was answered by a Mason on a passing ship and he was welcomed on board. […] He immediately signed on as a sailor and went travelling. He went to England, Scotland, North and South America and numerous other places. […] He went back to Chiriqui where he decided to settle down as a barber by trade. He worked hard at his barbering and in his spare time would do some painting on canvas and he got an insight of the art from Clarence Rock, who was the most prominent photographer in Panama. He kept on painting, giving the paintings to his friends and left quite a lot there.

He returned to Jamaica in 1926 and settled down. He married Cassie Fraser and took life more seriously as he had responsibilities to meet. He was fortunate in his marriage as his wife stuck by him and they both lived happily together. […] He continued painting till one day as he sat alone in his barber shop [on Princess Street in Downtown Kingston] he was approached by a white gentleman who had been attracted by the small signs which made up the screen of his shop. This gentleman, who introduced himself as Mr. Delves Molesworth [then the Secretary of the Institute of Jamaica], exclaimed ‘At last I have discovered a hidden artist!’ Mr. Molesworth encouraged him to keep on painting as he knew that one day he would achieve his goal. […] Dunkley was a poor but respectable man. His life made him beloved by all who associated with him.[…] His work was criticised by many who did not know his worth as he was the only imaginative painter in the island and one could not teach him as he was self-taught.

Years rolled over Dunkley’s head but he still continued to work harder, cutting wood and carving in African style. […] When the Sandy Gully Air Base was being sighted by President Roosevelt of America, he painted him, and from the first piece of Lignum Vitae wood that was cut down, a huge piece, he carved an African Man sitting down and named him Sandy Gully. Dunkley kept all these paintings and carvings all these years with an aim in view, hoping that one day he would achieve his goal. […] Health began to fail poor Dunkley and he was ill for months. His wife tried with the help of several doctors to prolong his life but death came to him on the 17th of February, 1947. His funeral was largely attended by the rich and poor. A lot was said of him for days in the papers which were the only time his worth was ever told.”

John Dunkley, Diamond Wedding (1940), Collection: National Gallery of Jamaica (Gift of Cassie Dunkley)

Dunkley’s biography

John Dunkley’s output as a painter was small. Less than fifty paintings are known, but they suffice to demonstrate a unique and compelling aesthetic allowing him to assume the rank of Jamaica’s greatest painter. His known oeuvre spans little more than a decade, and as he kept his works and continued to refine or overwork them, there is no clearly discernible development.

Most of Dunkley’s paintings are landscapes: imagined landscapes that seem full of a decided hidden symbolism. Typically, the vegetation seems fantastic, trees or shrubs with overblown inflorescences are counter counterpointed by bare truncated branches, often depicted in a manner that encourages their reading as phallic symbols. Small animals; crabs, birds, a mongoose, a rabbit and often spiders negotiating complex webs, frequent these dark disturbing woodlands. Only rarely does a human figure intrude. Man is implied however in the occasional house seen in the distance or at the edge of the wood, but more so in what is surely Dunkley’s most persistent motif, the path or road that pushes through the vegetation often suggesting great depth. In his famous Back to Nature (c1939), the path bifurcates in the foreground to encircle a heart shaped grave. Footprints of the departed hauntingly trod the path.

There is a distinct group which seem more more expansive, and these I suspect were his last works, Lonely Road, Springboard, Woman Feeding Fish, Footbridge where the accustomed claustrophobia, imparted by dense bracketing vegetation, gives way now to clearer skies, white now rather than grey and with far fewer elements within the landscape. In some of them the black outlines of a spare vegetation is silhouetted against the sky. […] Unrealistic touches, like the isolated springboard in Springboard, seem out of context, the leaves pushing up between  the cracks in Woman Feeding Fish, the unstable support of the bridge in Footbridge, contribute to the disquiet of these works.

John Dunkley, Sandy Gully (1940), Collection: National Gallery of Jamaica

Contemporary events occasionally inspired him. There is a painting/collage of Joe Louis and in the Good Shepherd (c1938) he paints the tall gangly figure of the populist politician Alexander Bustamante gathering flocks of sheep, while in the distance a few straggly goats run away. […]

Dunkley also produced a small body of sculptures, mostly wood-carvings. Few are however as accomplished as his paintings. Perhaps his finest works in this medium are Old Joe,  a small but intense portrait of a black man clasping his knees and bent in prayer, and Sandy Gully (1940), a seated portrait of a proud Jamaican man carved from the first lignum-vitae tree cut down in preparation for the building of the American air base in Jamaica. […]

After a memorial exhibition in 1947 and a joint Dunkley/Daley exhibition in 1960 – both at the Institute of Jamaica – Dunkley was virtually a forgotten artist. With the resurrection of a fair percentage of his oeuvre in the National Gallery’s retrospective in 1977, with its accompanying illustrated catalogue, and the subsequent permanent display of a good representative collection of his work, Dunkley has regained his position in the public’s eye as a true Jamaican master.

David Boxer

John Dunkley, Feeding the Fishes (1940), Private Collection

Ebony G. Patterson, Untitled - Haitian Flag Project - Ghetto Biennale, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, December 2009

Ebony G. Patterson recently participated in the Ghetto Biennale, an alternative international art event in the Grand Rue slum of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, that was positioned as “as a counter exhibition, disrupting conventional art scene exclusions, as well as a bold conversion of global power systems, centers of art production, and cultural transmission”. She presented an installation of “flags” that brought her provocative “Gangstas for Life” iconography in dialogue with the spiritual splendor of the traditional Haitian Vodou flags or “drapos.” Ebony, who divides her time between Jamaica and Kentucky, is one of Jamaica’s most critically acclaimed and exciting emerging artists and her recent contribution to the Ghetto Biennale presents a good opportunity to share some of her work with our readers.

Ebony G. Patterson, Untitled (Hybrid) (2007)

“Beauty, Gender, body and the grotesque are an ongoing discussion in my work. I am enthralled by the repulsive, the bizarre and the objectness of bodies and the contradictions that both have to art historically and culturally. The Jamaican vernacular, gendered cultural symbolisms and stereotypes serve as a platform for these discussions. I am enthused by words, conditions and experiences that objectify and abjectify.”

Ebony G. Patterson

Biography

Ebony G. Patterson was born in 1981, in Kingston, Jamaica. She attended the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, from which she received an Honors Diploma in Painting, and subsequently, the Sam Fox College of Art and Design at the Washington University in St. Louis, where she obtained a Masters in Fine Arts in Printmaking and Drawing in 2006. She lives and works in Lexington, Kentucky, where she is Assistant Professor of Painting at the University of Kentucky, and in her hometown of Kingston, Jamaica. Patterson has exhibited at the National Gallery of Jamaica, in major exhibitions such as the National Biennials of  2004, 2006 and 2008, and Curators Eye II (2005) and Curator’s Eye III (2008), and has been included in several major recent survey exhibitions of Caribbean art, such as the Infinite Island (2007) at the Brooklyn Museum and, currently, Rockstone and Bootheel at Real Art Ways in Hartford, Connecticut. She has presented five solo exhibitions thus far, in the USA and Jamaica, the most recent of which was Gangstas, Disciplez + the Doiley Boyz (2009) at the CAG[e] Gallery of the Edna Manley College in Kingston. Patterson has also received several awards, including the Prime Minister’s Youth Awards for Excellence, in Art and Culture (Jamaica) in 2006.

From Venus to Gangstas

Ebony G. Patterson’s work revolves around questions of identity and the body, and takes the form of mixed media paintings, drawings and collages, most of them on paper. Photography, found objects, installation and performance have recently become increasingly important in her practice..

Patterson’s early work was primarily concerned with the female body as object. Her Venus Investigations objectified the female torso, headless and anonymous, and explored the relationship between the ample-bodied “Venus” or female goddess images of prehistoric times and contemporary female self-images and beauty ideals.  Subsequent works more provocatively focused on the vagina as an object and, by implication, examined the taboos that surround this body part and its functions within Jamaican culture. This also led to 3-dimensional constructions made from intimate female articles such as sanitary napkins and tampons and more abstracted  and surreal hybrid organic forms that appeared in her large paper collages of 2007. This early body of work has a sober and at times even majestic visual beauty which as she puts it, reference “beauty through the use of the grotesque but visceral, confrontational and deconstructed.”

Ebony G. Patterson, Untitled I (Khani+di Krew) - From the Disciplez Series (2009)

More recently, Patterson’s attention has shifted to the male body and male identities. In 2008, she started exploring the phenomenon of skin bleaching among Jamaican males and its remarkable popularity among Jamaica’s “most wanted” gang members. This evolved into her current body of mixed media collages, Gangstas for Life (2008– ), which explores the shifting and contradictory notions of masculinity in Dancehall culture. The series, which is shown in installation contexts, consists of ornate portrait-like images of young Jamaican males that are glamorized with glitter, paper doilies, and elaborately patterned wallpapers, fabrics, and wall stencils, and combined with gilded toy soldiers and brightly colored toy guns that ironically refer to the trivialization of gun violence in contemporary Jamaican culture. Patterson thus probes the contradictory interplay between the hardcore masculine posturing of the “gangsta” and the feminized personal aesthetic that is now the norm among males in the dancehall culture and exemplified by such practices as skin bleaching, eyebrow shaping, and the wearing of flamboyant clothing and “bling” jewelry and accessories.

Ebony G. Patterson, Untitled (Haitian Flag Project) (2009) - detail: Erzili Freda

When Gangstas, Disciplez + the Doiley Boyz was shown at the CAG[e] gallery, several visitors had pointed out the aesthetic similarities between the works on view and the sequined Vodou flags or of Haiti, which represent specific “loas” or Vodou divinities. This formal relationship, the boundary-crossing gender dynamics in Haitian Vodou culture in which practitioners are frequently possessed by loas of the opposite gender, and the similarities and connections between the gang cultures of Jamaica and Haiti became the point of departure for her entry into the 2009 Ghetto Biennale in Haiti. For this project, Patterson recontextualized photographic images of young black males within the iconography of Haitian Vodou, referencing the loas Erzili Danto, Erzili Freda, Ren Kongo, Ayida Wedo and the Marasas (sacred twins) — all except for the latter female. The foundational images had been printed on fabric and she worked with a Haitian Vodou flag maker to sequin and otherwise embellish them, effectively turning them into drapos dedicated to each of these loas. The five large drapos were installed, along with traditional and  not-so-traditional offerings for the loas in question, inside the main room of one of the Grande Rue dwellings for a one-day exhibition. The installation captured the splendor of the sacred arts of Haitian Vodou and the bling aesthetic of contemporary gangsta culture and provocatively merged and interrogated the spiritual and the material, the male and female, the traditional and the contemporary, and the Haitian and the Jamaican.

Links

Ghetto Biennale:

www.yoonsoo.com/ghetto/files/about.html

Ebony G. Patterson:

www.artitup.zoomshare.com

www.seelinegallery.com/patterson.html

Omari Ra – Figure with Mask, 1987, private collection

This post focuses on one of the major figures in contemporary Jamaican art, Omari S. Ra. His work also provides an interesting perspective on the symbolic significance of Haiti in the African Diaspora, which has new poignancy in the aftermath of the devastating Haiti earthquake and which has motivated the timing of this post. The text is adapted from the doctoral dissertation of Veerle Poupeye, the NGJ’s Executive Director (all rights reserved by the author).

Omari Ra, also known as Afrikan, is one of the most significant artists to emerge from the 1980s and his work has helped to define the course of contemporary Jamaican art in the last twenty-five years. He was born in Kingston in 1960 as Robert Cookhorne but later changed his name to the Afrocentric Omari S. Ra. He graduated in 1983 from what was then the Jamaica School of Art (now Edna Manley College) and has more recently completed MFA studies at the University in Massachusetts in Dartmouth. Informed by his radical African Nationalist politics, Omari Ra’s work provides provocative, satirical commentaries on the historical and contemporary issues that have shaped the African Diaspora. Ra was originally a painter, who worked mainly in mixed media and collage on paper, but his recent work includes three-dimensional objects and installations and large drawings on fabric. Ra has exhibited regularly at the National Gallery, including the National Biennials, where he won the prestigious Aaron Matalon Award in 2004, and Curator’s Eye I (2004), which was curated by Lowery Stokes-Simms, then Director of the Studio Museum in Harlem. His overseas exhibitions include the 1986 and 1994 Havana Biennale and the 1995 Johannesburg Biennale. He lectures in Painting at the Edna Manley College, where he currently also heads the Painting Department.

Omari Ra is fundamentally a political artist and his work grew out of the cultural and political aftermath of the 1980 elections, which was punctuated by the 1983 Grenada invasion and the 1985 gas riots. These events, along with the general tensions that pervaded the final years of the Cold War, the increased exposure to current events through the media, and the international success of reggae, made Jamaicans acutely aware of their vulnerability in these international conflicts but also their capacity to “talk back,” be it only symbolically. This was evident in the visual arts, in the work of artists such as Ra, but perhaps most eloquently in Peter Tosh’s final album No Nuclear War (1987). Several of Ra’s early works specifically commented on the threat of a nuclear holocaust. Peter Tosh is a crucial reference in the work of Omari Ra and his peers: with his Stratocaster guitar in the shape of an M16 gun (in effect a present from an American fan) and his aggressive image as a tall, dreadlocksed and antagonistic Black man, he was the antithesis to the more conciliatory, redemptive rhetoric that had made Bob Marley internationally popular. Omari Ra’s direct indebtedness to those more militant politics was asserted in a 1984 portrait of a crowned Tosh playing his M16 guitar.

The power of Omari Ra’s work from early on derived from a deliberate ambiguity of meaning, which set it apart from the more sloganesque political arts that have proliferated in Jamaica. In the mid 1980s, for instance, he produced a series of portrayals of beggars and street people that defied their conventional representation as passive, powerless victims. Crouched uncomfortably in the tight compositional spaces, they seem to growl and scowl at the viewer and aggressively display their sexuality, as if it were a weapon. Their confrontational stance brings to mind the concept of “dread” in Rastafari, which mobilizes the ruling elite’s fear of the unkempt “lumpen proletariat” as a source of revolutionary subaltern power.

Figure with Mask (1987), a late version of Ra’s beggar imagery, features a crouching, male nude wearing an “African” mask and with large, prominent genitals. The squat, almost rectangular, chalky white figure is set against, or rather framed by an ominous blood-red background. This visual contrast adds to the expressive power of the work and helps to foreground the brown and black mask, which acts as the visual counterpart of the prominent white phallus. It is tempting to invoke Fanon’sBlack Skin, White Masks as a clue to the significance of this work, were it not that the metaphor has been inverted. The work could perhaps be construed as a comment on primitivism, specifically on the white adaptation or usurpation of black identities, but such an explanation would also be reductive and does not account for its relationship with Ra’s previous representations of beggars and street people.

Ra’s crouching figures are confusing, irritating and enigmatic presences, which are simultaneously animalized and demeaned and heroicized and ennobled (and some wear crowns and resemble his earlier portrayal of Peter Tosh). They are early explorations of his broader thematic of race, sexuality and power which he has since explored through a variety of troubling, ironic metaphors in which animal imagery has played an increasingly important role. One such was his extended Moby Dick series of the early to mid 1990s, in which the story of the white sperm whale became a fable of white power and its discontents. Ra’s titles became longer and more poetic, with bantering sexual allusions: a key work in the series was titled The Dick is Killed (from the Opera “Samedi’s Mind Set”) (1993). Ra’s titles highlight the carnivalesque quality of his exploration of the perverse dynamics of world power, in which Baron Samedi, the lecherous Vodou divinity of death, becomes the black nemesis of the phallic white whale.

Omari S. Ra – Blue Fetish (1987) (Private Collection)

Most of Ra’s early works are on a cheap but substantial type of paper sized about 38 by 25 inches that was readily available locally in the 1980s, when many conventional art materials were scarce. Working on this surface was economical but limited the scale of his works. This he resolved by creating multi-panel images, a solution also used by other Jamaican artists who have to work in cramped living spaces but wish to produce larger works. In the earlier-mentioned The Dick is Killed, he aligned three panels horizontally, each with a section of the whale’s body: the head, body and tail. The multi-panel format added to the significance of the work: the visual slicing of the whale can also be read as a symbolic slaughter or, to extend the phallic metaphor, emasculation.

Using paper also allowed Ra to work with and within the surface, which introduced an element of violence into the creation process. Sometimes he glued several sheets together and literally slashed and hacked into the layered surface, creating patterns of wound-like fissures. He also built up the surfaces by collageing found objects and images with textured substances to create dense, crusty, weathered surfaces that were suggestive in their own right and added to the multiple meanings of the works. The use of standardized sheets of paper was ultimately too limiting and by the late 1990s, Ra was exploring larger formats without, however, reverting to conventional painting surfaces and methods. His MFA studies provided an opportunity to explore new possibilities and his subsequent full-time employment at the EMC lessened his dependence on sales and allowed him to venture into directions that are not supported by the local market. Ra then started painting on white bed sheets or other types of fabric such as military-style camouflage. This provided him with cheap, flexible large surfaces that do not require much space to work on or to store or transport. He thus moved away decisively from the conventional art object, with which his earlier work had kept an ambiguous relationship: the fabric paintings are tacked directly to the wall or casually suspended, with disregard for the polished presentation and material durability that conventionally signal value in the Jamaican art market. Fabric lacks the relative rigidity of paper, which had allowed him to create heavily built-up surfaces. Ra thus had to rely more on the image to make his statement, although he managed to create an illusion of material density with the deep darkness of the paint and charcoal images. The first such works were in black and white, although he has since re-introduced color.

Ra’s first major fabric work was Bois Caiman’s Foreign Policy Retro: Restruction Globe Shrugged (2004), which was shown in the NGJ’s 2004 National Biennial and for which he won that year’s Aaron Matalon Award. It consisted of four painted white bed sheets that were hung in a curtain-like configuration that played up the theatrical quality of the work and allowed it to dominate the mixed exhibition space in which it was shown. Each sheet bore a monumental black male portrait head in what appeared to be a military uniform from the Napoleonic period. They reminded of the historical portraits of the leaders of the Haitian Revolution, Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines, but were obviously also self-images – a shift away from the depersonalized metaphors of his earlier work. As a group of portraits exhibited together, the work also challenged the traditional portrait galleries of the metropolitan West, which are mostly concerned with “dead white males.” The work was created during the bicentenary of the Haitian Revolution and the title refers to the site of the legendary Vodou ceremony that marked the start of the rebellion.

Omari S. Ra – Reconstruction: Legbara in Space (2004)

In subsequent works the references to the Haitian Revolution became more explicit and Reconstruction: Legbara in Space (2004-05) is a self-portrait in the guise of Toussaint Louverture. It more closely follows the official iconography of Toussaint, which was consolidated in 19th century portrait prints, while the background contains suggestions of a machete, the weapon/tool of the Caribbean peasantry, and linear patterns that remind of the Haitian vèvè drawings, abstracted ritual ground drawings that symbolize the various Haitian Vodou divinities. Ra thus foregrounded the association between Vodou and the Haitian Revolution as instances of rebellion and self-affirmation. The title refers to the West African trickster and crossroads or gatekeeper divinity Esu-Elegbara, or his Haitian counterpart Papa Legba, to which Toussaint’s adopted surname Louverture (“the opening” or “the opener”) may have deliberately referred. By turning this image into a self-portrait, Ra also alludes to his own subversive persona. This identification does not humanize Toussaint: with its looming monumentality and “supercharged” blackness, Ra’s portrayal turns Toussaint (and himself) into a fearsome mythological being that exemplifies his notion of Black Revolution. Ra, characteristically, raises more questions than answers but presents Haiti as a site of a crucial and as yet unresolved symbolic struggle in the Black World.

More recently, Ra’s work has critiqued the role of conventional Christian religion among the African Diaspora and actively participates in current debates about religion in historical and contemporary Jamaican society. In these works, such as 1865 Still on the Agenda (1985), he combines conventional, Western Christian iconography with symbols of violence and revolution, such as guns, and other provocative references to various Jamaican cultural practices, resulting in his most controversial statements to date.

Omari S. Ra – 1865 Still on the Agenda – God Bless the Child that Got His Own (2008)

David Miller Snr. - Talisman (c1940), Collection: National Gallery of Jamaica, Aaron and Marjorie Matalon Collection

As we continue the work of reinstalling our permanent exhibitions, we have recently reopened our Early Intuitives gallery, as the first gallery of the modern Jamaican art exhibition to be completed. This gallery features the work of three artists, John Dunkley, David Miller Snr. and David Miller Jnr. We have already presented a post on John Dunkley and now present one on two the Millers who were, like Dunkley, based in downtown Kingston, where they lived and worked at 8 Bray Street.

David Miller Snr. began his career in the early years of the twentieth century as a carver of curios for the tourist trade.  His earliest known works are fully within the late nineteenth century tradition of “coconut shell carving” where decorative floral motifs were etched into the hard shell of the coconut which had been fashioned into a lidded container. During the early twenties he was carving curios in wood; these were principally “negro heads” and a variety of animals.

David Miller Jnr. - Girl Surprised (1949), Collection: National Gallery of Jamaica

By 1920 his son David Miller Jnr. was fully integrated into the workshop and excelled at detailed work. David Jnr. honed his skills by repeating endless variations on a few basic forms (principal among them, the “heads” where he explored the negro physiognomy through a constant studying of people he knew and photographs from the daily newspapers). The library of the Institute of Jamaica yielded up images of a variety of exotic animals and illustrations of extinct dinosaurs which fueled the imaginations of both father and son.

The two worked closely together and deliberately merged their identities. Having the same name, which they proudly carved on the base of each piece, they simply became known as “The Millers.” Since the death of David Miller Jnr. in 1976 attempts have been made to distinguish between the two oeuvres. It appears that the majority of the famous heads were produced by David Miller Jnr. while the more imaginative works like Talisman are the masterworks of the father.

The Millers in 1964

This post was produced by the NGJ’s Curatorial Department.

Osmond Watson, Freedom Fighter (1973), Collection: National Gallery of Jamaica

This post is our tribute to Jamaican painter and sculptor Osmond Watson, who passed away in 2005,  at age 71. This post is adapted from a paper by O’Neil Lawrence, Curatorial Assistant, and an obituary for Osmond Watson written by Veerle Poupeye, Executive Director.

As an Afro-Caribbean man who resides in the Caribbean and is faced with Caribbean problems, my philosophy on art is simple. My aim is to glorify Black people through my work with the hope that it will uplift the masses of the region, giving dignity and self-respect where it is needed and to make people more aware of their own beauty.

– Osmond Watson, 1995

It is one of the most frequently quoted statements by the artist Osmond Watson; most likely because it is one that resonates as strongly now as it did in 1995. The identity of the Afro-Caribbean man/woman is one that is in a permanent state of flux but few of us even properly understand or acknowledge the unique position that Caribbean people hold within the African Diaspora. Jamaica is populated by a people whose ancestors struggled to maintain their cultural history and who are now willingly letting that history be subsumed by North American influences.

Who was this man Osmond Watson who seems even after his recent passing to act as a cultural beacon to a generation – of not only artists – in need of guidance? He was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1934 grew up in Jones Town in a period when the Marcus Garvey Pan-African Movement’s impact was still being felt (especially considering the fact that his mother was from Sierra Leone) and had, by the tender age of nine, proven that he had significant potential as a painter. His talent was nurtured at the Institute of Jamaica’s Junior Centre and in 1952 he received a scholarship to attend the Jamaica School of Art and Craft (J.S.A.C., later the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts). He apprenticed with Jamaican master painter Ralph Campbell and later shared a studio with another well known Jamaican painter Alexander Cooper.

Osmond Watson - Hallelujah (1969), Collection: National Gallery of Jamaica

In 1961 Osmond Watson went to England to study at the St. Martins School of Art and it was there in his own words that he discovered “himself.” The experience of London changed him in a fundamental way: exposure to British racism and what he termed as the [naked] capitalist exploitation changed him significantly but rather than sink into despair he decided to face the “enemy” squarely and taking inspiration in his state of despair from the Rastafarians in Jamaica and making the British Museums’ African displays, his refuge against the forces that were buffeting at him and threatening to shipwreck his development.

He turned the forces that challenged his sense of identity as an Afro-Caribbean Jamaican man and channeled them into creating his own identity: especially as it related to his artistic expression. He told Alex Gradussov in a 1969 interview forJamaica Journal that he felt sorry for “his pals back home, happy, smiling, working away like mad at European art […]  Think of the many Jamaican artists whose work you can’t differentiate from those of European painters.”

But this was not to be a wholesale rejection of the conventions of European art by Osmond Watson but rather a redevelopment if you will a creolization of those conventions infusing them with the trends from African arts – claiming or reclaiming the Cubist-like style that he became known for as a true inheritor of the style. His other sources included Byzantine icons, stained glass windows and early Flemish painting. Jazz music and the Afro-Cuban artist Wifredo Lam were also important influences.

Osmond Watson returned to Jamaica and set about developing his style (a process he continued up to his death) his subject matter and inspiration the Jamaican people for he felt it was his duty to represent the unique life of the people of Jamaica, the poor and the suffering: the class that he maintained as his own; the people whose business was that of survival. His most important source was indeed Jamaican popular culture; the aesthetic of his work enabled him to combine painting and woodcarving with found objects, such as plastic mirrors and costume jewellery, thus lending dignity to these tokens of local pop culture.

Osmond Watson - Peace and Love (1969), Collection: National Gallery of Jamaica

Osmond Watson’s distinctly black Jamaican imagery resonated deeply with Jamaican audiences, especially the upcoming, black middle-class, whose cultural values and racial politics it embodied. The popularity of his black religious images, market vendors, Jonkonnu dancers and Rastafarian drummers should not allow us to overlook, however, that many of his images originated in radical political gestures. For example, Peace and Love (1969) depicts Christ as a Rastafarian, a provocative merging of identities produced at a time when Rastafarianism was still marginalized in Jamaican society. The painting is also a self-portrait, which places Watson at the center of the Black Nationalist politics he embraced. It points to the personal side of his work, which included more realistic self-portraits and intimate portrayals of women, couples and children that often allude to his relationship with Daphne, his wife of 49 years.

Watson’s style is characterized by geometrically stylized forms, luminous colours and heavy outlines, which give many of his paintings a stained glass appearance. Some, such as Rainbow Triptych (1978), were actually painted to look like stained glass windows. He was also an accomplished sculptor, who worked mainly in wood, which he sometimes tinted with brilliant colours. His paintings often include sculptural elements, such as the hand-carved wood and metal frame that is an integral part of Peace and Love.

Watson’s work can be found in most collections in Jamaica, including the National Gallery of Jamaica, where he is among the best represented artists. Reproductions of his best known paintings, such as De Lawd is my Shepherd, can be seen in many local and Jamaican Diaspora homes. He represented Jamaica in many overseas, including in Britain, the Face of Jamaica (1964); Three Decades of Jamaican Painting (1971), Ten Jamaican Sculptors (1975) and Remembrance (1983), at the Commonwealth Institute, London and Back to Black (2005) at the Whitechapel Gallery. In the USA, he was also represented in Jamaican Art 1922-1982 (1983-1985) and Caribbean Visions. Among his many awards were the Jamaican Order of Distinction (1986) and the Institute of Jamaica’s Silver and Gold Musgrave Medals.

Osmond Watson - Morning Song for Jah (1991), Collection: National Gallery of Jamaica - Bequest of Michael Manley

Leonard Daley - The Pickpocket (1984), Private Collection

We continue building our archives on Jamaican artists with a post on the Intuitive painter Leonard Daley. This post is adapted from the Intuitives III catalogue, biographical information from our Education Department, and a tribute by Chief Curator David Boxer which was read at Daley’s funeral.

For me, the late Leonard Daley may well have produced one of the most original and impossible-to-classify bodies of work I have ever seen. Partly abstract, partly surreal, partly realist (in its depiction of birds, snakes or plants), it is always deeply spiritual. Daley’s paintings offer a rich stew of allusions to the power of natural forces, humankind’s relationship to the animal world, primeval spirits and the irrepressible fecundity of the earth. […] Perhaps in a way closely similar to that of Everald Brown’s visionary work, Daley’s semi-abstract images tap into and evoke a sense of Jamaica’s collective cultural consciousness — its collective memory or sense of its history.

– Edward M. Gómez (Intuitives III, 2006)

Biography

The Intuitive painter Leonard Daley was born in Point Hill, St. Catherine, in 1930. He started painting some time in the 1960s but no works have been preserved from before 1979, when he first came to the attention of the local artistic community. He came to national prominence in 1987, when his work was featured in the National Gallery’s Fifteen Intuitives exhibition. While his visionary, spontaneously abstract expressionist work was well received by aficionados of outsider art and Intuitive art, it proved controversial with those in the Jamaican art world who had more mainstream, academic tastes and could not appreciate his work as “art.” Despite this mixed response, Daley’s work was widely exhibited and collected, in Jamaica and abroad and ultimately received significant critical acclaim. It was included in several other National Gallery exhibitions, such as Intuitives III (2007) and is represented in its permanent collection. Daley’s work was also included in several noteworthy overseas exhibitions, such as New World Imagery (1995), an exhibition of contemporary Jamaican art which toured in the U.K., Caribe Insular (1996), a Caribbean exhibition which toured in Spain and Germany, and Redemption Songs (1997), an exhibition of Jamaican Intuitive art which was shown in the USA. Daley lived in the Liguanea area of Kingston when his work was first discovered in 1979, and subsequently moved to the rural community of Fidler Hill in St. Catherine, where his self-built house was a work of art in  its own right with all surfaced covered with his paintings and sculptures. In the latter years of his life, he lived in the Jack’s Hill area of Kingston. He died in 2006.

Leonard Daley - Ammanda (c1987), Collection: National Gallery of Jamaica (Gift of David Boxer)

David Boxer’s Tribute

Brother Leonard Daley initially came to the attention of the National Gallery during the run of the Intuitive Eye exhibition in 1979 when the then Brazilian Ambassador excitedly reported to the Gallery’s staff: “Come and See! I have found the Jamaican Hypollite,” referring of course to the great Haitian Primitive. David Boxer, then Director/Curator, immediately went with the Ambassador to view Daley’s work. He later recalled this first encounter with Brother Daley’s work:

In a darkened garage on Donhead Avenue, just up the road from Devon House, I entered a room that overwhelmed me with its intensity. My unease at the unabated angst that screamed from the walls was tempered by the extra-ordinary inventiveness of the depictions of the various animal and human forms, and the distorted tortured heads. No Hypollite, I thought, Bosch incarnate! Enigmatic surreal transformations were accompanied by dramatic shifts in scale and most unusually, ironic superimpositions: one image lying on top of another – the concept of surrealist juxtaposition in its most natural state. (I later discovered that he had been painting since the year of Flora 1962 and that he used to hang the paintings in the bushes at Cherry Gardens but they had all disappeared.) The huis clos atmosphere of the garage walls was encapsulated in the one available easel painting Dream which I promptly acquired and after pleading the case for more portable surfaces, I left Brother D, as the creator of these visions was called, to work out his nightmares and day traumas without the meddling of the trained critic.

It was too late to include him in the exhibition but by the time the second edition, Fifteen Intuitives, was staged in 1987, Daley could be exhibited to full effect and was quickly hailed as the most important new “discovery” among the Intuitives. His subsequent inclusion in exhibitions such as Home and Awayand New World Imagery, which was curated by Roger Malbert and Petrine Archer Straw for the Hayward Gallery in London, in the second Rastafari Kunst exhibition in Germany, and in the Redemption Songs exhibition which toured the U.S., placed him in the forefront of our living Intuitives. For the New World Imagery exhibition, Daley’s painting Pickpocket graced the cover of the catalogue. In 1999 Professor Barry Chevannes organized a one-man exhibition of Daley’s work at the Social Sciences faculty of the University of the West Indies. It was at the opening of that exhibition that I boldly declared Daley as “one of the truly great natural painters of the century.” In 2005 he was honored with a one-man exhibition at Cavin-Morris Gallery in New York.

Leonard Daley - Untitled (c1987), Private Collection

Randall Morris, the proprietor of Cavin-Morris in his writings on the Jamaican Intuitives has likened Daley’s compositional mode to Dub Poetry:

I think of Daley’s work in the same frame of reference as Dub music. The basis of Dub is the removal of the melody line (the obvious narrative) to reveal the intricate interplay of percussion and bass. Effects are added by the dubbing DJ consisting often of echo, repetition, and deep reverb. In Daley’s Dub paintings by removing the obvious narrative he encourages us to see some of the deeper movements of the artworks and his fast-moving cagey mind. His personal connections between the multiple events are de-emphasized yet still serve as reference points as when he used the John Crow bird as an autobiographical indicator. Some of the characters, like this bird, do repeat painting to painting. Daley is laying out the situations, personal, spiritual, political, etc. that are real and symbolic at the same time, involving the viewer’s participation in the outcome. He […] telescopes time and details. This is a trait of Rasta reasoning as well; a free-form forum when Rasta’s discuss events, prophecies and philosophy. […] The rhythm of the painting continues; it is the perception of the viewer that changes and improvises.

Daley’s themes, as Morris points out, are “hardships, striving, gossip, man’s inhumanity to man; the battle of Good versus Evil in the common man’s daily life.” In many of his works, Brother D depicted himself as a John-crow. Many may despise the “John Crow,” Daley would explain, “but it is a useful bird. It cleans up the place.” Brother D believed that if he pointed out the ills of the society in some of his work he might actually assist in healing the society.

The society is clearly not healed but his artistry in carrying his message has had a profound effect on younger artists. His closest follower who became an important painter in his own right, Byron Johnson was murdered in 2002 but his legacy live on. Rex Dixon, David Boxer, among others have cited Brother D as an important influence on their own work. And in a recent interview the young Jamaican/Canadian artist Charles Campbell when asked to name his favourite Jamaican work of art responded:

I’m a big fan of Leonard Daley. There is remarkable honesty and insight in his work. “The Pickpocket” is one of my favourites.  If you ever have the good fortune to spend time in Leonard’s company he has a way of letting you see the divine spark at the root of everything and in all of us. He is a remarkable man.

He was indeed a remarkable man whose spirit lives on in a substantial body of remarkable paintings.

Isaac Mendes Belisario was the first documented Jamaican-born artist. He was active in Kingston around Emancipation and his work, in paint and in print, provides a rich document of life in Jamaica, seen from the perspective of the Sephardic merchant class to which he belonged. Belisario’s work is well represented in the NGJ Collection and on permanent view in our historical galleries. The following overview of his life and work is adapted from the catalogue of “Isaac Mendes Belisario: Art & Emancipation in Jamaica” (2008).

I.M. Belisario, Cocoa Walk Estate (c1840), Collection: National Gallery of Jamaica

Biography

Isaac Mendes Belisario was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1795 into a Sephardic Jewish family of Spanish or Portuguese origin. The family had close ties to the Sephardic community in London. His grandfather, Isaac Mendes Belisario, after whom he was named, taught children at the Bevis Marks synagogue in London. The older Isaac’s son Abraham was sent to Jamaica in 1786 to work for Alexandre Lindo, a wealthy merchant, plantation owner, and slave factor. Five years later Abraham married Alexandre’s daughter Esther, and in 1803 Abraham, Esther and their six children – the younger Isaac, Caroline, Lydia, Hannah, Rose and Maria – moved to London.

Belisario trained as an artist under Robert Hills, the landscape watercolourist and drawing master. He exhibited landscapes between 1815 and 1818 but put aside his artistic endeavours in the 1820s, when he worked as a stockbroker. In 1831 Belisario showed a portrait at the Royal Academy of Arts, London.

Belisario returned to Kingston in about 1832 and remained there for at least fifteen years.  The island had a significant Jewish population in the 1830s, concentrated in Kingston and Spanish Town, and the majority worked in retailing, merchandising, and wholesaling. Belisario may have felt encouraged to return by the Jamaica Assembly’s passing in 1831 of the Jewish Emancipation Act, which gave Jamaican Jews full civil liberties at a time when the rights of Jews in Britain were still being negotiated.

The few works that survive from this period in Belisario’s career show him to have been a versatile artist, capable of working in different media and in a range of genres to cater to his clientele’s demands. In addition to his portrait practice, which was based oat 21 King Street, in downtown Kingston, Belisario painted estate portraits in oils and collaborated with the French printmaker Adolphe Duperly on various print projects. In 1837-1838 Belisario produced his best-known work, Sketches of Character, a series of twelve handcoloured lithographs, which may reflect his desire to produce work of wider appeal and more lasting significance.

The Jamaica to which Belisario returned was on the eve of making its troubled transition from apprenticeship to full emancipation, and his works provide a fascinating portrait of a colony undergoing – and resisting – radical transformation. He did not publicize his personal views, however, perhaps out of concern not to alienate his clients and community.

Belisario’s last documented Kingston work is a lithograph of 1846, and he died in London in 1849.

I.M. Belisario, Sketches of Character: French Set Girls (1837-38), Collection: The Hon. Maurice Facey and Mrs. Facey (On extended loan to the NGJ)

Sketches of Character

In September 1837, Belisario published the first part of a series of lithographic prints entitled Sketches of Character, In Illustration of the Habits, Occupation, and Costume of the Negro Population in the Island of Jamaica. The first part consisted of four hand-coloured lithographs accompanied by an extensive explanatory text, known as letterpress. The series was sold by subscription, and Belisario printed a list of subscribers with the first part. Two more parts followed over the next few months, but despite Belisario’s intention that there should be twelve parts in all, he abandoned the series after the third part of was issued in 1838, likely having exhausted either his financial or creative resources, or both.

Of the twelve published plates, seven are images of figures from the masquerades that the formerly enslaved performed in Jamaica during the annual Christmas and New Year’s holidays, and four depict examples of the different occupations frequently seen in the streets of Kingston. Belisario described these two groups of images as the “Christmas Amusements” and the “Cries of Kingston.” Belisario’s prints were the first visual representations both of the masquerades and of Jamaican occupational types, and Sketches of Character was a landmark event for both Jamaican and British print publishing.

The Christmas Amusements depict three separate, though overlapping, performance forms: the Sets, the Actor Boys, and Jonkonnu (usually referred to by whites during the colonial period in its anglicized form of John Canoe). Originating in African masquerade and religious practice, these forms underwent a process of creolization, incorporating elements of European theater and masquerade imported to Jamaica by immigrants. Masquerade was a controlled outlet for the enslaved, who endured an everyday existence of grinding monotony and brutality. The notion of the “world turned upside down,” parody, and masking are central to masquerade, raising troubling questions regarding social hierarchies, power relations, and personal identity, and the holiday period was a time of anxiety for planters and ruling elites, who feared that carnival would spill over into violence and revolt. There were, in fact, active efforts to suppress Jonkonnu in the post-emancipation period and it is only in the mid 20th century that this masquerade tradition was recognized as a legitimate part of Jamaica’s cultural heritage.

The series has had an important legacy. Belisario’s images were models for the revival of Jonkonnu in the 1950s, and they also played a role in the creation of a new national identity in the post-independence era.

I.M. Belisario, Skethces of Character: Jaw-Bone or House John-Canoe (1837-1838), Collection: The Hon. Maurice Facey and Mrs. Facey (On extended loan to the NGJ)

Belisario as a Landscape Painter

Belisario is remembered mainly as a watercolourist and lithographer, but he was also active as a landscape painter in oils whose works chronicle Jamaican plantation life and labour at a moment of profound transformation. He was perhaps the last exponent of the picturesque estate landscape in Jamaica.

A group of oil paintings and a related watercolour, all depicting estates belonging to the Marquess of Sligo (then Governor of Jamaica), explores the question of labour on the plantation in the transition from apprenticeship to freedom. They might specifically represent the estates under the management of Alexandre Bravo, who took them over as a manager in 1838.

Belisario’s paintings seem to offer an idyllic vision of free labour willingly performed in an open market, resulting in economic prosperity and social calm – the desired outcome of Sligo’s reforms. Other sources however record that the years after full emancipation saw the collapse of sugar production and agriculture on marginal lands such as Sligo’s plantations at Cocoa Walk and Kelly’s Estate. Only with the breaking up of the estates in a “ruinate” condition did the former apprentices finally have a chance to purchase and cultivate their own land.

I.M. Belisario, View of Kelly's Estate (c1840), Collection: National Gallery of Jamaica

Bibliography

Barringer, Tim, Gillian Forrester, and Barbaro Martinez-Ruiz, eds. Art and Emancipation in Jamaica: Isaac Mendes Belisario and His Worlds. New Haven: Yale Center for British Art & Yale University Press, 2007.

Boxer, David et al. Isaac Mendes Belisario: Art & Emancipation in Jamaica. Kingston: National Gallery of Jamaica, 2008.

Ranston, Jackie. Belisario: Sketches of Character. Kingston: Mill Press, 2008.

Spread the word!

Prepare to submit work for the 2010 National Visual Arts Competition and Exhibition! The exhibition includes a youth section and selected participants are eligible for medal awards and sectional prizes. Categories accepted: ceramics, fibre arts, painting, photography, sculpture, assemblage, video art and works on paper. Entry forms will be available shortly.

The redesigned entrance to the "Jamaican Art: The 20th Century" permanent exhibition

As part of the re-installation of our permanent exhibitions, which is currently in progress, we have recently re-conceptualized and re-installed the entrance alcove to the main permanent exhibition, now named Art in Jamaica: The 20th Century, which provides a comprehensive overview of modern Jamaican art. The entrance alcove has for many years housed Edna Manley’s famous Negro Aroused (1935), which we have retained but remounted on a display table by Jamaican Art Deco designer Burnett Webster, which was specifically commissioned and designed by the Institute of Jamaica to accommodate the sculpture.

Edna Manley’s Negro Aroused is a key work in the NGJ collection, for several closely related reasons. The first is that it is Edna Manley’s best known work and, and given her significance in the development of Jamaican art, a key work in Jamaican art history.

Second, the work is closely related, in terms of its original symbolism and the manner in which it has been used since then, with the nationalist, anti-colonial ferment of the late 1930s which culminated in the island-wide labour unrest and riots of 1938 and, more  generally, the growth of racial consciousness and labour unionism in Jamaica. A large-scale version of the work, created posthumously in 1991, now stands on the Kingston Waterfront, where it serves as a monument to these historical events.

Third, Negro Aroused was the first modern Jamaican work of art to be acquired for the Institute of Jamaica Collection and thus represents the start of what is now the NGJ Collection. The work was acquired by public subscription in 1937, an initiative which was initiated privately and illustrates that the Institute of Jamaica, previously an institution with a decidedly colonial outlook, was being pressured to accommodate the new developments in Jamaican art and politics.

David Boxer has written about Negro Aroused:

[N]owhere in Edna Manley’s oeuvre do we find such as balance, such integration “form” and “content.” […] It is surely this, an absolute clarity of meaning through form, that allowed the early acceptance of Negro Aroused as a symbol, as the very icon of an age. Book jackets, postage stamps, posters, logos, a monument; all have used this famous image to great effect.

Negro Aroused, a symbol of what? We have spoken of a surging upwards; a dawning. This half figure of an unmistakably black man, his gaze turned shkywards, is a symbol of a search; a vision of a new social order, a New Day, to a new consciousness of self, of race and of nationhood.

Negro Aroused is also used as the logo of the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts – the College was named after Edna Manley in tribute to her seminal role in the development of that institution, especially its School of Visual Arts, of which she was a founder in 1950.

In the new permanent installation, Negro Aroused is mounted on a table, made from wild tamarind wood, which was commissioned by the Institute of Jamaica from the Jamaican Art Deco designer Burnett Webster to accommodate the sculpture. The sculpture and table were both sent to London for Edna Manley’s 1937 solo exhibition at the French Gallery. The Art Deco style which had become fashionable in Jamaica in the 1930s, of which Koren der Harootian, Burnett Webster, Alvin Marriott and Edna Manley herself were exponents. Art Deco was the first emphatically modern design style to gain popularity in Jamaica and its influence could be seen in many aspects of the visual culture, most notably in the Carib Theatre in Cross Roads, which was designed by the American architect , graphic designer and artist John Pike.  By using this original Art Deco display table, Negro Aroused is thus also placed in its aesthetic context, as an early example of Jamaican modernism.

Edna Manley's Negro Aroused on its original Burnett Webster display table

Bibliography

Boxer, David. Edna Manley: Sculptor. Kingston: National Gallery of Jamaica and Edna Manley Foundation, 1991

Leyva, Irina. Jamaican Art Deco: The Designs of Burnett Webster. Kingston: National Gallery of Jamaica, 1999.

Marlon James, Stefan and Camille (2009)

On May 16, 2010, the NGJ will open Young Talent V, an exciting new exhibition which will feature the work of 14 young Jamaican artists. The Young Talent series was inaugurated in 1985, with other editions in 1989, 1995, and 2002. The objective of the series is to provide exposure to the work of emerging Jamaican artists, in the form of mini-exhibitions within the overall exhibition that provide insight into the development and scope of each selected artist. For Young Talent V, the NGJ reviewed the work of some thirty Jamaican artists under 40 years old, of which the following fourteen were selected: Marvin Bartley (Photography); Stefan Clarke (Photography & Sculpture); Phillip Thomas (Painting & Drawing); Michael Elliott (Painting); Marlon James (Photography); Ebony Patterson (Painting, Printmaking, Installation & Textiles); Keisha Castello (Painting/Assemblage); Oliver Myrie (Painting); Caroline Sardine (Bops) (Painting & Assemblage); Oneika Russell (Drawing & Video Animation); Leasho Johnson (Painting, Installation & Fashion Design); Megan McKain (Jewellery & Textiles); Christopher Harris (Painting); “Sand” (Painting). The exhibition is curated by NGJ Chief Curator, Dr. David Boxer and Executive Director, Veerle Poupeye and O’Neil Lawrence is acting as Assistant Curator.

While we are preparing for Young Talent V, we will be publishing posts on each of the artists in the show. This first post is on photographer Marlon James (not to be confused with the like-named novelist), whose exhibition is curated by Veerle Poupeye.

Marlon James, Stefan (2009)

Biography

Marlon James was born in Kingston in 1980. In 1998, he began his studies at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts.  While majoring in sculpture he discovered his passion for photography and chose to dedicate all his free electives in that direction.  Under the tutelage of Donette Zacca, he began his creative development as a photographer and photography quickly became his primary medium.

In 2001 the Pulse Entertainment Group recommended Marlon to work with international, awarding winning photographer Jeffrey Gamble. Over the next year, Marlon was nominated for the Under 40 Artist of the Year competition at the Mutual Gallery, worked as one of two photographers for the fashion designer SIIM and freelanced on a number of commercial projects. Seeking to develop his skills, he sought the advice of a noted photographer Franz Marzouca. Marzouca, impressed with Marlon’s portfolio, became a mentor and invited him to work on a number of projects. Thus began the first of a series of apprenticeships that would serve to increase his proficiency as a photographer. Marlon continued to enhance his skills by working with other seasoned and respected photographers such as William Richards, a fashion and commercial photographer working between NYC and Jamaica; Anthony Mandler, a noted photographer and music video director from LA; and Mark Seliger, the renowned celebrity photographer whose images have made the covers of Vanity Fair and other international publications. These experiences have allowed him to access a pool of expertise that continues to inform his work as he develops his own creative style.

As an artist Marlon is committed to creating powerful images that will command the viewer’s full and undivided attention. His defines himself as an unorthodox photographer who strives to break the cycle of monotony. His photographic practice is varied and includes dark room and digital, colour and black and white, and fashion and fine art although he has focused mainly on the human figure. For Young Talent V, the exhibition will consist of a series of portraits of fellow artists, most  of which were made on site at the Edna Manley College.

Marlon James is currently employed in the Photography department of the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts as a photography technician, and assistant curator of the College’s CAG[e] Gallery. He also teaches Beginner’s Photography in the Dept of Continuing Education.

Marlon James, Ebony (2009)

Artist’s Statement

Capturing the soul of someone was never my initial objective. I just wanted my subjects to be relaxed in front of my camera. I don’t like to impose any directions on them, I just let them be and the results have been fascinating, especially to me, as these people unveil in front of my lens. Mainly using one source of light with a monochromatic tone allows me to create a mood that seems to bring out their true character, to reveal the individual beneath the layers.

– Marlon James

Curator’s Statement

Marlon James’ stark black and white portraits of fellow artists are powerful physical and psychological presences and they will be shown at or near life size in the exhibition, to reinforce this effect. As Marlon explains, he lets his subject be themselves in front of the camera and this leads to acute portrayals of their personalities and physical appearance, some of them haunting, to the point of being disturbing, some amusing and some both.  While working on this exhibition, several noteworthy trends have come to the fore. One is the increased reliance on collaboration between contemporary Jamaican artists who are less concerned than their predecessors with drawing a firm line between their own work  and that of their peers. In this exhibition, this new thrust towards collaboration and collective approaches is particularly evident in the work of Marlon James, Stefan Clarke, Ebony Patterson and  Marvin Bartley.

The other emerging trend, which is a source of particular fascination to me, is the performative self-presentation of certain young artists in Jamaica, who create a spectacular public persona in which provocative fashion, body adornment and posturing play an important role – quite a contrast with the more modest, at times even self-effacing stance of many of our older artists. Their self-presentation recognizably draws from contemporary youth culture — dancehall, hip-hop and goth stand out — but is taken to a level where it becomes part of the artistic practice. Marlon James’ portraits powerfully capture this development, most obviously in his portrayals of Stefan Clarke, who is also in the Young Talent V exhibition and whose body, with his self-designed tattoos and jewelry, piercings and radical hairstyles, is an ever-evolving performance piece.

– Veerle Poupeye

Marlon James, Giselle (2010)

Michael Elliott - The June Fellowship (2008), Collection: Wayne Gallimore

In this second post on the upcoming Young Talent V exhibition, we feature the painter Michael “Flyn” Elliott.

Biography

Michael Elliott (or Flyn, as he is known to many in the art world) was born in Manchester, Jamaica in 1979. He was interested in art from an early age and in 1998 registered at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, where he studied painting and became attracted to photo-realism, which he initially used to document the physical environment of Jamaica. Photography has played an important role in the development of Michael’s work and most of his paintings are based on his own photographs.

In the years following art school, Michael grew an awareness of current affairs and social issues, not only in Jamaica but globally,  and would seek to represent these by means of realistically painted symbols, including such disturbing images as dead, bloodied rats and chopped meat.  The use of close-up views adds to the shock-effect of these images, as it confronts the viewer more directly with their disturbing character and underlying messages.

Michael does not limit himself to depicting the macabre, however, and also paints images that are more moody and poetic, whether scenery or still life, although these also carry implied social messages: his train series for example explores the shattered hopes about Jamaica’s defunct railway system, which was once a source of national pride, and, by implication, the broader economic challenges facing contemporary Jamaica.

Michael has exhibited regularly since graduating from the Edna Manley College in 2002,  including the Annual National (2002) and the National Biennial (2006, 2008) at the NGJ, and various Mutual Gallery exhibitions, such as Young Generation. He has also  received a Silver Medal in the 2008 JCDC/NGJ National Visual Arts Competition and Exhibition. He had his first solo exhibition at the CAG[e] Gallery of the Edna Manley College in 2008.

Michael Elliott - Dead Flesh (2008)

Artist’s Statement

Jamaica today stands at a crossroads or, some would, say a T intersection. The world in general also faces this dilemma. Recent events have put into question the nature of man’s relationship with each other, and political crises, wars, religious tensions and many other manifestations of conflict seem to be the order of the day. Even the earth seems to be angry, perhaps angry at what we have done to it and each other, and there have been several catastrophic events involving flooding, hurricanes, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. I believe it is my calling to use my art as a tool to raise social awareness and I would like to see Jamaican art as a tool for change that makes our society think and do better.

My recent work addresses a number of current issues including crime, political crisis, as can be seen in The Trillionaire which comments on the situation in Zimbabwe, and even more recently Golgotha, which brings up the question of the morality of the Church in today’s world, especially the issue of sexual abuse in the Catholic church. Did Jesus die for an institution with secrets behind the curtain? The earthquake in Haiti was the most heart-rending news of the first quarter of 2010, which has prompted the world in response to it. A day after the quake, I shifted my mind to the developments on the two-state island and this has led me to produce two paintings so far, Tous Saints (all Saints) and Loa Arise. Tous Saints features, similar to Golgotha, a still life of a skull, only this time encrypted on the wall behind are dates of significant happenings in Haiti’s history. The title of this piece could be a call to the many saints in their religion to save this rich culture from further cataclysms, from both political and natural disasters.

Michael Elliott

Michael Elliott - Loa Arise (2010)

Curator’s Statement

The following is an excerpt from David Boxer’s opening speech at Michael Elliott’s solo exhibition at the CAG[e] in 2008:

Michael uses photographs, his own photographs …. And I want to say something about such use of photographs, for too often I hear collectors and observers of our art, making what they feel are derogatory statements “Oh. He uses photographs” implying somehow that there is something wrong about this. That it’s copying.  That it’s almost like cheating.

The use of the camera and photographs to assist an artist has been around from the very beginnings of photography. Many major artists from Delacroix, through Degas, though Picasso, and Francis Bacon have utilized photographs, both those that existed and had a life of their own or photographs taken specifically by  the artist  or  commissioned by the artist to aid him or her  in some aspect of the work. Delacroix was one of the first to recognize that there are essential differences between camera Vision and Human Vision. He was also one of the first to point out how immensely useful the camera could be to the artist. […]

So Michael uses photographs. And there is nothing wrong with that. In fact there is everything right in that. Further, Michael uses photographs that he has taken himself. This is the standard methodology of the super-realist painters to whom Michael is tangentially related, though I wouldn’t use the word super-realist to define his work.

If I find fault with Michael’s method, and sometimes I do and I have told him so, it is the feeling that the translation from photograph to painting is at times too mechanical, which is what I feel about most super-realist art, that there is not enough “thinking” in the medium […]. These are paintings, and thus one wants to sense always that these are paintings speaking to us and not simple “hand-made” photographs. They must speak as paintings, and connect to the history of painting.

To be sure, this feeling of mechanical transference is diminishing in Michael’s work and  I have watched his skills as a painter develop and I believe that he is on an upward curve,  and that his painting, as painting is deepening. So too are his ideas about subject matter and iconography which are developing and becoming more clearly articulated.

David Boxer

Michael Elliott - The Trillionaire (2009)

Marvin Bartley, Study from the Enthroned Madonna (2010)

This is our third in the series of posts on artists the upcoming Young Talent V exhibition at the NGJ, which is now confirmed to open on May 16. Marvin Bartley was born in Lionel Town, Clarendon Jamaica. He attended the Edna Manley College from 2003 to 2007 where he studied painting but photography had already become his main interest when he started his final year project, a series of haunting manipulated images inspired by Dante’s Divina Commedia. Since graduating, he has earned acclaim as a fashion and fine art photographer. His fashion photography has been featured in Iconography, She Caribbean, Jamaque, Posh, Skywritings, German Playboy, Buzz, Shabeau, and Back A Yard. He has participated in the following exhibitions: the J.C.D.C. Fine Arts Exhibition, Shortwood Teacher’s College, 2005; Jamaica National Biennial, National Gallery of Jamaica, 2006; Materializing Slavery, National Gallery of Jamaica 2007; and Kingston on the Edge, Gallery 128, 2007. Marvin Bartley’s participation in Young Talent V is curated by Dr. David Boxer, the NGJ’s Chief Curator.

Artist’s Statement

When asked about who I am, I refer to my profession first and then my name. I am a fashion, commercial and fine art photographer. My interest in photography was never planned. I went to the Edna Manley College of the visual and Performing arts to become a painter. Classical painting was my main interest, however despite my intentions then, fate had other plans. I slowly grew an interest in photography and soon realized that the basic understanding of classic painting composition, light and so on, could be applied to digital photography and digital editing in ways unimaginable.

My fine art imagery represents a graphic depiction of ideas relating to Christian religion and doctrines of the afterlife, particularly the ideas documented by Poet Dante Alighieri in his epic poem  ‘La Divina Commedia’. This fascination with the afterlife and its circles was born out of mere curiosity and then developed into this almost incessant need to understand documented ideas on life after death. Dante’s poetry revealed far more than any other material as it relates to punishment met and the journey of souls in the after life, the Divine Comedy.

Marvin Bartley, The Hearts of Fools (2007)

My photographic images are created by a combination of physical and digital construction.  Essentially, depending on the project, they come to life through the manufacturing of grand or miniature sets, the attainment of associated props and models, which are digitally captured  These photographs are eventually assorted, in composites of as many as 500 images, and enhanced with the use of Photoshop.

Another side to my photography is fashion. In many ways it is different from the religiously themed and bizarre photographs earlier mentioned. However on a basic level they are quite similar as the process of transforming models and space through digital capture, retouching and manipulation is equally shared with my other images.

Marvin Bartley, Catalin Botezatu - She Caribbean Magazine (2009)

My interest in fashion photography started four years ago when I was introduced to fashion designer and stylist, Dexter Pottinger. Quickly the interest morphed into serious devotion and my images have now graced the covers and pages of many reputable magazines. I have also been granted the opportunity to work in the commercial sector, shooting for various companies in entertainment, advertising, real estate, as well as album covers and model agencies, locally and internationally. The year 2009 marked the turning point in my career, where I was able to create beautiful high fashion images with major designers such as Catalin Botezatu, Sushma Patel, Gavin Douglas, Deola Sagoe and many others. It is my intention to become a household name not only in Jamaica, but in the rest of the Caribbean. While I pursue this endeavor, I anticipate that my work will segue into the North American and European fashion market.

Chevonese Fender - Jamaque Magazine (2009)

Fashion photography allows me the freedom to transform everyday spaces, models and outfits into something more exorbitant. More importantly, there is hardly any comparison to the pleasure and responses received when the images are viewed in the publications that are distributed across the globe. For these reasons my knack for producing beautiful imagery will forever be explored.

Currently, I reside and work in Kingston, Jamaica.  My work behind and beyond the camera has become more than a profession. It provides, for me, an escape from normality and a way to create my thoughts in a modern, creative and intriguing way.

Marvin Bartley

http://marvinbartley.blogspot.com/

Leasho Johnson - Territorial Fad (2010) (right panel of triptych)

Leasho Johnson is a graphic designer, painter and fashion designer. His exhibition is curated by Veerle Poupeye.

Artist’s Statement

My work is inspired by various graffiti and graphic art styles, which I interpret within the context of my own environment. Being trained by my father in the traditional methods of painting and drawing, I have fused these traditional methods with my love for cartoons to create art that I consider to be more relevant to me as a young person than the kind I was trained to create. I believe cartoon illustrations are capable of reinterpreting controversial subjects such as religion or even homosexuality into a source of amusement, which provides me with an opportunity to express my interpretations of my immediate environment and my experiences as a Jamaican. I also believe cartoons reinterpret reality in another manner that reality itself cannot express; they are less threatening towards sensitive human emotions (anger, fear, hate) because they are not considered to represent reality. Ironically, using cartoons allows me to reintroduce and address the realities behind them.

Leasho Johnson - Territorial Fad (2010) (left panel of triptych)

The installation The Product is a miniature “city” that is made up of greed, identity crises, sexual frustrations and commercial enslavement. The triptych Territorial Fad makes you laugh because you know that the best way to deal with your own flaws is to embrace them and  to laugh along with those laughing at you. How can we hate what we see around us, yet never fail to become a part of it? Goats were made to be goats, dogs were made to be dogs and well, ‘sketels’ were made to be …

Biography

I was born in Montego Bay, St. James, on December 5, 1984. My mother was a beautiful “country girl” and my father was an aspiring young artist, fueled by dreams to become a great artist like his idols from the Impressionist Era. He eventually had to give up these dreams because of his family obligations, one of them being me entering the world. I am however the product of that dream: I live the dreams of my father and have added to this my own.

I grew up in Sheffield, Westmoreland with both parents and in my father’s studio. I created my first paintings at the age of four and always had a sketchpad since attending Sheffield All-Age School. I attended Green Island High in 1996 and my library of sketchpads grew, my reputation for drawings well made me popular and my contribution in various arts-associated clubs earned me many several trophies ranging from poster design to more complex art competitions. After graduating from high school in 2000 I spent three years sharpening my skills in figure and portrait drawing and painting in various mediums under the guidance of my ever-supportive father.

Leasho Johnson - The Product (2010), detail of installation

Attending Edna Manley College just felt like the right decision. I however wanted nothing to do with what I already knew from my painting practice, so I embarked on studying graphic design. During the course of my development there, I realized my innate ability to design both 3-dimensionally and 2-dimensionally and I fell in love with fashion design. I am particularly fascinated with how fashion shapes the image of the woman herself, within the constraints of the economy and her ethnicity. Design for me, meant I could physically affect my environment and this opened a door for me, an avenue that fine art cannot reach.

My fine art practice however provides me with a much-needed mental oasis in the sea of logic and visual regurgitation and my ongoing relationship with it has led me into several exhibitions. One of my most significant to date was the Rockstone and Bootheel exhibition of contemporary West Indian art at Real Art Ways in Hartford, Connecticut in 2009.

As a young artist I believe my purpose in this world was decided long before I was conceived. My role is to continue and expand the art world that was laid before me by my artistic forebears and I hope to lay a new foundation for the generation still on the drawing board.

– Leasho Johnson

Leasho Johnson - Wedding Dress (2010)

Curator’s Statement

Leasho Johnson is, to me, one of the most compelling and original talents to emerge from the Edna Manley College in recent years. Already as a student at the Edna Manley College, he crossed all conventional disciplinary boundaries and moved effortlessly between the visual communication, painting, ceramics, and textiles departments, producing outstanding work in the process. While his work is essentially interdisciplinary, Leasho allows different artistic voices to come to the fore in each medium. The selection for this exhibition deliberately brings into dialogue two contrasting voices in his work, which represent the two extremes of his aesthetic range and illustrate his formal and technical inventiveness: the pristine, formalist sculptural quality of his fashion designs, which are quite at home in the world of international couture, and the riotous cartoon and graffiti aesthetic of his paintings, ceramics and three-dimensional constructions, which draw their inspiration and energies from street and youth culture and mercilessly lampoon life in contemporary Jamaica.

– Veerle Poupeye

Oliver Myrie - The Sacrifice (2009)

Biography

Oliver Myrie was born in Jamaica in 1978. He pursued a BFA at the Edna Manley College, graduating in 2005. His achievements include a scholarship to the University of Contemporary Art in Pont-Aven, France in 2004, when he was selected as one of two final year students.

He has participated in several exhibitions: Celebrating Jamaica’s Young Artists – USAID, The Pegasus Gallery, Kingston Jamaica, 2002, Young Generation at the Mutual Gallery, Kingston Jamaica, 2008. In 2009 he was one of four short-listed artists in the Super Plus Under 40 Artist of the Year Competition. He was selected as one of thirteen artists to participate in 2010 in the Young Talent exhibition at the National Gallery of Jamaica.  He lives and works in Old Harbour, Jamaica.

Oliver Myrie - Between, Betwixt and Beyond (2004)

Artist’s Statement

My paintings are said to be intuitive. Painting to me is a cathartic function. My expressions are responses to various intakes absorbed over time: observing, listening, thinking, talking and feeling. To the point where there is an overwhelming need to release what has build up inside.

Many times what starts the process is unlikely to dictate what the outcome will be. Similar to the fulfillment of letting go, there is an emotional and textural response. As the markings change by mixing together all the elements, it leads to an unpredictable finish.

The desire in me to create something new comes from a sudden desire, quite unpredictable. I may not be able to determine the outcome, but whatever the result, it is always a part of me.

— Oliver Myrie

Oliver Myrie’s exhibition in Young Talent V is curated by Dr. David Boxer.

Keisha Castello - Chair (2009), colour photograph

Biography

Keisha Castello was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1978. She was educated at the Edna Manley College and Roehampton University (U.K.). She has exhibited widely in Jamaica and abroad, including Curator’s Eye II (2006) at the NGJ, Infinite Islands (2007) at the Brooklyn Museum and the Global Caribbean Project (2009) in Miami and France. She currently resides in England. Her exhibition in Young Talent V is curated by David Boxer.

Artist’s Statement

I remember being quite good at making things with which I would use as props in my world of imaginative play as a child. I used to be quite in awe of my older brother so anything he would make I would copy to or imitate to the best of my ability. When I was in primary school it was this kind of creative activity that gave me the confidence to come out of my self a little and engage more with my class mates. I would get other students coming up to me wanting to get drawings or science diagrams in their exercise book. I never thought of my life as an artist until late high school days. I grew up in places the Jamaican society termed ghettos and lived with a family of my three siblings and a strict Christian mother and worldly father until I was fourteen. The psychological make-up of these societal institutions impacted me in many ways and much was internalised as a young girl. At first I found solace in the down to earth nature of my high school teachers and the safe containing walls of the art room. I developed an admiration for the creative space that held me together when every other aspect of my academic life and adolescent life in high school made no sense to me. Under the influence of my art teachers I began to feel confident about my life after high school.

Keisha Castello - Tombstone in their Eyes (2004)

The next stage of my life was to be at Edna Manley College. This marked the beginning of art as a very significant role in my life; it had me caressing different hues of my soul where creativity found expression in earthy coloured moths trapped by camouflage to hybrid quirky creatures hidden in the unknown world of oddly crafted shadow boxes. I also found my self creating another life in which I worked with children through to adults making and teaching art with a conscious effort of wanting to give back to world with which I felt a common emotional thread. In both worlds I was witness to the power of art and its transcendental power to transform as well as facilitate individuation. I am most proud and honoured to have been a co-pioneer of the REDRUBBERBAND mural project that brought together and held very primitive and desirable art making which gave persons voices a safe medium of expression. This was for me a most dynamic experience to carry into my present pursuits as a trainee art therapist.

Keisha Castello - Chair (2009), colour photograph

I am currently working with a group of mentally ill persons presenting with schizophrenic diagnosis. Within this clinical setting at first I struggled with my role as a therapist versus my role as the artist. I am still amazed at my journey which is now centre stage. Everything I have created in the past year and a half has grown out of my contact with mental health studies and having to practise in clinical capacity which demands an open closeness to personal self knowledge that wrenched me violently from my self. Thankfully I regained my footing through creativity.

My most recent works have been inspired by my current studies to qualify as an art psychotherapist. The course is Jungian based so I have been looking at psychological literature that informs the fusion of art and psychology to be used for human psychological development. I have always believed in the power of the mind and the many complex layers it possess. As an art psychotherapist trainee you are made to delve into your own unconscious mind, peel away layers of your self in order to facilitate another in doing so. These images are a reflection my own unconscious rants. They are spontaneous images that came to me in times when word language was not enough to speak my emotions. These images are symbols from my unconscious self that brings to life archetypes and speaks to mythology.

My reflection on these latest works presents me with thoughts about the earliest relationship between mother and baby and the symbolic formation of language formed between them through unconscious communication. The phenomenal pattern of this relationship becomes the ones we reflect later in our adult life. the unconscious mind holds a repository of memories that have been forgotten but that may nevertheless be accessible to consciousness through art making. In these works I explore my shadow. The shadow of our self is a part of the unconscious mind that reeks of repressed weaknesses, shortcomings, and instincts. the shadow is one of three most recognisable archetypes. The more repressed this shadow is the darker and denser the primal instincts linked to this archetype. tTe madness of this shadow is prone to project repressed inferior feelings into another and are so powerful that if not recognised, can alter ones state of relating to others. Despite its capacity for dark deeds, the shadow of the unconscious is the seat of creativity that informs my work.

— Keisha Castello

Keisha Castello - Chair (2009), colour photograph