Peter Johnson – Want Freedom (2012), alabaster

The NGJ regrets the passing of the sculptor Peter Ralph Johnson. He was born on April 4, 1960 and most recently lived at 17 James Street, in downtown Kingston, where he operated his sculpture workshop.

Johnson was essentially self-taught as an artist, although he attended some leisure classes at the Edna Manley College. He also worked in the studio of artists such as Fitz Harrack and Judith Salmon. He collaborated with the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission for many years, mounting exhibitions and doing set, costume design and restoring antiques. He also worked with Mutual Gallery, Gallery Pegasus and Grosvenor, mainly assisting with the mounting of exhibitions. He was a regular participant in the National Visual Arts Competition and Exhibition and was awarded bronze medals in 1982 1993 and 1996 and he had also exhibited at the NGJ in 2012 National Biennial. Johnson exhibited at various other galleries, including the Grosvenor Gallery and Gallery Pegasus. Most recently he was collaborating with the children’s workshops organized by OAaSIS International in downtown Kingston.

Peter Johnson – The Royal Visit (Chess), 2012

As a sculptor, Peter Johnson worked mainly in stone, especially alabaster, but occasionally also in wood. His sculpted a variety of subjects, including portrait heads and religious figures but the most outstanding examples reflected a droll, fantastic imagination, as could be seen in the gargoyle-like Want Freedom (2012) he exhibited in the 2012 National Biennial and The Royal Visit (2012), a satirical depiction of various royal figures in the form of a chess set, which was shown in the 2012 National Visual Arts Competition and Exhibition.

The NGJ extends sincere condolences to the family and friends of the late Peter Johnson.

Peter Johnson

Matthew McCarty – I Took the Liberty of Designing One (2013)

We are pleased to present the opening remarks delivered by Petrona at the opening of New Roots: 10 Emerging Artists on July 28, 2013.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to share some observations on what is an exciting and challenging exhibition.  This exhibition is significant in a number of ways. The National Gallery has had a long history of providing opportunities for artists to show work which challenge prevailing ideas and reflect new thinking, as seen in the Young Talent exhibitions. This exhibition, however, is groundbreaking in that it presents bodies of work which do not have the curatorial framing based on chronology, and presents the body of work on its own terms. This is the realisation of the concept of the “project space” which allows artists to present proposals for recent work, and allows us to focus on their ideas in a given space.

Varun Baker – Journey (2012), digital photograph

The exhibition reveals some interesting developments taking place in contemporary Jamaican Art. Taken as a whole, there is a prevailing denial of traditional notions of the “art object”. The space in which we are now located cannot be bought, collected or sold.  The site-specific work of Matthew McCarthy and the New Jamaica collective is defiant in its emphasis on collective engagement, and forces the audience to re-evaluate their ideas about “art” in the museum space.  What we see in this exhibition are investigations with a diverse range of media which challenge the hierarchies of the singular precious “object”, and do not privilege one form or media over another. The site-specific installations, video installation, photo-based work and animation sit beside painting and collage, each presented on its own terms.

Olivia McGilchrist

We also see new collaborative and interactive directions, where “the work” is not a complete entity but an evolving process in which the audience participates.  This participatory aspect  is a significant shift in the Jamaican art context, though it locates itself in major redefinitions of “authorship” and the role of the audience  which have informed contemporary art practice. The work by Matthew was produced by a team , and the collective effort is the product.  This is presented as an open-ended process in which the audience is invited to participate. The performative aspects of Olivia McGilchrist’s work are realised in the bodies which are interacting with us in the space, and Deborah Anzinger invites us to respond to and interact with the work directly.

Deborah Anzinger – detail of installation

The anonymity of “The Girl and the Magpie” presents a challenge to the idea of the artist in Jamaica, and the social hierarchies which are deeply embedded in the Jamaican art-world, dependent on validation and status, in which both artists and audience are complicit.  Her large-scale transformations of material invite us to meditate on the fragility of our ecosystems, and also serve to re-evaluate our concept of “jewellery”.

Ikem Smith – Sudafed (2013), animation still

There is also an interest in social activism which is overtly manifested in the work of Matthew McCarthy, and the New Jamaica project, as well as the work of Ikem Smith.  But this work is not seen through the  idealised lens of specific political ideology which informed the activism of my generation.  This activism is informed by a context in which the contradictions of the society  and the uncertainties of our time have shaped their perspective –  these artists are a product of our time. These artists are “knowing” and are not bound by fixed ideological positions.  The work is reflexive and also hopeful and optimistic.  This activism is also seen  in subtle but no less potent ways in documentary portraits of Nile Saulter and Varun Baker, who through their choice of subject make political statements, and take positions in terms of their own location.

Astro Saulter – Loleta40 (2012)

The work of Deborah Anzinger introduces new considerations.  Her seemingly disparate and random juxtapositions co-opt the audience in the deconstruction of the structures which exist in our realities and force the viewer to interrogate their own perceptions, an internal journey. Throughout this complex installation there is evidence of fragility, of issues of place, location and identity. The work engages in a conceptual language that may be new to this audience, but is very much grounded in and connected to the current times.

Nile Saulter

The works of Camille Chedda, Gisele Gardner, and Astro Saulter are linked by the exploration of interior landscapes, despite diverse approaches and media.  Astro Saulter uses digital imagery to produce dynamic, joyous and whimsical works to communicate his reality. Equally powerful are the disturbing paintings of Gisele Gardner and introspective self-portraits of Camille Chedda, which draw us inwards.  Olivia McGilchrist’s multi-layered video installation is an impressive investigation of race, gender and identity, which also reflects the fragility and displacement evident elsewhere in this exhibition.

Camille Chedda – Built-In bsolescence (2010-2011), Acrylic on Sandwich Bags, 28 parts, each 20 x 16 cm

So how do we support these artists, in this new paradigm, where the majority of the works are not “collectable”?  I believe that we need to first and foremost participate in the discussions around the work, engage the artists in critical dialogue, and be open to the ideas and concepts of art reflected in this exhibition.  I would like to congratulate the National Gallery on this bold initiative of the “project space”, and the work that they have been doing to foster this dialogue and broaden audiences, and hope that they will continue in this direction. There is also need for financial support of non-commercial alternative studio and exhibition spaces, which will provide opportunities for artists to develop their practice and realise ambitious projects.  Support can also come from the provision of project and travel grants, as well as artist-in-residence programmes sponsored by private entities and individuals.

I am very optimistic about the state of Jamaican art as reflected in this exhibition, and urge you to continue to support the artists, in a time of transition and change.

Petrona Morrison

Gisele Gardner

The National Gallery of Jamaica is staging another educational event associated with its New Roots: 10 Emerging Artists exhibition, namely a tour of the exhibition with five of the participating artists, namely Deborah Anzinger, Varun Baker, Camille Chedda, Nile Saulter and Ikem Smith, who will each talk about their work. This event is scheduled for Thursday, October 31, starting at 2:30 pm.

New Roots features work in a variety of new and conventional media by 10 artists under 40 years old, Deborah Anzinger, Varun Baker, Camille Chedda, Gisele Gardner, Matthew McCarthy, Olivia McGilchrist, Astro Saulter, Nile Saulter, Ikem Smith, and The Girl and the Magpie. The exhibition samples some of the most dynamic and innovative directions in the Jamaican art world, by artists who are questioning conventional understandings of art and the artist while presenting a socially engaged perspective on contemporary Jamaican society.

Thursday’s artists’ tour of New Roots is free and open to the public. The New Roots: 10 Emerging Artists is closing on November 2, so this event also represents one of the last opportunities to view the exhibition. For more information, see: https://nationalgalleryofjamaica.wordpress.com/tag/new-roots/

Milton Harley – Mayan 1, (c1976), Collection: NGJ

In March 1963, almost a year after Jamaican Independence, the late Rex Nettleford gave the main address at an art exhibition held at the now defunct Hills Gallery in Kingston. This public exhibition was considered to be the first of its kind in Jamaica to feature paintings and drawings that were solely abstract in nature. The works were created by a young Jamaican artist named Milton Harley and it was his first solo exhibition in the island, since graduating from the Pratt Institute in New York the previous year. In response to an expressed concern that the work of Jamaican artists must be relevant to the redefinition of Jamaican cultural identity at that time,, Nettleford was quoted as saying that, “The most we can demand of him is that he works to the pulse of Jamaica and that he allows Jamaican life to act as a catalyst for thought and expression in the arts.” Heavily influenced by the later exploits of the Abstract Expressionist movement, as an art student in New York during the 1960s, Harley remembers: “When I returned to Jamaica from New York I brought back all these ideas of painting from the New York School in particular, where I saw shows of the giants like Robert Motherwell, Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning.”

Milton Harley – Nocture (1962), Collection: NGJ

Milton Harley was born in Kingston 1935, and at a young age migrated with his family to the USA. One of the earliest pioneers of modern abstraction in Jamaican art, Harley’s visual rhetoric seemed to contrast with the cultural aspirations of other prominent Jamaican artists, social theorists and the general populace of the early Independence period. His aesthetic approach introduced the act of painting as directly engaged with its own material and elemental possibilities, without the illusion of objective imagery. As an abstractionist, he identifies and utilizes the elemental essences of the ‘real’ (such as form, texture, colour, etc.) to create an alternative but equally fascinating visual perspective to subject matter. In fact, according to the artist, though his work is abstract, the subject matters he deals with are all based on observations of actual people, places and environments. This may have been the case for one of his earliest paintings Nocturne (1962) which is an abstraction of “three women carrying containers of water on their heads as they are crossing a river at moonlight”.

Harley belongs to a generation of Jamaican artists whose approach to art practice was largely shaped by their international experience and education. Harley, like contemporaries Karl Parboosingh and Eugene Hyde, broadened his understanding of modern art through international fellowships, exhibitions and educational opportunities. Mayan 1 (c1976) from his Mayan series, for instance, was inspired by his time spent in Mexico during the late 1960s to the early 1970s. During this time, he was able to visit the site of Teotihuacan, a pre-Columbian Mesoamerican city renowned for its exceptionally well-preserved architecture, sculpture and painted murals. For a viewer, the presence of red, white and green in the painting may be reminiscent of the Mexican national flag. However, considering the convolution of gestural marks and shapes at the centre of the painting, one may ponder upon Harley’s response to the ancient Mayan culture, given that Jamaica’s own pre-Columbian history is characterised by the presence of another Amerindian civilisation, the Taino.

Milton Harley – Untitled (Face 1, n.d.), acrylic on paper, Collection: NGJ, Guy McIntosh Donation

Milton Harley’s artistic philosophy, along with that of his contemporaries, challenged the conservative Jamaican visual art culture and aided in initiating a significant evolutionary development. There was now the option of pure or semi-abstract expressionism as a tool for intellectual engagement. This is evidenced in the work of later artists including David Boxer, Hope Brooks, George Rodney, Milton George, Laura Facey, Margaret Chen, Omari Ra, Stanford Watson, Khalfani Ra and several others. Additionally, it heralded the adoption of other post-modern approaches like assemblage, installation art and digital art which now form the basis for contemporary artistic approaches in twenty-first century Jamaica. Additionally, as an educator of art history, methodology and practice, Milton Harley has contributed to the development of future generations of artists, art theorists and art educators in many institutions locally and internationally. Some of these include the Jamaica School of Art and the Moneague Teacher’s Training College in Jamaica as well as the Royal Grammar School in the UK and the University of Victoria in Canada. Milton Harley currently lives and works in Kingston, Jamaica.

Sources

• Milton Harley, Artistfile Education Department, National Gallery of Jamaica
• Hucke, Claudia, Picturing the Postcolonial Nation, (Inter)Nationalism in the Art of Jamaica 1962 – 1975, Ian Randle Publishers, Kingston 2013

Earlier this year the National Gallery launched a new exhibition series, Explorations, with the Natural Histories exhibition. The  series explores major themes in Jamaican art, and in the National Gallery collection, and aims to allow our curators and our visitors to engage in new and more thoughtful ways with the artistic and cultural history of Jamaica. The series also serves as a platform for our curators to rethink how we exhibit our permanent collections, as we will soon be reinstalling our permanent modern Jamaican art exhibition and intend to do so along thematic lines. We are now presenting the second in the series, Explorations II: Religion and Spirituality, which will open on December 22, and several other editions are in planning for future showings.

Explorations II: Religion and Spirituality examines the themes of religion and spirituality in Jamaican art and will consist entirely of works from our collection. That we can mount such an exhibition without resorting to loans is in itself testimony to the pervasive role of religion and spirituality in almost all aspects of Jamaican history and life and, consequently, in Jamaican art. While predominantly Christian, Jamaica is also the birthplace of Rastafari and earlier African-derived forms – Revival and Kumina being two of the most well-known.  Other world religions are also represented in Jamaica, namely Judaism, Hinduism and the Islam, albeit in small but at times influential minorities, who further add to the complex landscape of beliefs and religious practices found in the island. In these various incarnations, religious and spiritual practices and beliefs have played multiple social and cultural roles, as instruments of control and oppression in some instances and as tools for liberation and self-assertion in many others. Visual artistic forms have been an integral component of almost all religious practices on the island and many artists have been drawn to the subjects of religion and spirituality in their search for iconic Jamaica subject matter or, sometimes, as a target for critical or satirical commentary.

As was done in the Natural Histories exhibition, the thematic explorations offered in Religion and Spirituality will be organized around several broad themes, including: “In Our Own Image”, “Spiritual Warriors”, “A Chapter a Day” and “Praise Songs”. “In Our Own Image” will explore how the colonial representation of Christian (and to some extent Judaic) religion as white religions has been implicitly and expressly challenged in local religious and artistic practice and we will pay special attention to the representation of the Black Christ. “Spiritual Warriors” will examine the role of militancy in religion, for instance in public preaching, as well as the role of religion in resistance and liberation movements, especially during the colonial period. “A Chapter a Day” will explore the central role of the Bible in Jamaican life and will include various works that illustrate biblical scenes. “Praise Songs” consists of works of art that illustrate the role of religion and spirituality in local song and dance practice and the performative elements in religious and spiritual practices. The exhibition will also include work that uses traditional religious iconography to address other issues, whether personal or social, which has been fairly common in modern and contemporary Jamaican art.

The artists to be represented in Religion and Spirituality include Carl Abrahams, Mallica “Kapo” Reynolds, Osmond Watson, Renee Cox, Edna Manley, Ebony G. Patterson, Gloria Escoffery, Eugene Hyde and Everald and Clinton Brown. While the exhibition will consist entirely of work from the 20th and 21st century, it will also make reference to our pre-twentieth century galleries, which include several historical works relevant to religion and spirituality, ranging from Taino sculpture, which was predominantly religious in nature, to works of art related to the Abolitionist campaigns.

The Natural Histories exhibition included various natural history artefacts, publications and illustrations that are not normally regarded as “art” and thereby also explored that the art/artefact dynamic in the context of art galleries and museums. The Religions and Spirituality exhibition is less actively concerned with this issue, because doing so in a manner comparable to Natural Histories would require us to include active sacred objects, constructions and images, which poses various practical and ethical problems. Several of the works in the exhibition – for instance, Everald Brown’s musical instruments or ritual staff – however represent transitional area between sacred object and “museumized” work of art and in a number of other works – such as Kapo’s Rising Table, which represents a Revival table – sacred objects, constructions and images appear as part of the subject matter.

Explorations II: Religion and Spirituality will run until April 27 and will be accompanied by several special events and educational programmes, some of them attached to our Last Sundays programme. Look out for further news on this exciting exhibition.

Carl Abrahams – Thirteen Israelites (1975), A.D. Scott Collection, NGJ

Carl Myrie Abrahams was born in St Andrew, Jamaica, in 1911. He was educated at Calabar High School where he received basic art training and, encouraged by his headmaster Reverend Ernest Price, began to study the work of old masters such as Frans Hals and Sir Frederick Leighton.

On leaving school in 1928, Abrahams started his career as a cartoonist, under the tutelage of Cliff Tyrell, one of the pioneering cartoonists in Jamaica. Abrahams soon contributed regularly to local publications such as the Gleaner, the West Indian Review and WISCO magazine. The English painter August John, who visited Jamaica in 1937, encouraged him to take up painting. After three years of service in the Royal Air Force during World War II, Abrahams returned to Jamaica and started painting professionally while also continuing as a cartoonist and illustrator.

Carl Abrahams – Birthday Drive (1972), Collection: NGJ

Like John Dunkley, the Jamaican artist whom he most admired and who was an influence, Abrahams was an an individualist who opted not to participate in the art classes that were offered at Institute of Jamaica and, subsequently, the Jamaica School of Art and Craft and kept himself at a remove from the formal and informal artists’ groups that emerged in mid 20^th century Jamaica. He essentially taught himself to paint, with the assistance of correspondence courses from England, and charted his own artistic course. It took a while before he found his painterly voice but when he did, he quickly emerged as one of Jamaica’s most original artists who produced ironic transformations of the great mythological and religious themes of the past, surreal commentaries on historical and contemporary events, and bizarre personal fantasies, in varying cartoonesque styles that defy art-historical classification and eccentrically challenge conventional rules of composition and representation.

Carl Abrahams – The Ascension (c1978), AD Scott Collection, NGJ

Carl Abrahams is most acclaimed as a religious painter who somehow managed to combine genuine and deeply felt religious sentiments with irreverent satire, as can be seen in his versions of The Last Supper, Thirteen Israelites, The Ascension (1976), Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah and Backyard Preacher (c1975). He was also fascinated with the dramatic events that shaped Jamaican history – such as the ascent of Marcus Garvey and Rastafari and, most of all, the destruction of Port Royal, as the richest and wickedest city in the world – all lovingly depicted but seen through the lens of his uproarious satirical imagination.

Carl Abrahams – The Destruction of Port Royal (c1975), AD Scott Collection, NGJ

While mainly known as a painter, cartoonist and illustrator, Carl Abrahams occasionally also sculpted and produced his own picture frames, whimsically designed and constructed to match the aesthetic of his paintings, although few of these have survived the ravages of time and termite infestation. Abrahams also painted the back-drop for the first Jamaican Pantomime, Jack and the Bean Stalk (1969) and executed several murals, the main example of which is a large, two part mural on Jamaican history he painted for the Norman Manley Airport in 1985. His final decades saw few new developments in his work, however, and he replicated many of his earlier paintings in copies and variations.

Carl Abrahams at work on the airport mural, photographed by Deryck Roberts, c1985

Carl Abrahams was the recipient of several national honours including the Order of Distinction and the Gold Musgrave Medal. His work is well represented in the collections of the NGJ and he was the first artist to be granted a full retrospective by the NGJ in 1978. His master work, Woman, I Must be About My Father’s Business, was loaned to the City of Edinburgh’s Light of the World exhibition commemorating the 2000th anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ, while two of his religious works, were featured on Jamaican stamps marking the advent of the new millennium. The NGJ also staged a special tribute exhibition after Carl Abrahams passed away in 2005 and he will be prominently featured in the upcoming Explorations II: Religion and Spirituality exhibition.

 (Collated from the Carl Abrahams file in the NGJ Education Department)

The National Gallery of Jamaica is pleased to report that a exhibition of Jamaican art, Jamaican Art from the 1960s and 1970s, is presently on view at the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands in Grand Cayman. The exhibition, which opened on Friday, March 21 to an enthusiastic capacity audience and continues until May 15, is the second Jamaican exhibition in the Cayman Islands that was brokered between the two country’s national galleries – the first one, an exhibition of contemporary Jamaican art, was held in 2004.

The present exhibition examines Jamaican art from around Jamaica’s Independence in 1962 to the politically eventful 1970s – one of the most culturally dynamic periods in Jamaican history – and consists of thirty works from the National Gallery of Jamaica Collection and two works from Cayman-based collections of Jamaican art. It includes later works by artists who were already established at that time, such as Edna Manley, Alvin Marriott, Albert Huie, David Pottinger and Carl Abrahams, and younger artists who emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, such as Barrington Watson, Eugene Hyde, Karl Parboosingh, Osmond Watson, Judy Ann MacMillan, Mallica “Kapo” Reynolds, Everald Brown, Gaston Tabois, Hope Brooks, George Rodney and Winston Patrick. The works were selected by NGJ Executive Director Veerle Poupeye and Acting Senior Curator O’Neil Lawrence.

“The National Gallery of the Cayman Islands is delighted host Jamaica Art: 1960s & 1970s from the collection of the National Gallery of Jamaica,” says National Gallery of the Cayman Islands Director Natalie Urquhart. “This exhibition marks an important international collaboration between NGCI and NGJ, and it is an opportunity to reflect and celebrate the long-standing social, cultural and economic relationships between our two countries.” The exhibition, which is one of several planned exchanges between the two national galleries, also reflects the NGJ’s present thrust towards greater regional engagement and visibility.

The Explorations III: Seven Women Artists exhibition, which will open at the NGJ on Sunday, May 31, asks the question whether any concept of women’s art is relevant in Jamaica today – it is part of our Explorations series, which examines the big themes and issues in Jamaican art, the first of which was Natural Histories (2013) and the second: Religion and Spirituality in Jamaican art.

Seven Women Artists, which is curated by Senior Curator O’Neil Lawrence, features the work of seven mid-career female artists who live in Jamaica or art part of its diaspora and who work in a variety of media: Jasmine Thomas-Girvan, Judith Salmon, Miriam Smith, Prudence Lovell, Kereina Chang-Fatt, Berette Macaulay and Amy Laskin – a small but representative sample of accomplished female Jamaican artists. We invite viewers to explore whether there are any commonalities that set these artists’ work and careers apart from those of their male counterparts and whether there is any justification to label them, individually or collectively, as “women artists,” or their work as “women’s art.” We have also asked each of the artists to produce a statement on the subject that will be reproduced in the catalogue and the exhibition text panels.

Jasmine Thomas-Girvan – None but Ourselves (2015)

The sculptural and sometimes wearable work of jeweller Jasmine Thomas-Girvan explores the complexities of Jamaican and Caribbean histories as well as the cultural implications of those histories.    Her spectacularly surreal assemblages often employ or are inspired by naturally occurring plant matter and oftentimes actively utilise found objects that have a personal resonance with the artist. Her work None but Ourselves references the intellectual legacy of Marcus Garvey highlighting the importance of the transmission of liberating values to the next generation.

Judith Salmon – Pockets of Memory (2012)

The dynamics of memory are at the heart of the installation and assemblage work of Judith Salmon. Salmon who creates work that has, in some instances, involved an element of interactivity for instance Pockets of Memory (which invited viewers to leave notes or other things that had personal significance and made the audience a part of the creative process) explores the way in which memories are preserved obscured or lost over time. She utilises fibre, wax and various printmaking techniques to create work that contains multiple conceptual and also physical layers.

Miriam Smith – Justice Denied (2014)

Miriam Smith is known for her mixed media artwork prioritised by her manipulation of fibres and textiles. Her work also reflects her experience of bookbinding, some in the form of actual books are often symbolic pages weaving a personal history that highlights life changing experiences but is also at its heart very much concerned with historical and contemporary social injustices. The multi-panelled work Justice Denied…1600 and Still Counting reflects that focus and challenges the viewer to do the same.

Prudence Lovell – Untitled (Connected III) (2015)

Prudence Lovell, an artist who’s widely ranging concerns coalesce in a number of stunning drawings and collages. To paraphrase her own words Lovell explores ‘the history and potential for allusion’ found in art as well as the various ‘truths’ found in documentary images. The ambiguities and disjunctions that occur due to the immediacy of photographic and other digital imagery and seeming reliability of these images and the often result in a rupture between perception and reality. Her most recent work, such as Untitled (Connected II), is based on Skype conversations with her children, who are studying overseas, and address the moderated reality of online connections, in terms of the ambiguities of the simultaneous experiences and realities of proximity and distance.

Kereina Chang-Fatt – Progressive Unravelling (2008)

Linked explicitly to her preoccupation with drawing and the manipulation of surfaces in her printmaking background, Keriena Chang Fatt’s dreamlike installations of filmy voile fabric are a meditation on the way her own personal relationships have played an important role in shaping her life. The delicate threads and fabric that are at the heart of her work act as metaphors for the fragility of the human body and add a universality to the themes of fertility, loss and longing that emerge in her work. The undoubtedly visceral response that comes from viewing a work such as Progressive Unravelling speaks not only to her themes but also to the power of the medium to elicit such a response.

Berette Macaulay – Lisa (Neue Roots) (2009)

The search for identity and belonging is at the heart of the photography and multimedia installations of artist Berette Macaulay. She has done seemingly distinct bodies of work done over the last few years exploring not only traditional photography but also Polaroid image transfers and collages set on light boxes. At the core of her work is a preoccupation with mythology continuing exploration of a complex personal history and the drive to resolve those histories. The power of memory and its relationship to the construction, reconstruction and establishment of family ties is seen in the work Lisa from her Neue Rootz series.

Amy Laskin – Flora and Coral Collaborate (2014)

The seemingly whimsical compositions of exquisite floral arrangements with distinctly feminine touches belie the conceptual depth of the work of Amy Laskin. The paintings themselves could be appreciated for their beauty alone but when one looks deeper one sees in works such as Flora and Coral Collaborate a preoccupation with the natural environment but also an implicit warning about the fragility of the beauty that we admire. A traditional painter, inspired also by her surroundings in the mountains St Andrew, her paintings often have distinctly feminine elements ranging from a simple ribbon in some cases to surreal dresses that double as the vessels for the natural arrangements. She has subtly inserted herself within the environments that she depicts because the concerns she seeks to share are her own.

This is the first of a series of short features on the artists in the Young Talent 2015 exhibition, which opens on August 30:

Greg Bailey was born in 1986, in Trelawny, Jamaica. He obtained a BFA in Painting from the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts. Bailey is currently based in Kingston, Jamaica.

Artist’s Statement

Painting is the frequency through which I communicate my reactions towards the impulse of society. I am intrigued by social-constructs and the ambiguities of the reality it imposes on the human psyche. My consciousness of context and content channels my interrogations toward the provocative nature of Jamaica’s social welfare; its legacies, its atrocities and how, interestingly, its history lingers in its present. The act of painting is the process through which I go about to create an elusive atmosphere within a two-dimensional structure—an atmosphere where sensibilities are stimulated by using elements such as colour, image, symbolism and emotion.

This is the conceptual mind-set behind this current body of work. The pieces are conversations about the phenomena of a two-sided culture that are extremely different and although they exist within the very same space, they never collide. For instance, Jamaica is rated as one of the most beautiful countries in the world while at the same time it is rated as one of the most violent. In the same breath, it is declared an independent state while at the same time it has the slowest growing economy in the Caribbean; so slow that it cannot sustain itself in many sectors even though it is among the top three Caribbean countries with the greatest concentrations of minerals that are most valuable on the international market.

These opposite extremes is what has lured me into painting beautiful renditions of not so beautiful realities. Realities of deception, the cultivation of decadence, self-hate, self-glorification as well as the lack of vision to identify with and combat the reoccurrence of past atrocities.

Here is the second in our short posts on the artists in the Young Talent 2015 exhibition, which opens on August 30:

Alicia Brown was born in St Ann, Jamaica in 1981. She attended the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, Kingston, Jamaica, and received a diploma in Art Education in 2003 and a BFA in Painting in 2009. Alicia also attended the New York Academy of Art in New York and obtained an MFA in Painting in 2014.

Artist’s Statement

The use of mimicry as a tool for creative invention, imitation and expression plays a vital role in formulating cultural identity. This is evident in the formation of subcultures, resulting from class distortion associated with colonialism. The desire for social acceptance and the search for missing pieces of self is the gateway to copying dominant cultures. This desire becomes a fantasy that is embraced while reality is rejected.

My work invests itself in a social critique, addressing issues of social construct, colonialism, pop culture, Western trends and their impact on Caribbean identity. I reference Dutch 16^th and 17^th century portraiture, where aspects of this history are appropriated and re-contextualized in their representation. I use portraiture as a tool to imitate this model, incorporating both traditional and contemporary painting languages as dialogue on identity.

Here is another in our short posts on the artists in the Young Talent 2015 exhibition, which opens on August 30:

Katrina Coombs was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1986. She holds a BFA in Textiles and Fibre Arts from the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in 2008 and has completed her MFA in Creative Practice at the University of Plymouth through the Transart Institute in 2013. Katrina lectures part time in the Textiles and Fibre Arts Department at the Edna Manley College.

Artist’s Statement

My work is governed and guided by my emotions as I attempt to understand and search for the woman that I am. Each artwork represents a part of me that is hidden from myself an others. They embody my hidden voice. The artworks I create depict my experiences of birth, death, love, heartbreak, corruption, entrapment, destruction, joy, happiness and freedom. In this attempt to understand the Self and these experiences, the Other becomes ever more present. Through the use of fibrous material and techniques I explore the effect of the Other on the ‘I’.

This body of work emphasizes the social implications of insecurities and turmoil that a woman faces as she struggles with her daily life attempting to satisfy herself, partner, family and friends which create an enterprise for conflict. In this situation the Other would be the motherly instincts and desires of a woman. The works mimic the nature of the womb, which becomes an Other to the woman as she attempts to conform to its demands, as well as the emotional turmoil that accompanies its actions. The ‘I’ becomes absent as the Other prevails and creates a void of neurotic divergence within.

Di-Andre Caprice Davis – Overly Utopian Dreams (2007-2015)

We publish another of our short posts on the artists in the Young Talent 2015 exhibition, which opens on August 30:

Di-Andre Caprice Davis was born in 1986, Kingston, Jamaica. She is a self-described visual artist who is experimenting with new media technologies. She works and lives in Kingston.

Artist’s Statement

In my work, I combined a passion for digital aesthetic with furthering the exposure and understanding of how technology has affected our world. Although the images are highly personal representations of my dreams, they are abstract enough and open enough to allow individual interpretation. I have used animation techniques to show the power of artistic image manipulation; turning still images into hypnotic GIF art. I prefer to collage and compose several looping actions emphasizing the motions that mimic bodily rhythm. It is like an adventure in a second life exploring its outer limits with digital imaging tools.

Here is the sixth of our short posts on the artists in the Young Talent 2015 exhibition, which opens on August 30:

Domanie Hong (née Denniston) was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1989. She graduated from the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts with a BFA in Printmaking in 2015. She currently teaches at Hillel Academy High School.

Artist’s Statement

This body of work comprises of three concepts, journaling my personal life experiences and predictions of the future. The first concept, titled The Water Series, signifies the start of my journey. During pregnancy, the womb is filled with water enabling the creation of human life.

The second concept, The Red Series, depicts the psychosomatic nature of human emotions. The bright attractive colour sends mixed signals to the neurons in the hippocampus, which plays a role in emotions.

The third concept, The Desert and Textured Series, represents the end of a journey and expresses the notion of returning to dust.

This body of work represents a visual discussion of my struggles with self-worth and self-acceptance. These concepts are the unwanted realities of my life and represent a visual conversation with its cycles.

Here is the seventh of our short posts on the artists in the Young Talent 2015 exhibition, which opens on August 30:

Howard Myrie was born in 1982 in Cambridge, St James, Jamaica.  He is a recent graduate of The Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts where he received his BFA in Painting. He currently resides in St James, Jamaica.

Artist’s statement

In Jamaican culture, the issue of homosexuality is a volatile and controversial topic, with persons on both side of the debate having fiery passions and each side being sure that their perspective is the correct one. My work seeks to engage in the discussion through a variety of media such as video installation that is text based, wood carving with graffiti elements, and text on glass.  These media are used as a way of participating in the discourse, pointing to social ills and asking important questions that are worthy of attention, while allowing space for contemplation and reflection on personal attitudes.  The Instrumentalist theory of art states that art should do more than being decorative or beautiful; art should be able to facilitate change and make society and the world we live in a better place.

Franz Marzouca – Canoe Nude Series # 7 (2016)

Franz Marzouca’s work in the Jamaica Biennial 2017 can be seen at the National Gallery of Jamaica in downtown Kingston until May 28.

Franz Marzouca was born in 1959, Kingston, Jamaica. Marzouca studied photography at TASIS, Switzerland and Barry University in Miami. Since 1982 he has been working as a commercial photographer, executing commissions for major clients in the Caribbean and North America. Marzouca has participated in numerous art shows including the Annual National and Biennial exhibitions of the National Gallery of Jamaica as well as the annual Liguanea Art Festivals. Marzouca lives in Kingston, Jamaica.

Website: franzmarzouca.com

Franz Marzouca – Canoe Nude Series # 5 (2016)

Bryan McFarlane – Dark, Like the Weather (c2016)

The Jamaica Biennial 2017 is almost in its last month as it closes on May 28, and is a must-see exhibition. Here is a short feature on Bryan McFarlane, whose two paintings, which are presented as a diptych, and video can be seen at the National Gallery of Jamaica on the Kingston Waterfront.

Bryan McFarlane – Like the Weather (c2016)

Bryan McFarlane was born in Moore Town, Portland. McFarlane was educated at the Jamaica School of Art and earned a MFA at the Massachusetts College of Art in 1983. He is Professor of Painting and Drawing at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth and has previously served as Visiting Professor to a number of institutions including the University of the West Indies and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He is currently working on a three year project with research scientists, jointly with EMMAS and TERC, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), with a grant from the National Science Foundation. McFarlane has been featured in numerous exhibitions locally and internationally and is well represented in a number of public and private collections. His paintings and mixed media works explore his Maroon heritage, African Diaspora culture and the environmental threats of the Anthropocene. Among his many accolades, McFarlane was awarded a gold medal by the Chinese Government for his entry in the Olympics Fine Arts Exhibition in Beijing in 2008. He was also awarded the Silver Musgrave Medal by the Institute of Jamaica for his contribution to art and art education. Bryan McFarlane lives in the USA and St Andrew, Jamaica.

Website: bryanmcfarlane.net

David Marchand (photo: Chloe Walters-Wallace)

On Tuesday, we received the sad news of the passing of David Marchand, just short of what would have been his seventy-third birthday. Marchand was one of the most unique Jamaican artists, legendary for his eccentricity (and at times bellicose personality) but even more so for his brilliant, quirky visionary paintings and assemblage boxes. The National Gallery of Jamaica’s pay tribute to him and his unique body of work.

David Marchand – Double Censored (2001)

David Marchand was born in Old Harbour, St. Catherine, in 1944. He studied art in New York City in the 1960s but he found that the city had too many distractions and returned to Jamaica. His first solo exhibition was at the Contemporary Artists Association Gallery on Oxford Road in 1970. He briefly worked for a local advertising industry but soon retreated from formal employment to focus on his art and, arguably, to live life on his own unconventional terms. In recent decades, his studio and home was in Runaway Bay, St Ann, where he shared space with a large number of cats in the burnt-out shell of what must once has been a glamorous beachfront residence, a family property.

David Marchand – The Necklace (n.d.)

Marchand’s “big break” as an artist may never have come, as he frequently lamented, but his artistic work was well respected in the local artistic community and he had the support of several loyal friends and collectors. The producer and art collector Maxine Walters was arguably his greatest champion and her daughter, the film-maker Chloe Walters-Wallace, has been working on a documentary on Marchand and his work, titled Tsunami Scarecrow. The title of the documentary refers to Marchand’s often-told vision of a major tsunami, approaching not from the sea in front of his home, as one would have expected, but from over the hills behind him—a cataclysmic event that would have destroyed the island of Jamaica and perhaps the rest of the world. The title also refers to his unusual appearance—a thin, scarecrow-like figure with wild, wiry hair.

David Marchand – Star and Star’s (n.d.)

Marchand’s  paintings and assemblage boxes comment, with provocative, satirical humour, on the spectacle of human life—with often autobiographical subjects that spoke about relationships, sexuality, politics, freedom, and about being an artist—set against the much bigger spectacle of the cosmos and its celestial bodies, and the uncontrollable forces of nature. While his paintings have similar qualities, his unique visionary imagination is most evident in his boxes—mini-dioramas constructed from bought and found objects and hand-built elements, to produce surreal scenes such as a group of tooth and paint brushes in a romantic slow dance scene, or the artist-prophet in contemplative dialogue with the apocalyptic spectacle of the universe, as a modern, decidedly irreverent St John the Apostle.

David Marchand – Artist and Models Ball (n.d.)

David Marchand regularly exhibited at the National Gallery of Jamaica, in the Annual National and Biennial exhibitions, and was most recently featured in the 2014 Jamaica Biennial, which included two of his boxes. He was also one of the artists featured in the National Gallery’s Curator’s Eye I exhibition in 2004, which was guest-curated by the noted African-American art historian and curator, Lowery Stokes Sims. His most recent exhibition was organized as part of the KOTE (Kingston on the Edge) festival in 2015, presented under the title Tsunami Scarecrow, a retrospective of his work which was shown at the Devonshire at Devon House.

David Marchand (photo: Enola Williams)

David Marchand appears as a side character in the French music journalist Helene Lee’s book The First Rasta (2003), a travelogue which follows the trail of Leonard Howell, and it seems appropriate to close this tribute with a quote from this book, which captures the uncanny poetry of Marchand’s relationship with the cosmic universe, which he has now fully rejoined:

In Runaway Bay, in 1999, David Marchand is watching the sky. A purple bank of clouds on the western horizon has swallowed up the sun, and the first pale stars have appeared. David is perplexed. He is looking at an unfamiliar constellation. One of the stars isn’t supposed to be there, but it’s still early and the sky remains too transparent to be sure of this celestial apparition he thinks he sees. David waits on the shore, his copper features shining in the orange light under a halo of crazy hair. Maybe he’s mistaken, but…this strange star!

David Marchand – Rainbow (n.d.)

Winston Patrick – Growth (2017)

The Jamaica Biennial 2017 continues until May 28, 2017. The work of Winston Patrick can be seen at the National Gallery of Jamaica on the Kingston Waterfront.

Winston Patrick was born in 1946, in Clarendon, Jamaica. Patrick attended the Jamaica School of Art where he attained a Diploma in Sculpture 1966. He also attended the National Academy of Fine Arts (1966) and the School of the Brooklyn Museum of Art (1969), in New York. Since the late 1970s he has exhibited extensively both locally and abroad. He is best known for his exquisitely carved, tactile woodcarvings that make simple but powerful statements in space. Patrick lives in Kingston, Jamaica.

Winston Patrick – Monument To…. (2017)

K. Khalfani Ra – Post White: the end of HIStory, Fukuyama’s Failure – for Yosef ben-Jochannan (n.d.)

Khalfani Ra‘s work is on view in the Jamaica Biennial 2017 at the National Gallery of Jamaica until May 28.

K. Khalfani Ra was born in 1958, in Kingston, Jamaica. He was educated at the Jamaica School of Art where he received a Diploma in painting, 1983 and spent a year in Zimbabwe on a Commonwealth Fellowship. Ra has been a regular exhibitor locally and overseas: recent shows include Infinite Island (2007) at the Brooklyn Museum and the National Biennial 2014 at the NGJ. In 2004, Ra received a Purchase Award in the National Gallery of Jamaica’s National Biennial. His work tends to be provocative, targeting issues of the perception of blackness, sexuality and religion, and attacking the creolization of the Jamaican narrative. He lives in Kingston, Jamaica

Omari S. Ra is one of the invited artists in the Jamaica Biennial 2017. His work can be seen at the National Gallery of Jamaica in downtown Kingston.

Omari Ra was born in 1960, in Kingston, Jamaica. Ra (also known as “Afrikan”) studied painting at the Jamaica School of Art (now the Edna Manley School of the Visual Arts) and graduated in 1983. Ra’s work provides provocative, satirical commentaries on the historical and contemporary issues that have shaped the African Diaspora. Currently, the Head of the Painting Department at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, Ra also holds an MFA from the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth. He has exhibited widely locally and internationally, participating in exhibitions such as the 1995 Johannesburg Biennial, and the Annual National and Biennial exhibitions in Jamaica. In 2004, he was awarded the Aaron Matalon Award for his entry in the 2004 National Biennial, and in 2011, Omari Ra was awarded the Silver Musgrave Medal by the Institute of Jamaica. He lives in Kingston, Jamaica.