Jamaican art

Under the hammer...

Submitted byJeeraik009 onFri, 11/23/2012 - 11:32

Kudos goes to Hi Qo Gallery in Kingston who hosted the art auction A Selection of Jamaican Works last weekend. Jamaica's art market has been in the doldrums for the past few years, reeling from the depressed economic climate, failed ponsi schemes and a Jamaican dollar valued now at almost $90 - 1 $US.  This sale presented a timely test to see whether the hard times are easing. Organiser Susanne Fredericks selected more than 100 works from two death estates and other works that had come into the Gallery recently. The batch included pieces by significant names such as pioneers Manley, Kapo and Huie as well as younger talent like Khary Darby, and Oliver Myrie.

The event could have benefitted from a more experienced auctioneer who might have offered a more nuanced understanding of works and roused buyers to bid more competetively. Even so, more that 60% were sold successfully with the highest bid for the evening going to Carl Abrahams' Jesus's Miracles (c. 1980) at JA $715,000. Notably, other works around the million dollar mark, such as Huie's Port Henderson (c. 1975) and Edna Manley's Goat (c.1978) were withdrawn suggesting that buyers are still keeping their purse strings tight. Works offered at under JA $100,000 did best while the highpoint of the evening was the lively battle over Eric Cadien's Sleeping Figure (1960), the work shown here estimated at JA $90 – 100,000 that eventually sold for JA $170,000. Auction results suggest that the market is finally moving after a long period of decline but it still has a long way to go before it regains the momentum and values reached before the recession.

About Face

Submitted byJeeraik009 onFri, 11/16/2012 - 14:06

When the University of Florida's Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) approached fellow art historian Claudia Hucke and myself about a show to celebrate Jamaica's 50th Anniversary of Independence, an online exhibition was a logical and exciting choice. We decided to re-examine Face of Jamaica, an exhibition that toured Europe in 1963-4 but was never viewed in Jamaica. Working with Dr. Hucke's research material, the support of dLOC's web designer and permissions from artists, we have been able to reconstruct much of the original exhibition in an interactive multi-media format. On the About Face website, viewers can see the show, look at the original pieces displayed, study its catalogues, and understand how the tour was recieved through newspaper clippings and reviews. Text panels, photography and multimedia such as music and video are all used to help re-envisage this exhibition. With a simple click, we can provide access to an event only previously experienced in Europe. We hope the About Face website can serve as a research tool for understanding how the visual arts supported new definitions of the Jamaican nation. The About Face exhibition remains online for the year of our celebration, after which its material will be archived in dLOC.

Too close to call....

Submitted byJeeraik009 onFri, 11/02/2012 - 20:19

 This year's Super Plus Under 40 Artist of the Year exhibition, judges are spoilt for choice with four finalists all showing competitive work at the Mutual Gallery in Kingston. Marvin Bartley and Leasho Johnson have both fulfilled their Young Talent promise presenting work that builds on that 2010 display but with a greater depth of sophistication and maturity. Like film director Woody Allen, Bartley works with a team of models, sensationalised because of their familiarity. He places them against backdrops with multiple writhing bodies that bring to mind renaissance lietmotifs and Caribbean bachanal. Leasho Johnson maintains his hot pink portraits with contemporary cannibalised forms shown here. Meanwhile the two women artists Olivia Mc Gilchrist and Berette Macauley (both trained outside Jamaica) show work that pushes the boundaries of the photography. Mc Gilchrist is the purist with images that are stunning for their colour and crispness, while Macauley is messy deliberately damaging images and obscuring them in lightboxes that add to their drama. That all four artists seem preoccupied with the digital processes, whether in the form of photography, graphic art, compositional manipulation of video-making is indicative of how that generation has absorbed new media into their art-making. Yet, even with all this reliance on technology, most of their works are up-close and personal, telling stories about themselves that are intimate and sometimes shocking. In an age when we can all be stars of our own Facebook pages, these artists raise the bar on portraiture and its presentation.

Heart to Heart

Submitted byJeeraik009 onWed, 02/08/2012 - 23:28

 

Art from the Heart, the second exhibition from Kingston's newest gallery has provoked some discussion about the art market and the gumption it takes to run an art business now.

DecorVIII opened late last year and its new show, Art from the Heart, (both phonetic puns intended) celebrates love and Valentine's Day. Situated in a small business enclave in an increasingly commercial but chic part of Kingston, DecorVIII is well appointed for uptown viewers seeking new trends and Art from the Heart offers a mixed bag, sometimes reflecting the sentimental tastes of the McDonald family team who run the gallery. The exhibition's Sunday morning opening with live music and good wine, was reminiscent of the nineties, an era when Jamaica's economy was buoyant and collectors had more disposable income to buy both good and bad art. The art market has dwindled since, even as it has become more competitive and sophisticated. With resources scarce, art lovers are becoming more discriminating about what they view and ultimately what they buy.

Perhaps because of these harder times, the McDonald's have been able to garner consignments, with stock from pioneer artists such as Alexander Cooper to younger talents such as Nakazzi Hutchinson (shown here), all keen for visibility given fewer opportunities to exhibit. DecorVIII's good natured owners are also enthusiastic about using their space to feature the work of up-and-coming artists, so they are showing pieces by those who have yet to find favour with the art world cognoscenti.

Art from the Heart reflects the McDonald's altruistic intentions and the exhibition's title is a gesture to their own passion and their eclectic approach. It remains to be seen if they also have the heart to weather the competitive nature of the business, the critical appraisal of their venture, and the risks of a shrinking market in these recessionary times.

Finding a voice....

Submitted byJeeraik009 onFri, 09/02/2011 - 17:08

 

A new book, The Art of Jamaica: A Prelude, written by art aficionado Wayne Lawrence and published by the Jamaican Guild of Artists, allows its artist members to speak directly to their viewing public without the trappings of art criticism or historical analysis. The formula for the book's content is simple, employing Lawrence as an interviewer who translates the ideas of eighteen guild artists into brief illustrated chapters which display their work and tell their life stories. In this way the book's production is a willful act that militates against the role of institutions such as the National Gallery of Jamaica or publications such as the Institute of Jamaica's Jamaica Journal that have traditionally retained the power to document and exhibit the nation's art and to determine which Jamaican artists receive greatest visibility. By self-publishing this book, the Jamaican Guild of Artists has undermined this authority and communicated the independent vision of its artists. And does it work ? – not really. For all its well-intentioned principles, these artist's narratives are weaker and less punchy than their art that often speaks silently but more powerfully against establishment views. Also, the decision to make this book 'A Prelude' initially showcasing living pioneer painters, means that the voices and imagery of younger members of the guild will have to wait for the sequel.

Second time around...

Submitted byJeeraik009 onThu, 03/24/2011 - 15:46

A second edition of Jamaican Art has just been released by LMH Publishing here in Kingston. Being a contributor has given me insight into the history of its production as well as its usefulness and flaws. First published in 1990, it was initially intended as an instructive coffee-table publication. It was heavily illustrated, offering up to three images per artist, and it boasted a text that surveyed Jamaican art's development over a span of sixty years. Because it was the first book of its type ever published on the subject of Jamaican Art it quickly became a research staple for students as well as collectors. Unfortunately, the initial print run was small and it very quickly disappeared from book shops.

This revised version has been a long time coming. With the new title Jamaican Art: Then and Now it documents art from an era of nationalism to the new millennium and adds three new chapters that feature contemporary artforms including, textiles, ceramics, photography, video, performance art and installations. Additionally, this edition has tried to accommodate those artists who did not make the cut twenty years ago but who have continued to exhibit successfully over the past two decades. It is still generously illustrated, although many of the pioneer artists have been reduced to one or two images to allow for the work of younger talent. With a bolder more modern typeface, a striking cover and updated biographies, this is a useful text for anyone interested in the subject. Although those who have the first edition may not consider its revisions substantive enough, it is certainly a must-buy for those who missed it the first time around.

Seya: In Sorrow

Submitted byJeeraik009 onFri, 08/20/2010 - 12:01

 

The Jamaican art community is saddened by the recent death of artist and poet Seya Parboosingh. She died at 85 having spent more than fifty years here. Born Samila Joseph in 1925 in Allentown Pennsylvania, Seya changed her name in 1957 when she married expressionist painter Karl Parboosingh in New York. They moved to Jamaica the next year and with Karl's encouragement, Seya began painting and exhibiting alongside him. Their styles were remarkably different. His paintings were strident with bold, brash brushmarks that critiqued the social conventions he abhored. Seya was more introspective, reserving her poetic forms for domesticated scenes with young women that like In Sorrow (1977) seemed to blend a childlike imagination with adult poignancy. In 2000, over a number of weekly visits, I had the privilege of talking at length with Seya while we prepared an article about her life and work for the magazine Caribbean Beat. I will miss her. Read the article.

Raymond Watson

Raymond Watson has lived and worked in Jamaica, Trinidad, and London, and exhibited across the Caribbean, the United States, South America and England. He has mounted public sculptures in London, Kingston, and Port of Spain, as well as being represented in private collections world wide. In 1990, along with brother Basil Watson, he mounted Sculpture in the Park an outdoor exhibition of life size sculptures in New Kingston, Jamaica. In 1994, Raymond moved to London to work and subsequently mounted the First Child commission in 1998 at Max Roach Park, Brixton. He has since returned to live and work in Jamaica. His work continues to be a synthesis of influences, born as much out of process as concept.

Final Cut

Submitted byJeeraik009 onWed, 06/03/2009 - 16:11
Last week, I examined final year painting displays at Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts. Without breaching confidentiality, I can say that it was a mixed bag offering images and installations that speak of the social and personal issues that artists are grappling with today. Issues range from intimate anxieties expressed with unique dreamworld imagery influenced by the psychanalysis of Freud and Jung, to contentious portraits referencing dance hall, exploitation and the black female body.

David Boxer

As an influential artist as well as the Chief Curator (Director Emeritus) of the National Gallery of Jamaica, David Boxer has had a significant impact on Jamaica’s art and its artists. He has consciously steered Jamaican art in new directions.

Boxer studied at medical school in the US, later switching to complete his doctorate in art history. He has had no formal art training. Nevertheless, his artistic vocabulary is sophisticated, stemming from an interest in artists such as Francis Bacon, Joseph Cornell and Joseph Beuys. He now works increasingly in series and was one of the first Jamaican artists to move ‘of the wall’ into environmental and installation art. Canvas, paper, boxes, found-objects and furnishings are all integrated within his displays, as he works to enshrine, dramatise and expound his themes. As an accomplished classical pianist, his themes are like musical suites, each phrase being worked in detail only then to be combined into a major orchestration.

Using and subverting grand narratives, Boxer tackles ideas rarely articulated n Jamaican society, in particular, the taboo issues of sexuality. More recently. he has been pre-occupied with issues related to history, slavery and political traumas as they arise throughout the world. The Milky Way: A Postscript (1991-93) was part of his response to the bombing of Baghdad during the first Iraqui War. For Boxer, it seemed incredible that even in Jamaica one could witness the atrocities of that war, courtesy of the cable news networks which make Jamaica virtually a satellite of the USA and its culture. Boxer’s initial response was to create an installation that was first exhibited at the National Gallery of Jamaica in 1991 in the exhibition Aspects III: Eight Avant Garde Artists. When the piece was dismantled, he decided to retain the imagery in his postscript of works on paper.

Certain ‘leitmotifs’ or ‘icons’ recur throughout Boxer’s imagery. In Memories of Colonisation (1983) and Violin D’Ingres (1986) the fragmented and gauzed human form, the African Tchi Wara mask, renaissance images and musical notations are spliced and collaged; personal and cultural imagery inserted is disruptive, he cuts and replaces so neatly and decisively, like a surgeon, that the overall effect is one of completeness. He explains:

“Very often in my work, I’m trying to deal with bringing together two cultures. I have African ancestry, I have English ancestry and the two cultures clash. This clash is witnessed in my Memories of Colonisation series set in English palaces with the African masks invading them…”

Boxer’s use of African masks is symbolic, if not ritualistic. He incorporates them within these new settings as a way of maintaining the black presence; although they are merely cut-outs, the plastic surgery he executes on them is intended, as he says, to ‘activate and revitalize’ them.