INTRODUCING

Christina Leslie's Portraits

Saturday, January 16, 2016

ARCHIVING ART:JAMAICA

Happy New Year to All.  This open letter to you has been a while coming. ART:Jamaica as a venture has been great and put me in contact with so many interesting people. In 2006 when I launched this blog as a place for my art students at Edna Manley College, I had no idea it would become a place where I was doing most of the writing. I am not a naturally enthusiastic or great writer or art administrator so you can imagine how hard a task...

Saturday, March 14, 2015

Biennial Notes: Thread

Katrina Coombs, Absence The 2014 Jamaica Biennial is now coming to a close on Sunday March 15th with artists talks planned to talk about new practices and directions.  At major exhibitions there is always a highlight on the biggest most glamorous, glaring or loud practices. High politics, high shine, high rhetoric, high tech is trendy. Within art scenes, markets and circles this is all of course to serves its purpose to ensure that the...

Sunday, February 22, 2015

An Impression of Marlon James' 'King Yellowman'

Marlon James, detail of 'King Yellowman', Source: The 2014 Jamaica Biennial Catalogue, The National Gallery of Jamaica When the British Broadcasting Service [BBC]was first set up in 1927 its mission was to 'educate, inform and entertain'. Successful Art institutions such as Tate Modern, [currently the most visited Modern Art museum in the world ] might subscribe to something similar because viewing Art has become big business with entertainment...

Saturday, January 31, 2015

Virtual Curation & Alternative Biennials

Since last summer, Kathryn Buford, editor/ curator of LiveUnchained.com, and myself have been speaking about the art culture in Jamaica with the aim to collaborate on a project together. I had the chance to work with Kathryn previously when she interviewed me for one of her online articles. With the upcoming Jamaica Biennial we hit on the idea of presenting together a sort of alternative biennial via this blog with Kathryn making the major...

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Time-based Media @ THE 2014 JAMAICA BIENNIAL

Courtesy of The National Gallery of Jamaica, Renee Cox – Zulu Man Tree (from Sacred Geometry), digital photograph I am currently facilitating a course at Edna Manley College called 'Time-based Media'. It is one of three Media Art courses I developed under the guidance of Annie Hamilton, Hope Brooks and Petrona Morrison back in 2006. I had just finished my MA in Interactive Media in the UK and had many ideas about how to integrate the things...

Saturday, October 18, 2014

What does Cultural Identity have to do with Abstraction?

so you, 44" x 65" GA Gardner has recently returned to more regular artistic practice in Trinidad after years living and working in the U.S and launched a public project on Facebook called GetThru which functions as an artists think tank. He has also recently opened a show in Washington D.C. His work rests on the thin line between abstraction and reality or abstracted realities and has been described as a 'cacophony of messages' and information...

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

ON THE SCENE: The School of Visual Art's Final Year Show

Ramone Johnson, BFA Painting The annual School of Visual Arts Show opened on June 7th. I haven’t seen a final year show at The School of Visual Arts for at least six years due to being away from Jamaica. During that time however there have been so many reports of surprising and promising work being shown. Some of that work has even gained so much notice that graduating students have been able to transition directly into curated shows at The...

Friday, June 6, 2014

ON THE SCENE: Diversity Spreads in the Kingston's Art Scene

Members of the JA Cosplayaz in character and costume. Over the last couple of weeks, I have had the opportunity to attend a few of the art events happening in Kingston. From exhibitions featuring Hello Kitty to online events enabled by YouTube Live and Google Hangouts, there has been a range of experiences to be had. Our local art scene is not necessarily being compared with other more expansive and developed scenes overseas but it is being...

Saturday, May 17, 2014

ON THE SCENE: Theatre tackles Science in 'HeLa'

Adura Onashile performs solo in  HeLa The HeLa cell has been a major component driving the major scientific research and advancement in the last sixty three years. The particular qualities of the cell to grow rapidly and it’s resilience has made it an invaluable component in over 90% of scientific labs worldwide. If we think about the scale of which the HeLa cell has had an impact we can think of research in the HIV vaccine, In vitro...