Glee Club and Folk Music

Got this video sent to me in a forwarded email. I think in case you didn't get to see it, here is the opportunity. To view a an interesting moment of cultural transference/ borrowing/ appreciation etc. What do you think about this rendition, the interpretation and what it means for Jamaican music and culture. How do you feel about this.

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Searching for Jollywood

I am among many persons concerned about or at least curious about the lack of a thriving film industry. We want so much to have the tangible evidence of the creativity and richness of our storytelling tradition in that most glamorous and cool of cultural industries. We are proud of the handful of critically acclaimed films but we still wonder what can be done to jumpstart the way. Many in the authority roles in the country have tried form starting film festivals, holding forums and conferences, sponsoring proportionately big budget productions, funding training camps. inviting the many film industry professionals from the US and UK, who are often expected to breathe life into our feeble infant of an industry by waving a magical stick. I thought maybe Jamaica's film industry cannot start as an industry, maybe we shouldn't yearn for a type of Jamaican version of Hollywood. Our Jollywood maybe found perhaps in the cheap tools and technologies that many have around us and take for granted. Maybe we shouldn't look to others for that million dollar budget, maybe we could start in our own back yard, in small rooms, in our spare time, just go for it. Be it bad or rude or crude it perhaps should just start from anyone interested. Our Jollywood will most certainly start from the underbelly, the unschooled or schooled but definitely the passionate. Who says that we need to know and use a particular way, lets build our own way or work on using the mainstream way in our own way. I recently watched 'Be Kind Rewind' and felt how great that would be for us to inspire any kind of attempt at social change, recording personal histories,engaging our culture and imagination through something like grass roots films, animations etc. If we don't know how to or what to do first or even have already tried I invite you to use this blog and our Google group forum as the place to network and share ideas and air what you have, call for participants etc. Ask a question and hopefully you can find an answer.
One group of students from Northern Caribbean University students have already released a few films online and have been building a following on YouTube. I present The 'Revenge of Hurricane Tongue'

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National Biennial 2008: Ebony G. Patterson

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Watch Petrine Archer-Straw's interview with Ebony Patterson

Interview by Nikki-Ann Chambers

What inspired you to do this piece?
The kind of hypocrisy that is evident in our Jamaican culture. We “bun out” “batty man” which is seen as a kind of feminist thing yet the real men and the “ganstas” dress better than women, wear questionable women clothes, bleach [which used to be a woman ting] and pretty up more than most women today. However the work is not about homosexuality but an exploration of a shift in masculity , and the contradictions of what was once the anti-mocho. The feminity is now reshaping the masculine

How do you see this room and what is the story of this room?
I Use and see the room as a faux feminine, really questioning what masculinity is, our ideas about beauty and the grotesque and how that all ties in with stereotypes and our perceptions, a culture and a people.

What relation do the tampons have to the general piece?
I refer to them as the “pussy bulletz” and I wanted to use something that was obviously feminine to juxtapose with the homosexual serotypes that I created with these photographic images. What is really interesting is the shape of the tampons and how they resemble and echo the shape of a bullet.

What relation do the men have within the piece?
I use young men within a particular age group as they represent a demographic involved in the practice. Unlike persons in the the 1990’s that did this for social mobility , these young men are not bleaching and going up-town in suites to look for jobs. They are on the corners and getting involved inillegitimate activities but at the same time it seems that a faux feminine that is beginning to immerge from their appearance. This juxtapose with objects that are obliviously feminine and liking that to “gansta culture,” an aspiration and gratification of the “gansta”.

Does the colour of the wall plays a divider or a link between what is masculine and what is feminine?
Red can be seen as a neutral colour of the sexes. I chose it and if u realize is not “red red” but more of a pinkish red. I did this to play on the whole concept of how the men are bordering the line between masculinity and femininity.

-The original post has been edited to accommodate requests by the artist, Ebony G. Patterson

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National Biennial 2008: O’Dwayne Wilson

Interview by Peta-Ann Smith, Jan. 26, 2009

PS: Based on your displayed work, the figures appear to be dressed as high-ranking Catholic clergymen. Did the fairly recent child abuse scandal that rocked the Catholic Church inspire this particular piece?
OW: Yes the recent events have influenced me to do works examining the role of the clergy and religion on a whole. But then what really did it for me was the film ‘Deliver us from Evil’ which was a biopic on a clergy man who molested kids at whichever church he went and the cover ups surrounding it.

PS: Did the subject matter of the work influence your choice of media? If so, in what manner?
b) If the subject matter bore no influence on choice of media, what inspired you to select these particular materials rather that use traditional canvas?
OW: Yes it did to an extent, the cloth, wood and the nails where all symbolic of the Catholicism. However the wood was mostly found due to constraints in the project and to off- set cost of the work. The wood was lying everywhere especially since the school was under going minor constructions. So I made use of what my environment could afford me. The cloth was also was interesting experiment in it self.

PW: Given the controversial nature of the work, especially when one considers the events of the past five years, do you think you'll revisit this subject in future pieces?
OW: Yes I would but it would be used as sort of linkages between ideas. Besides there are so many dimensions to the topic and a historical context which I feel could be explored more in depth. But I wouldn’t want to replicate the same works again in terms of the structure and forms that they took. I believe that the works would have worked better as an installation.

PW: Have you considered other themes and/or subjects that you would like to explore in your future pieces? If so, would you be willing to give us an idea of what you'd like to examine next?
OW: Hard to say ... the current financial situation of the world is always a stimulus because it affects every one on so many levels.
What I am watching right now is the conflict in Gaza and how that plays out. It has more effect on me right now. The battle happening there is a historic and an old one and has not been resolved for thousands of years. But its hard to say right now. But I am interested in doing a piece focusing on issues closer to home.

PW: Apart from different subjects, are there any media that you'd like to utilise in the future? If so, which media do you think will be the most challenging and possibly the most rewarding?
OW: I’ve always wanted to do digital media because of ability to be visually agile. It can enable me to explore a range of issues and techniques and maybe even venture into filmmaking.

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Alphonso Dunn Emerges

Some time ago, I heard from Alphonso Dunn. He had recently left the New York Academy of Art and just beginning to build his body of work. He had left Jamaica while still a teenager and was interested in his connection to Jamaica, which was evident through his work. I began plans to feature this artist next on this blogspot. Suddenly, Alphonso disappeared from our radar and time passed. Alphonso has recently resurfaced with exciting news of new directions, group shows in New York and studio life. Now is the time for ART:Jamaica to introduce you to Alphonso Dunn.

So I would like to just hear about the experience of leaving Jamaica for the U.S.,.
AD: I moved to the states with my mother and sisters when I was 17. I had almost finished high school in Jamaica.

Were you interested in art before that?
AD: Although throughout my earlier school years I concentrated most of efforts in the sciences—aspiring to be a doctor—I was always active in art, whether doodling or copying tirelessly from art instruction books , comics and cartoons. My earliest memories in art are from second grade, drawing comic book characters and creating superheroes. But it was while attending St. Jago High School that I started to really hone my drawing skills, and took art much more seriously. I entered several art and poster competitions and often placed very well. It was there too that I had my first apprenticeship-like experience, via my two art teachers; Mr. Barrett and Mr. Collins. Mr. Barrett was more the abtract expressionist and Mr. Collins the realist, but both more or less figurative artists. I copied inexhaustibly from Mr. Collins' drawings and spent countless hours discussing art theory and ideas with Mr. Barrett. They were very nurturing and complemented each other very well, as opposite in temperament as they were. Looking back, that was an integral component of my artistic development. Even now, more than 13 years later I still make it a priority to visit them whenever I'm in Jamaica.

What was the experience of attending New York Academy of Art?
AD: After moving to the states, I did a year of high school before going to study Chemistry at William Paterson University, in NJ. I was still bent on going to medical school but was able to squeeze in one figure drawing course. While in school I amassed an impressive collection of figure drawing instruction books, which I practiced from voraciously. I was virtually self-taught between high school and grad school, which inadvertently provided me with a portfolio of work to submit for grad school admission.
Upon graduating college I decided to pursue a formal art education. It took much courage to do this because I had to accept I would disappoint the expectations of people that were very important to me. But in some weird way I knew they understood.
My two years at the New York Academy of Art were two of the most wonderful years of my life. It was my first time indulging in such a rich and nurturing space of people, whose sole aspiration was set on making figurative fine art. The Academy, as a graduate school, is unique for placing the study and representation of the figure and its conceptual and metaphorical aspects at the center of its curriculum. I was in heaven.

How did you relate to studying the European-derived academic approach to art.
AD: Interestingly, I was already familiar with much of the European masters and the academic approach to representation through my many books on art. It was exciting to be around people who felt just as passionate about the representation of the figure, both instructors and students alike. Regrettably, however, I had to seek outside the academy for any information or instruction on the art of people who were non-Caucasian. This was not a new experience, and was not unexpected. My priority was to develop my skills at representing the figure as best as I could.


How does your Caribbean orientation affect the way you make work (subject matter, concepts, process etc.)?
AD: I'm not sure there how easy it is to articulate the nature and degree of influence of my Caribbean heritage on the ideas behind my work, no more than I can acknowledge the plight of the African Diaspora virtually everywhere...
I think of all the aspects of my work, my Caribbean background speaks most strongly through my passion for draftsmanship and the figure. Growing up in Jamaica, I had virtually no access to any other medium but pencil and ink, and occasionally poster paint. I only read of oil and acrylic, and sculpture was as remote as an art supply store. I focused my energies on what tools I had: cheap HB and colored pencils, and extra-fine point writing pens. Thus, started my life-long love affair with line.
Even today I doubt most children in Jamaica have access to any more medium than I did back then. But with learning several years later the importance and centrality of drawing to other arts, I have no regret that drawing was my involuntary choice.

Tell me about a recent body of work and your future plans for your artistic growth and your search to link with the Jamaican arts community.
AD: My recent work comes from years of trying to find an effective way to translate my ideas though a visual language that best complements and challenges my way of creating. I love realism and I love abstraction, but I resent realism and abstraction for their own sake. My work, ultimately, is driven from a place unique to me as a child of the African Diaspora and as a member of a very troubled and complex human race.
I want to make art that provoke questions and addresses concerns about perception and truth, the human imagination and power, and their effect on how we construct meaning and drive our relations with the world, others and ourselves.
In my drawings there is an unsettling tension created by the juxtapositions between text and image, childlike drawing and naturalistic representation, that challenges the viewer to intermittently suspend and reframe “adult” perceptions and judgments and become engrossed in a dynamic cross-referencing in order to construct a comprehensive meaning of the work. Neither language nor image is all-inclusive of meaning or truth, but through the seductive engagement of the imagination, perception is framed and realities made of figments. This visual experience calls attention to a reevaluation of our own habitual ways of seeing, deferring our seemingly automatic inner-processes of constructing meaning and directing action; the experience of finding what I refer to as our perception’s locus of control.

I hope to interact with other artists of the Jamaica and Caribbean and engage in meaningful exchange on art, ideas, and finding and defining our space and clarifying questions. I believe all true artists are intellectuals, yearning for discussion.

You may contact the featured artist and see more of his work at www.alphonsodunn.com

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LECTURE @ National Gallery: Reframing Slavery

Dr. Krista Thompson to Present 2009 Edna Manley Memorial Lecture on Thursday, March 5 at the National Gallery of Jamaica

The Edna Manley Foundation, in association with the Edna Manley College and the National Gallery of Jamaica, is pleased to present its 2009 Edna Manley Memorial Lecture, Reframing Slavery: Photography, History, and Re(Memory) by Krista Thompson. The lecture will take place at the National Gallery of Jamaica, Kingston Mall, on Thursday, March 5, 2009, starting at 2:30 pm. A reception will follow at the end of the lecture.

The Edna Manley Foundation was established shortly after Edna Manley's death in 1987, as a foundation dedicated to her artistic legacy, in terms of her own work and her broader role in Jamaican art. The Foundation is also dedicated to the broader development of art in Jamaica and to stimulating intellectual discourse on the subject. Its activities include, among others, the organization of an annual Edna Manley Memorial Lecture, which is featured during Edna Manley Week, the Edna Manley College's annual founders' week. While the inaugural lecture focused on aspects of Edna Manley's life and work, this year's lecture will cast a broader look at Caribbean culture and history.

Krista Thompson's Reframing Slavery lecture examines how photographs from the late nineteenth century inform visual memory in Jamaica and in the Anglophone Caribbean more generally. It explores how, despite photography's invention as slavery was being abolished in the English speaking territories, historians often use photographs from the post-slavery period to represent slavery. While this occludes aspects of the history of slavery from view, it also brings into focus African Diasporic ways of remembering. Indeed, the transposition of slavery and the late nineteenth century in some historical accounts seems to aptly capture what Toni Morrison characterizes as "re-memory" among enslaved Africans and their descendants, the ruptures in space and time, the ever-presentness of the past, that are intrinsic to the memory of slavery and to the formation of the African Diaspora more generally.

Krista A. Thompson is Assistant Professor of Art History at Northwestern University and the author of An Eye for the Tropics (2006), an examination of the colonial imaging of the Anglophone Caribbean in photographs and its effects on landscape, history, race, governmentality, and contemporary art. She holds a Ph.D. in Art History and Cultural Studies from Emory University. A Getty Foundation postdoctoral fellow (2008-2009), she is currently working on a book titled The Visual Economy of Light in African Diasporic Practice on the intersections among black vernacular forms of photography, performance, and contemporary art in the Caribbean and the United States. Her writings have appeared in American Art, The Drama Review, and Small Axe.

The Edna Manley Memorial Lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Veerle Poupeye, at 929-2350-2 @ extension 2117, mobile 579-8282 or veerle.poupeye@emc.edu.jm.

-contributed by Veerle Poupeye

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LOOKING AHEAD: There are times when I look back....

YOUNG, GIFTED & BLACK

A newish old space holds a second launch with an exhibition of contemporary art. The curator and director of the space Rozi Chung sees the show as launching the new Jamaican artist. At the same time the show goes back to a time when being rude, loud, raw, smart, clever, informed, playful was what art was about. A time before commercial gallery art shows and artists prizes and slickness. A new, old moment. The show opens on Saturday November 8, 2008 @ 3pm. There will be a mix and expansion of what we call art. Graphic artists, screenwriters, painters, musicians, pop dancers will be part of the opening event. The space may be found at 174 Harbour Street, with its entrance on West Street. Coincidentally it is also a stone's throw away from The National Gallery of Jamaica. We invite you to attend and post comments or images on the experience.

'Studio 174- Press Release

Located at 174 Harbour Street Kingston (Down Town), Studio 174 –home to a collection of young Artists recently graduate from the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, Presents its second opening, titled “ Young Gifted and Black”, with guest speaker Rose Bennett, Attorney at law Slated to commerce at 3.00pm on the 8th of November 2008, the exhibit will represent the dynamic and creative expressions of an empowered group of young Jamaican talent destined to leave the imprints on the Jamaican culture and people. This is defined by their deliberated move from being based in an uptown Artistic Avenue to a venue more directly positioned in Downtown Kingston, the catalyst of new artist dynamism.

The gesture is aimed at creating a hub in which Art influences and is influence by community development, cultural exchange, heritage and tourism embodying an idea more than social intervention bringing a multifaceted approach to building a foundation. It is the hope that with this youthful vision others will be of a mind to initiate similar entrepreneurial feats, fostering new endeavours, found on a revolutionary artistic direction which challenges the stereotypical misconceptions and directions of Art.'

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NIGGAH DEH WINNAH: Lawrence Graham Brown

Still on the highs of the wins made in Beijing by the Jamaican team, it seems appropriate to speak about 'Niggah Deh Winnah'. Lawrence Graham-Brown, A Jamaican artist based in the United States who has exhibited regularly on the Jamaican art scene,tells us about his work.

I first saw Graham-Brown's work in the 2005 Biennial at The National Gallery. I was convinced it was the work of a newly emerging older artist, given the 'intuitive' use of materials and the links to the work of contemporary intuitives like David Marchand.The scribbling of the text 'Niggah Deh Winnah' on work in later exhibitions however began to put this to rest. This was an artist who had sly covert and deeply political concern. This I must admit revealed my prejudice of the label 'intuitive'. I looked at the method of craftsmanship, the colour scheme, manner of representation and immediately felt that this must be the work of one of the artists we often label 'Intuitives'. The label often seems associated with a kind of mysticism and romanticism about their process and 'inspiration'.

This is how I placed Graham-Brown neatly in a box as I tried to absorb the huge phallus attached to a small ethnicized figurine resembling a kind of centaur. The phrase 'Niggah Deh Winnah' kept appearing on his work mounted in various group exhibitions held locally in the last two or so years. Appearing in shows such as 'Materialising Slavery' an installation-focused exhibit at the Institute of Jamaica last September and the JCDC Fine Arts Festival in 2007. Graham-Brown's work has since helped me travel further into the intellectual depth of our Intuitive artists such as Ras Dizzy, Everald Brown and Evadne Cruikshank. The artist now gives us some insight into the series.

'Wrestling with struggles within the confines and legacies
of Black self-hatred, gay self-hatred, Black-ness,
Jamaican-ness, African-ness, sexuality, class and religion.
With influences from the Rastafarian movement, Hon. Marcus
Garvey, history, the present and the future for my artistic
commentary and protest.

There are three themes that my work circum-navigates:

A.
The series “The legacy of degradation. The Black man
relegated to a life of servitude and the beast of
burden.” This is the genesis of my work from my Black
memorabilia collection. A re-discovery of Black hatred and
a quest for identity has driven me to investigating
architectural components of Black servitude, free labor and
its legacies via modern industrialization example: the
prison system, factories, hospitals, and domestics in the
form of printed historical documents from the
mid-nineteenth century to the present. displayed in a
collage mixed media.

B.
The series The Nigger the Winner, “Niggah deh Winnah”
Pan-African play on words, is a form of aspiration and
protest for my race. Since the images that I use in my art
are so degrading of the Negro. "Negro in impropia
persona"
Writing the words in a broken Jamaican dialect [patois]
is a form of passive protest of the colonizers language.

C. The series “Who is most masculine?” interrogates and
comments on masculine constructs, identities and legacies by
the display of power and control within the domestics,
tourist trade, industrialization, gender policing within
the Afro-Caribbean culture and the gay balls in the United
States via dvd.'
- Lawrence Graham-Brown

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Tribute to Christopher Gonzalez

Image source: http://media-files.gather.com/images/d246/d672/d744/d224/d96/f3/full.jpg

The following obituary was issued by the Edna Manley College:


THE EDNA MANLEY COLLEGE PAYS TRIBUTE TO CHRISTOPHER GONZALEZ


The Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts deeply regrets the passing of the acclaimed Jamaican sculptor and painter, Christopher Gonzalez, who was one of its earliest graduates and a former lecturer at its school of art.

Christopher Gonzalez was born in 1943 in Manchester, Jamaica. In 1963, he was among the first diploma graduates of what was then still known as the Jamaica School of Art and Crafts, along with Kenneth Kellyman (Painting) and Gasseth Brown (Sculpture). He had studied there under the Scottish-born sculptor Bill Broome, who served as head of the Sculpture department and Deputy Director of Studies at the time. Gonzalez continued his studies at the California College of Arts and Crafts in the early 1970s, where he obtained an MFA. His studies also included travel to Mexico and Scandinavia, where he encountered the work of the Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland, whose mystical symbolism and interlocking organic forms became a lifelong influence. He also taught at the Jamaica School of Art from 1964 to 1969 and again in the 1970s. He served as head of the Sculpture department from 1977 to 1979, when he moved to Atlanta to take up a position as Artist-in-Residence at the Spelman College, one of the historically Black colleges in that city.

Gonzalez’s talents were recognized from early on. While still a student in 1963, he was commissioned to produce an abstract relief sculpture for the Jamaica Manufacturers Association, as part of a project brokered by Aaron Matalon. His first public commissions came in 1965. One was a portrait but of George William Gordon for the Morant Bay Rebellion shrine at National Heroes Park in Kingston, where it stands in the company of the half-body version of Edna Manley’s Paul Bogle statue. The other was a Coat of Arms relief for Vale Royal. In 1975, Gonzalez also produced the two sculptures – titled Birth of the Nation and Unity of the Nation – for the Norman Manley shrine at National Heroes Park. Gonzalez received the Institute of Jamaica’s Silver Musgrave Medal in 1974, as one of the youngest artists ever to be granted such an award.

Gonzalez was in great demand for public and private commissions but some of these proved controversial. In 1968, he was produced a ciment fondu statue of The Risen Christ for Holy Cross Church (1968) in Kingston, but it was rejected by the Church authorities because the figure’s penis was prominently visible through its windswept clothes. Gonzalez explained that he had merely wished to assert that Christ was a man. It was subsequently acquired by A.D. Scott for his Olympia International Art Centre collection and it is today recognized as one of his finest works. In 1973, the St. Jude’s Church in Stony Hill commissioned a Christ figure, which was executed in beaten copper. Some objected to the assertive representation of Christ as a Black, dread-locksed man and the unconventional iconography, which combined the Crucifixion, the Resurrection and the Ascension into one image, but the sculpture was ultimately accepted.

The most public controversy came in 1983 with his Bob Marley monument, which was rejected by the public and members of the Marley family before it was even unveiled and withdrawn by the Government. Gonzalez, who still lived in Atlanta at that time, had opted to represent Marley symbolically as a mystical “rootsman,” a concept that was certainly compatible with Marley’s own beliefs, but the monument’s critics wished to see the physical likeness of the late reggae singer instead. This wish was fulfilled with a new statue of Marley by Alvin Marriott which was erected in 1985. The original statue was moved to the National Gallery of Jamaica, where it was on display for many years and became one of the most popular exhibits, although Gonzalez was unhappy about this arrangement which, he felt, hid the statue from public view. It was in 2002 moved to the Island Village duty free shopping and entertainment complex, near the Ocho Rios cruise ship, where it remains on view to the present day. Although he did return to Jamaica in 1984, the rejection of his Marley statue was a significant professional disappointment for Gonzalez and he produced only a few sculptures afterwards. Instead, he focused on his drawings and paintings and his trademark watercolours became very popular in the local art market.

While he produced some abstract work in the beginning of his career, under the influence of his lecturer Bill Broome, Gonzalez’s mature style has been consistently figurative and is best described as expressionist and symbolist. It is characterized by undulating, onionskin-like linear forms and stylized human figures with high foreheads and serene expressions, devices which he uses to express a mystical vision of humanity. While it has affinities with the work of Vigeland, Edna Manley and certain aspects of West African art and relates to that of his peers Gene Pearson, Cecil Cooper and Philip Supersad, Gonzalez’s style is uniquely his own and the general popularity of his work, despite the painful controversies, illustrates that it appeals to modern Jamaica’s aesthetic sensibilities. His work is represented in many public and private collections in Jamaica and abroad, including the National Gallery of Jamaica, the Bank of Jamaica, the Wallace Campbell Collection and the Denny Repole collection.

Christopher Gonzalez passed away on Saturday, August 2, at age 65. He is survived by his wife, Champayne Clarke-Gonzalez, and six children. His daughter Christina is currently a student at the Edna Manley College’s School of Dance. The Board of Directors, Principal, Staff and Students of the Edna Manley College extend their condolences to the family and friends of Christopher Gonzalez and pay tribute to this great Jamaican sculptor and painter.


Veerle Poupeye

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KINGSTON ON THE EDGE: THE CITY'S NEW COOL ARTS FESTIVAL

Kingston on the Edge returns this year after last years success. It is a growing phenomenon and injects some vibrance into the summer art scene. The programme line up involves music, performance, a gallery crawl, screenings etc. Check out the programme below and please send us images and comments on your experience of the various events. For more info. visit myspace.com/kingstonedge and send emails to kingstonedge@gmail.com.CLICK ON THE IMAGE BELOW TO SEE AN ENLARGED VERSION OF THIS YEARS PROGRAMME SCHEDULE.

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Curator's Eye 3: The newness and nowness of our cultural past

The Curator's Eye III opened at the National Gallery of Jamaica on April 27, 2008. The show comes around every two years and provides a thesis about contemporary Jamaican art propsed by an internationally invited curator. The curators invited in the past have been Lower Stokes Sims and Eddie Chambers. This year Keith Morrison of the Tyler School of Art was invited. From September 2007, artists were invited to share in Morrison's vision for this show- Ceremony in Space, Time and Sound. The National Gallery's press release lists the artists exhibiting as:
'LOCAL ARTISTS: Cleve Bowen, Carol Campbell, Carol Crichton, Paula Daley, Andy Jefferson, Ras Kassa, O'Neil Lawrence, Khepera Oluyia Hatshepwa and Oneika Russell.
INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS:Albert Chong, Michelle Eistrup, Lawrence Graham-Brown, Ebony G. Patterson and Tal Rickards'

Artists were encouraged to create fresh work in multimedia thus resulting in a numerous new pieces involving video, photography digital prints being exhibited. It will be interesting to see whether this show has opened a path for more Jamaican artists to exhibit work which delves into the sphere of video and digital media. If this is the case then such a show would then become a part of the nation's history of art-making. The curator has sought to extend this concept into the documentation of the show as he seeks to utilise digital media to market the show and its proposal of contemporary Jamaican art. To reimagine ceremony, which usually reminds me of ritual, ancestry, spirituality, history and pre-modern analogue practice, in a digital realm certainly promises something edgy in our cultural landscape.


The notion of 'Ceremony' was evidently interpreted in diverse ways. Artists perhaps used this plunge into new working methods to tackle more confrontational subject matter. Bleached ivory faces on black bodies, burned domestic interiors evoking acts of violence, figures sculpted in the gestures of Afro-Christian religions were just a few of the works exhibited. As I will not be on-site to see this show I invite you to read the curator's ideas and give us feedback on issues such as the timeliness of the exhibition, its approach to Jamaican art, relationship to past curator's eye exhibitions, the value of the distinguishing between local and international artists in a show reflecting on 'Jamaican Art', your notion of 'Ceremony' and its relevance in Jamaican culture etc.


Excerpts from the curator's exhibition write-up follow:
'The Curator’s Eye III consists of art by 15 artists, four of whom live abroad. I call the exhibition “Ceremony in Space, Time and Sound” because the media the artists use involve dimensions that extend forms of visual forms of art. The exhibition involves film, TV and video projections, room installations, interactive art, along with paintings, photographs; prints and sculptures. It is an exhibition with a variety of ceremonial themes to be found in Jamaican art, reflecting a dynamism from which Jamaica takes its cultural character and a source of a continuum from the cultures of ancient Africa to our time. Of course, not all Jamaicans are descendants of slaves or of Africans. Jamaicans are Black, White, Maroon, Chinese, Indian, Jewish, Arab, and just about all others. However, as is commonly known, and as The Curator’s Eye III further substantiates, the cultural originality of the country is strongly affected by Africa and practices evolved from the days of slavery.'
--- Keith Morrison

The following three paragraphs are on walls in the galleries of the Curator’s Eye III

“… it appears to me that the seeds for inclusion in Jamaican art lies in of some of the authentic ideas that characterize the country, such as ceremonial practices, religious or secular rituals, dancehalls, and street life, are probably best cultivated through the populist iconography of new media. “Populist” because its signs, symbols, metaphors, and narrative are commonly known; and the visual language of the art is vernacular. And in the case of electronic media, the art is also populist because it may be shared by a wider segment of the population than rational art, since the cost to own or reproduce it (copying DVD, CD, and video, or internet access) is negligible.”
--- Keith Morrison

‘Originality in art is not how well artists emulate standards set by other cultures (e.g., Europe or the US), but how well they bring new ideas to the fore. Originality is the basis for cultural distinction, without which one is merely a follower, a footnote to the legacy of others. Originality, which comes from new idea, is needed before art can be made. New idea is the foundation of originality. In my opinion, without originality there is no art. Refinement of existing art ideas may be fascinating virtuosity, attained by the very few with superior skill, may be entertaining and enjoyable, but that by itself is what I would call more technical finesse than art. Originality by itself may not be art, but all true art I have seen includes originality. Original art is art that is potentially important. And importance is the criterion for change or influence on the art world at large. Jamaica is ripe with original ideas that may make new and important world-class art. These ideas are to be found in Jamaica’s spiritual and religious practices, its legacy from slavery, its multilayer ethnicity, Jamaican style, music, language, and attitude.”
- Keith Morrison

“But often the best art is strident, even offensive, as it rubs against the grain to reveal complex and contradictory truths of the society it serves. So it is in contemporary Jamaica. And so perhaps the nucleus of originality of contemporary art in Jamaica is in the imagery of sex and gangsta in the Dancehall culture, which takes impetus from the mores of the slums of Kingston and flaunted as phallic shoot-outs in spotlights that defy perceived middleclass denial and suppression, as explored in this exhibition by several artists. But if the slum and Dancehall culture form the prominent contemporary paradigm for Jamaican art, it shares the stage with some other sources from which it springs, as seen in the work of other artists in the show, whose ideas harkening back to ancient Africa, through slavery, festivals, rituals, ceremonies and the urban popular culture. Jamaican artist are expressing a richly layered aesthetic as revealed in the work if these 14 artists. Jamaican artists stand to become world-class leaders through exploring the originality of their culture with its multiethnic racial and ethnic experiences, unique religious diversity and profound ceremonial practices. If The Curator’s Eye III is any indication, the future of art by Jamaicans could be internationally outstanding.”
--- Keith Morrison
In order of apperance, the images show the work of Oneil Lawrence, Michelle Eistrup, Ras Kassa, Ebony Patterson and Lawrence Graham-Brown. Images contributed by Susan Alunan

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