Exhibition

In 2009, when Jamaican artist/photographer Peter Dean Rickards made this video about his discovery and reclaimation of British street artist Banksy's mural on Mona Road, it was a powerful statement about value and how art can be lost in translation from one culture to another. Now, Rickards has destroyed that work, including it in an assemblage created for I is AnOther  an exhibition at the New Art Exchange in Nottingham UK including other contemporary Jamaican artists such as Nari Ward, Storm Saulter, Hurvin Anderson and Ebony G Patterson. Rickard's deliberate destruction of Banksy's work and his 'outing' of the internationally enigmatic artist Banksy has solved a mystery, while also making an ironic statement about Rickard's own claims about fame. View more works in the show.

Sculptor Laura Facey is one of few contemporary artists able to think outside of the frame of Jamaican art and push the boundaries of her audiences. Her new work Radiant Combs returns to history and provocative themes stemming from her 2003 public monument Redemption Song that triggered concerns about who has the right to represent Jamaica's history of slavery and emancipation. Radiant Combs which includes a video where Laura discusses her work in prose, is no less challenging. With her usual fiestiness, she has entered it as part of her portfolio for New York's 3^rd Ward competition demonstrating that she refuses to be constrained by national boundaries and local criticism. The competition requires viewer participation and asks supporters to vote online for the artist of their choice. If you use Facebook and you like this video then follow this link to share Laura's work and her ideas. The competition deadline is 9 march 2012.

An exhibition exploring the Myths, Beliefs, Religions and Imagination in the Caribbean is on show in Martinique's Regional Council building in Fort de France this month. Organized by the Director of Culture Reneé-Paul Yung-Hing  , the multi-media display brings together contemporary work from the English, French and Spanish speaking islands including Cuba's Manuel Mendive, Martnique's Patricia Donatien-Yssa, Haiti's Eduard Duval Carrié, Trinidad's Leroy Clarke, Barbados' Ras Akyem and Ras Ishi and Jamaica's Albert Chong. Creating any exhibition that crosses language barriers and geographical boundaries is a major task especially when its works and artists are forced to navigate airline hubs such as Miami and San Juan, but the shows language of myth and spirituality is a forceful one that speaks more to the region's spiritual commonalities rather than its differences.

The human form features prominently in the art on show. The ritualized body whether stripped naked in Ras Akyem's drawings, bio-morphised in the paintings of Mendive, or costumed with bric-a-brac in the assemblages of Duval Carrie (shown here), demonstrates how as a result of slavery, the region's dispossessed peoples harnessed their inner resources to create intimate sites of worship that could speak to other worlds and realities. Whether inspired by Vodou, Revival, Rastafari or Santaria, the art works in Myths, Beliefs, Religions and Imagination in the Caribbean show how the enshrined body becomes the altar where our people display inner wealth and offerings, to praise and appease their gods.

The works from Hugh Dunphy's Collection now on show in a small exhibition at the Bolivar Gallery in Kingston, are some of the best of Ras Dizzy's output from around the 1990s. Wild-west marshalls, racing jockeys, market women, exotic birds and fruits all feature in this show that demonstrates his extraordinary talent as a painter and his resiliance as an artist who lived most of his life on the streets. Ras Dizzy's eccentricity and critical stance against society was what made his paintings both lyrical and powerful and, maybe also what made him a marginalized figure in our art world. His unwillingness to adopt the social graces and art world polities meant that even up to his death as an indigent artist in 2008, he was still feared as an unpredictable outcast. As Prof. Carolyn Cooper has noted in her Jamaica Journal (Vol.31, No.3) tribute to the late artist, it is a poor reflection on our patronage of elderly artists and our understanding of self-taught painters such as Ras Dizzy, that we value the art and not the artist. We have educated ourselves to be accepting of their 'intuitive' skills and visions but we have not yet trained our hearts to accommodate them as people. Watch the video.

Courtney Hogarth's Black Earth exhibition at the Olympia Gallery in Kingston is timely coming when relations between Jamaica and China are strengthening and when cultural alliances will help to configure the geo-political shape of our future world. It's unlikely that this artist could have envisaged the extent of China's economic growth or the waning of US and European markets when he embarked on his scholarship to study at China's Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing nearly a decade ago. Now, with a Ph.D in Classical Chinese Painting and Philosophy, and with China on the rise, Hogarth's art can foster relations between our two countries. But for all its cultural posturing, Black Earth is a very intimate exhibition, featuring artworks such as Feelings (2005) pictured here that seem more personal than propaganda. Intimate self-portraits, and abstract watercolour paintings demonstrate the artist's skillful brushwork, while the quality of his paper and beautifully mounted works on silk, subtly nod to his Asian influences and the softly-softly approach China is taking to establish its presence in our hemisphere.

Diaspora artist Albert Chong was present to answer questions at the opening of his exhibition at the Mutual Gallery in Kingston last night. The show offered a selection of the artist's most successful photographs and prints on canvas from years past, as well as new works on tile and an installation featuring a hand cart and palm leaves. Whereas Chong's earliest works were shot through with nostalgia and a longing for 'home', by including his most recent works that are photographic compositions on stone tiles, he showed how his ideals have become less sentimental, more earth-bound, radicalized and edgier. His use of the camera that was once focussed on the self, the intimate, and the personal, has set aside ego to consider a greater good, challenging what the artist considers 'the most pressing issues of our time.' Chong explained how recent works such as Hope Deferred (2011) shown here, reflect his interest in world affairs and America's two unpopular wars. His exhibition, almost retrospective in its selection, offers a glimpse into his life and thought in pictures that embrace both nostalgic idealism and a healthy dose of political realism.

The catalog arrived only recently by mail, although the exhibition took place in Ethiopia during the summer. Yet it is extensive enough to give the viewer an understanding of Jamaican born artist/author Danijah Tafari's recent work and display. Every page brims with the energy of his new technique that forgoes formal photographic representation to capture the play of light and energy in increasingly technology overloaded cityscapes of Kingston, London, Paris and New York. In his personal statement, the artist calls his process 'drawing and painting with light', using traditional medium format cameras. He explains why his recent images such as Ethereal Body shown here, fall outside of mainstream taste and have more often been discarded by professional photo labs that consider them rejects. Yet, Danijah Tafari is drawn to what these single exposure photographs that have not been digitally enhanced communicate about the ethereal and electric auras that pervade the atmosphere around us. The idea of presenting that which is normally unseen, appeals to this artist who has long since been attracted to rastafari philosophy and a deep concern for humanity. The catalogue does not tell us how this exhibition came to take place in Addis Ababa but we sense that these brilliant images and the artist have found a spiritual home in that city of light.

Visiting Curacao's  Kura Hulanda Museum  devoted to slavery should be compulsory. It's a specialist museum with collections that focus on the African slave trade and the fate of displaced blacks once transported to the New World. Beginning with a small display that documents man's earliest civilisations, the viewer is invited to meander through galleries that move through time and space telling the story of Europe's intervention in Africa; the establishment of the triangular trade in sugar, cotton and human chattel, and the attrocities that attended the Middle Passage crossing from that continent to the Americas. Collections are rich with historical artifacts as well as life-size installations that invoke the horrors of bondage. In later galleries devoted to the 20^th century, viewers come to see how resistance to slavery and Jim Crow oppression were directly tied to the emergence of political movements such as Marcus Garvey's UNIA and Stokely Carmichael's Black Panthers. Finally, the display ends with exquisitely curated modern spaces filled with African artifacts that emphasise Africa's heritage and a culture that its African Diaspora can be proud of. The Kura Hulanda Museum provides an education that no one should miss – an alternative to Disney World – that shows how we are all implicated in this history of wealth and woe. View more pictures from the museum

The National Visual Arts Competition and Exhibition 2011 opened last week at the National Gallery of Jamaica. It is a popular show that because of its diverse youth and adult entries in painting, drawing, photography, sculpture and video from across the country normally enjoys the support of a cross-section of Jamaicans. Originating from a national competition established after Jamaica's independence, the exhibition has had mixed fortunes over the years, often reflecting periods of buoyancy or malaise according to what is happening in the country. This year's event is underwhelming, with 354 entrants, one third of whom are new to the competition. It lacks the support of seasoned artists whose works normally serve to underpin the display. Yet, it does present an opportunity to see the work of independent artists not normally reflected in NGJ curated exhibitions such as Ann Ventura whose painting Firmly Rooted is shown here. Additionally, unlike the National Biennial that is the NGJ's own juried show, The National Visual Arts Competition and Exhibition is supported by artists who more readily consider themselves amateurs. Perhaps this too explains why the show, mounted in the temporary exhibition space on the ground floor, seems little enhanced by galleries that normally display work to advantage. Instead, entering the exhibition from the lobby, other works in the  NGJ's permanent collection overshadow the competition's submissions. Of course this disparity begs a question about the relevance of the National Visual Arts Competition and Exhibition, but its historical popularity and political support will ensure that it survives, despite its current mediocrity.

Although better known as an abstract painter of nature, Hope Brooks has never been shy about including political content in her work; dealing with subjects such as the US bombing of Afghanistan Tings cuda wurs (2001), human rights Justice Denied (2010) and Confessions of a Policeman, 2010 or environmental issues such as Painting for the Planet Earth (2011). In her latest solo show, People and Their Stories: Then and Now! at the Mutual Gallery, Kingston, she turns her attention to race and issues related to history, nation and identity. Using the head as a recurring image she compulsively demonstrates her preoccupations with slavery as part of the colonial story that has tied Jamaica to both Africa and Europe.

In her typically unrelenting way, Hope creates a family of images that is not portrait painting in a conventional manner. Instead, Hope explores the human condition in its most existential sense, carefully meditating on the nature of our being, beyond nomenclature, physicality, or social hierarchies. In this year 2011, declared by the United Nations as the International Year for People of African Descent, Hope Brooks' Benetton coloured heads remind us that Africa is the cradle of humanity and that our concern with that continent and its diaspora, is a concern for the self and each other.