National Gallery of Jamaica

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 50^th 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.

This week members of the National Gallery community gathered to welcome a painting into its collection by the late Canadian artist Vera Cumming (1921-1996). The painting was presented to the Gallery by her nephew Lawrence Cumming who had overseen preparations for its restoration and journey from Canada. The new acquisition called Jamaican Girl (c.1951) was created by the Vera Cumming whilst she was living in Jamaica and volunteer teaching at the Institute of Jamaica. It depicts a young buxom woman positioned somewhat awkwardly against the backdrop of a revival meeting: a vignette that brings to mind the street scenes of David Pottinger. As chief curator Dr. David Boxer pointed out in his introductory remarks, the painting is significant not just for what it tells us about the artist's spiritual concerns but also for how it demonstrates her stylistic influence on a younger group of artists such as Henry Daley and Pottinger whom Vera likely taught in the early days of the nationalist movement. Working alongside Edna Manley, Vera was one of a handful of expatriates such as Koren der Harootian and Vera Alabaster who used their skills to instruct and encourage young Jamaican artists to paint local subjects. Jamaican Girl is the donation of Toronto based family of Diana Haddad and the late John Haddad, keen to see Vera Cumming remembered with a work of such cultural importance.

A respectful crowd turned out to hear master painter Barrington Watson's lecture at the National Gallery of Jamaica yesterday. At eighty, his presentation was not the most dynamic but the extensive slide-show of his works and his anecdotes were enough to keep the audience engaged. His tales of immigrant life in 1960s London at the Royal College and later studies in Europe, peppered with names such as Ruskin Spear and Norman Manley provided rare details about the artist's determination to become one of the region's finest painters. Most telling, was his description of how he stole skills from the great western masters to arrive at a way of painting that he considered uniquely Caribbean. His often quoted aspiration to utilize... “ ..the light of Turner, the line of Ingres, the range of Rembrandt, the techniques of Velasquez, the emotion of Goya...and, my birthright of Benin” vainly articulates how so many post-colonial period painters balanced on a fine line as they painted their personal histories and narratives. The talk served to whet the appetite of fans who can anticipate his retrospective of over 300 works scheduled for display at the NGJ in January 2012.

Jamaica lost one of it most generous art collector's today. Guy McIntosh the owner of Frame Centre Gallery and one of the finest collections of contemporary Jamaican art has died just a few months after making a major donation from his collection to the National Gallery of Jamaica.

Much about Guy McIntosh's early life predisposed him to Jamaica's modern art movement. He grew up in Westmoreland in a family already involved with woodwork, making furniture. Initially, he too learned cabinet-making in his adopted father's workshop, but once he came to Kingston in his late teens, he recognised that he could earn a living from framing art. Initially, he framed work for burgeoning collectors such as Dorit Hutson, Pat Rousseau, Vin McMorris and A.D. Scott but eventually the establishment of a small workshop on the premises of the newly formed Contemporary Art Gallery, meant that he would establish friendships and his own working relationships with artists such as Barrington Watson, and Karl Parboosingh, and recent JSA graduates Gene Pearson, Jackson Gordon, Cecil Cooper and Kofi Kayiga so much so that even after the CAG dissolved and he set up a workshop on Constant Spring Road beneath the studios shared by Barrington Watson, Keith Curwin and George Rodney, these artists continued bringing their art to him. The support of other collectors such as Maurice and Valerie Facey and a stint as Manager at Noel Ho Tom's HiQo Gallery finally encouraged him to re-establish his own business on a more formal setting with partners and a bank loan. In 1972, he incorporated the G. McIntosh Frame Centre, that would become the prototype of the Gallery and work shop later opened in Tangerine Place.

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.

In spite of the cancellation of Kingston on the Edge this year's city urban festival, The National Gallery of Jamaica went ahead with its open house Dialogues in Space, featuring dance, improvisation and fashion performances. The programme began with the work of two dancers Safi Harriot and Zita Nyaradi who blended their creative movements to the live sound of a drum and guitar. The gallery's normally tranquil lobby became a stage for the two artists who dominated the space with their open fluid forms. At times the routine seemed a little clumsy but this might have even been intentional as this awkwardness was absorbed into the push and pull of the choreography. Peter Chin's performance added to this sense of improvisation, he offered a multi-disciplinary performance that referenced 'the dance he might have given' had the urban festival gone ahead all the while stressing that he preferred to play with the uncertainty of the present and the frustration of time. He told us that he wanted to give us everything and tell us everything about what had brought him to that moment even as he interacted with the audience asking them repeatedly 'how much time do I have left?' His fifteen minutes of hesitation, humour, sound poetry, recitation and dance kept the audience guessing as he explored concepts related to embarrassment and transcendence and even departure. In contrast, fibre artist Jehan Jackson's fashion display was minimal. Her five models placed on pedestals held their poses like mannequins shifting only occasionally to display a new attitude and aspect of their garb. Titillated, the audience moved closer, themselves becoming part of the optimistic mood and art on show proving that improvisation trumps poor planning and pessimism, any day.

The National Gallery of Jamaica has been busy this past month mounting two exhibitions of works donated to its permanent collection. On display in Kingston is the Guy McIntosh Donation while at the Civic Centre in Montego Bay in a space that many are already calling 'National Gallery West', visitors can view The John Pringle Collection a donation of paintings by the self-taught artist Mallica “Kapo” Reynolds. Both are stunning shows that demonstrate the broad spectrum of art in Jamaica ranging from its abstract expressionism that peaked in the 1980s and 90s with artists such as Milton George, Kofi Kayiga, and Milton Harley and Omari Ra to the grassroots expressions of “Kapo” the revival preacher whose art also enjoyed acclaim in the same era. Yet, despite their different schooling and social status and attempts in the past to label these artists as 'mainstream' versus 'intuitive', the works of these artists are not so far apart; they share an ability to channel emotion directly and potently. Works in these two important collections demonstrate the inherent links between naif art and modernism; the fluid relationship that also fired the imagination of Europe's avant garde nearly a century ago. Jamaica is lucky to have two such deep and rich veins of artistic expression running through its art history and the National Gallery of Jamaica is fortunate to have acquired work that can demonstrate those cultural currents so vividly.

The National Biennial exhibition now showing at the National Gallery of Jamaica is a blockbuster, featuring eighty artists and over one hundred and fifty works in various media. As always the show is topical and a useful gauge for the state of fine arts and how artists are thinking now. It is a show that combines both juried and invited artists that gives the viewer a good sense of which artists are enjoying success or perhaps more importantly, successfully engaged in the creative process. With prize money attached to the winning of the Aaron Matalon Award, the show can also be competitive, pitting younger talents such as Ebony Patterson with her Christ and Co. (Gonzales Christ Revised and Extended) or Philip Thomas and Carousel against the work of older hands. After the dynamic and popular Young Talent show earlier this year, it seemed likely that the prize might go to an emerging artist but a strong showing from others such Tina Spiro Aurora Xaymaca (To Kapo With Love), Petrona Morrison Jamaica 2010 and Omari Ra From the “If We Must Die” Series We Get No Love in the Time of Cholera meant that these established artists could not be dismissed. In the end, the prize went to Laura Facey for Plumb Line an assemblage constructed from cedar, steel cable, and lignum vitae that, with the artists characteristic minimalism, seemed to cut through all of the surface noise of other works. Against the background of ocean waves, Hindu chanting and Rastafari drumming, the viewer is asked to reflect on nature's ability to subvert our daily interest in death, dons, and even environmental issues. It is a beautiful, profound work that speaks to eternal truths and even hope. Happy New Year!

This week I was a member of the seven person panel judging entries for the National Biennial IV exhibition scheduled to open at the National Gallery of Jamaica in December. To ensure fairness, panel members were selected from diverse areas of artistic life with artists, curators and others having equal say. Yet, it was interesting to note how much consensus there was about what art pieces qualified for this high status exhibition. It was also good to argue about the merits and demerits of artworks without feeling that our critiques would engender bitterness or feelings of victimisation. The process of judging which was in turns reflective, lively, argumentative, humourous and serious brought home the fact that forums where one can discuss art in this open and honest way are limited in Jamaica and that perhaps our art product is suffering as a result.

The National Gallery of Jamaica's latest exhibition entitled Edna Manley’s Bogle: A Contest of Icons is a research based exhibition that explores the iconography surrounding the controversial image of Jamaica's national hero Paul Bogle. As with so many of Jamaica's national monuments, the Bogle statue created by sculptor Edna Manley has been the subject of dispute ever since it was first erected in 1965 outside the Morant Bay courthouse in St Thomas. More recently, since the monument's removal for repairs last year, parish residents have protested its return asking instead for an effigy bearing the true likeness of their folk hero Bogle. They claim, that Manley's statue (depicted here by photographer Amador Packer) was modeled from a local man claiming to be Bogle's grandson and they take exception to what they view as its muted and emasculated form. Instead they wish for a statue more closely resembling the photograph of Bogle which according to the NGJ has become the de facto official representation of the hero used on stamps and currency.

As a research exhibition, Edna Manley’s Bogle: A Contest of Icons takes no sides in the controversy but instead provides a fascinating history of the monument, its creation, Manley's iconographic sources, and its much debated reception. Central to the display are questions of artistic license, racial aesthetics and public taste. Yet by focusing its concerns around Manley's project there is an inherent bias towards that artist's imagery and a defense of her approach that favoured the symbolism of a 'bold black man' rather than photographic accuracy. While the monument is out of commission, it remains to be seen how this saga related to image and likeness will be resolved. If the politics of Laura Facey's Redemption Song and Christopher Gonzalez Bob Marley monuments are anything to go by, Edna Manley's Bogle may just remain at the National Gallery of Jamaica where its aesthetic can be best understood and communicated.