Contemporary Jamaican Art

Life in the Caribbean is complicated. Sometimes, that complexity comes from the choices we make, much more is determined by family, place and our relationship to history. Laura Facey's Radiant Combs exhibition provides tools for untangling our lives. Her combs are elemental forms drawn from nature that unravel our knots of privilege or poverty and provide a sense of clearing and possibility. It is not coincidence that the afro-pick forms Laura has created are like trees, rooted and erect or with fronds that fold like weeping willows such as Daughter of Comb 2010 shown here. These shapes come from the land around and her skill at whittling and honing whatever it provides, into forms that whisper rather than shout. Placed around her home's high-ceilinged gallery, her sculptures ache with their aged beauty, caressed surfaces and their ability to ease the soul. On the wall, oversize drawings of the surrounding landscape depict peaks and valleys with shafts of light and space. Like her combs, they show how the gaps in-between life's sometimes violent prongs are the true places of healing. Laura has always been in the business of making things beautiful but these combs have opened up channels that allow us to explore new pathways and her own inner passions.

Oddities is in exhibition selected by Amaicraft gallery owner Herman van Asbroeck that displays his interest in strange and wonderful objects. It is an ecclectic range of expressionist paintings, historical prints, tribal masks, contemporary photographs and disarming curios that speaks to this collector's essentially modernist sensibility. Walking through the warm red upper rooms of his small framing business in Kingston and experiencing the juxtaposition of works by 19^th century printmaker Isaac Mendes Belisario (1795-1849), the late painter Milton George (1939-2008), intuitive Albert Artwell (b.1942 ) or the Cuban Roberto Fabelo (b.1951) brings to mind the connoisseurship of Parisian collectors such as Daniel Henry Kahnweiler (1884-1979) or poet Guillaume Apollinaire (1880 – 1919) whose financial support and intellect provided the backdrop to that city's avant-garde movement. Oddities' strange and wonderful marriage of objects, with Caribbean art at its core, demonstrates Herman van Asbroeck's discerning taste but also the extent to which this region's art deserves to be part of a larger story about western art and modernism. 

Despite the rain hundreds of young people showed up at the Edna Manley College's School of Visual Art's graduation exhibition recently to support their friends. There were a few parents and older well-wishers too but it was good to see generation X and Y enjoying the celebration and responding so positively to the work on show. And they were not disappointed. The exhibition this year is exciting, with numerous high points in all the departments, suggesting that the school's more inter-disciplinary approach to their curriculum is finally paying off. In fairness to the college, it has always had a history of being multidisciplinary ever since the 1970s, when students were required to work their way through its departments such as painting, sculpture, textiles, jewelry, graphics and ceramics before choosing an area of specialization. Today, departments are even more fused with new names such Visual Communication, or design courses that incorporate fashion. In this sense, the school is in step with post-modern trends to bridge the arts by not viewing them as separate forms. This can be enormously liberating for students who can develop a more holistic approach to their craft by learning and borrowing from other disciplines. The benefits of this sharing are evidenced in this year's show, where painting students are working in 3D and a textile designer's display can take the form of a theatre set with live models and funky clothing. In the old sculpture studio, a ceramics student has created an installation that mimics a butcher's shop -only with human body parts - and the fine arts student's studios have Vis.Com displays with jewelery showcases. It's a real mash-up of creative ideas suggesting that these younger artists are finally delivering on the school's original intentions. Visit the gallery to view the exhibition's highlights.

About Change is a series of exhibitions curated by Félix Angel that focus on contemporary art in Latin America and the Caribbean. As part of that series, Contemporary Jamaican Artists opened at the Inter-American Development Bank's Cultural Center in Washington this week. The exhibition features nine artists including Charles Campbell, Margaret Chen, Laura Facey, Gerard Hanson, Marlon James, Michael Parchment, Ebony G. Patterson, Oneika Russell and Phillip Thomas; an ecclectic group of multi-media artists, whose works speaks to that same diversity. Each is represented by recently acclaimed pieces and through this tight selection, visitors glean some of the distinctive themes occupying Jamaican artists now, such as slavery and the middle passage in Campbell's Oceans (2005) and Facey's Their Spirits Gone Before Them (2006) and Russell's video Porthole (2008) or popular culture reflected in Hanson's Gun Salute (2009), Marlon's tattooed Stefan (2010), Patterson's Entourage (2010). More subtle are Chen's Cross Section of Ark 1999 and Thomas's Carousel (2009); the first reflecting the inward journeys that have preoccupied many female artists since the 1980s while Thomas's more extrovert and beautifully rendered Carousel (2009), offers a satirical view of life in the island that is a never ending round of drama and slippage. Collectively, the About Change series of exhibitions demonstrates that art in Jamaica as elsewhere in the region, appears to be shifting in focus and style to reflect a more acute sense of social awareness and activism. 

It is ironic and perhaps sad that Roktowa the building and organisation that has become an artist's beacon in downtown Kingston is opening its gift store Glyph uptown at Red Bones Cafe this week. The new outlet's location in a trendy New Kingston happy hour spot reminds us that the patrons and well wishers of contemporary Jamaican art are still not prepared to frequent the Roktowa's huge warehouse space for more than the obligatory hours of an exhibition opening. The idea of hanging out downtown is still not chic. Even so, we wish Creative Director Melinda Brown well as she launches this project that will showcase 'beautiful and curious object d'art' for the xmas season. Profits go towards Roktowa's exhibition program which has so far supported artists from the local and mainstream contemporary artists community as well as a recent exhibition of Haitian artisans in residence there. If the reception poster is anything to go by, the Haitian connection will offer a new twist on the often predictable shopper's fare available at other uptown venues.