Olympia Gallery

Exploring identity can be a complex exercise. The exhibition Bricolage of Identities now showing at the Olympia Gallery in Kingston uses the body as a point of entry. The artists, Carol Crichton, Garfield Morgan, Mortimer McPherson and Gisele Gardner come to the human form with different perspectives and techniques. Crichton embellishes her own body prints with characteristic collage and markings while Morgan's more densely massed, dark imagery depicts female bodies that are disturbing in their facelessness. McPherson creates more conventional but expressive portraits while Gardner focuses on the mouth, recognizing how this orifice can reveal a great deal about a person's lifestyle, health, age or even class. Although the 'bricolage' aspect of this show suggests difference, together these works are so divergent that they compete with each other. Gardner's studied painterly style contrasts sharply with the more spontaneous imprints created by Crichton. Meanwhile, McPherson's endearing portraits that are full of personality, challenge the anonymity of Morgan's figure painting. Overall, it is Gardner's mouths that have the last say about identity. These intimate bodyscapes shout to be studied more closely as they lure the viewer into their surreal and threatening cavernous grottos.

The Olympia Gallery in Kingston has just launched its new website. Appropriately, the online design features the mural by senior artist Barrington Watson that has come to characterize the gallery's distinctive architecture and the optimism that accompanied the building's establishment in the 1960s. Founded by art patron A.D. Scott and supported by members of the Contemporary Artists Association such as Karl Parboosingh, Eugene Hyde, Aubrey Williams, the gallery represented the dream of Jamaica's newly independent intelligentsia who wanted to see art placed at the center of their country's nationalist agenda. Although, the vision of the Gallery as a thriving arts community and artist in residence retreat was never fully realized, its architecture and permanent collection still speak to the potential of that moment. Currently, the Olympia is experiencing a revival in popularity under the management of Rosemarie Thwaites and it is good that she has the foresight to see that Olympia's outreach must go beyond its brick and mortar facilities to embrace an extensive audience online. Click here to watch the 2 min video and to learn more about the gallery's design and history.  

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.