Phillip Thomas – Faust, 2016, triptych – digital collage

Phillip Thomas is represented in the Digital exhibition, which opened on Sunday, April 24:

Bio

Phillip Thomas was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1980. He received a BFA in Painting from the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts (2003) and an MFA from the New York Academy of Art. Thomas has exhibited widely in Jamaica and abroad, and his awards include the Bronze Musgrave Medal in 2014, the Aaron Matalon Award in the NGJ’s 2008 NationalBiennial, and the Public Prize in the 2006 SuperPlus Under 40 Artist of the Year competition. He represented in local and international collections, including at Sotheby’s and the World Bank. He currently lives and works in Kingston, Jamaica where he lectures at the Edna Manley College.

Phillip Thomas – Metro Media, 2016, diptych – digital collage

About the Work

Phillip Thomas’ paintings rely heavily on appropriated images, taken from the worlds of fashion,interior design, historical and documentary photographs and many other sources, and often include collaged elements. The resulting images reflect with ironic sophistication on history, race and sexuality and raise questions about the social roles of art, particularly the tension between its status as a luxury commodity and its potential for politically potent and subversive visual interventions. Thomas has for many years been using digital media to produce the studies for his paintings but these digital studies often take on lives of their own as image meditations that reflect more directly on the politics of representation. Printed on PVC, on a scale comparable to his paintings, the digital images in this exhibition simultaneously challenge and reinscribe the luxury commodity value conventionally associated with his art.

Dionne Walker – 00.15.16 (2016), still from GIF

Here is another feature on an artist in the Digital exhibition:

Bio

Dionne C. Walker is a film producer and curator with years of experience in television media production including the making of films such as Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, Spooks and the Harry Potter series. She has developed unique programmes for both wide and niche audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. Dionne’s first prominent artistic effort was as the festival director of the inaugural Camden Film Festival: Made in Camden CNJ feature, for which she designed and programmed locally shot films including The Lady killers and cult indie Withnail and I. She has worked in partnership with Roundhouse, ICO, Odeon and MTV Europe. Walker has curated as well as participated in Waves of Protest, British Museum (2011) and Caribbean Cities: Kingston and Havana (2009). She lives and works in the United Kingdom.

Dionne Walker – 00.15.16 (2016), still from GIF

About the Work

“00:15:16 is a set of hashtag GIFs representing a sense of place, examining race, class, religion and environment. They review last year’s overwhelming issue of police violence and the killing of unarmed black men in the diaspora. 00.15:16 wants to oppose the binary of #blacklivesmatter and #alllivesmatter and juxtapose the condition inside an emergency room – that is plastered with imagery of bloodiness, not white or black.”

Rodell Warner, Arnaldo James, and Darron Clarke – darron.gif, 2015 – still from GIF

The Digital exhibition includes several collective projects. The GIF “darron.gif” by Rodell Warner, Arnaldo James and Darron Clarke is one of them.

Bios

Rodell Warner is a Trinidadian graphic designer and photographer, born in 1986. He has exhibited in Kingston, Johannesburg, London, New York, Washington and Maracaibo. Rodell was a recipient of the 2011 Commonwealth Connections International Arts Residency and he was an artist in residence at New Local Space (NLS) in Kingston, Jamaica in 2014.

As a photographer, teacher and designer (graphic and product), Arnaldo James interrogates gender, race, privilege and exploitation. These interrogations often develop into spaces that encourage safe interactions challenging marginalization based on gender identity, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, class and mental/physical ability. James engages his photographic portraits as collaborations, acknowledging subject as co-creator. This collaboration with Warner and Clarke is an act of intentional support among Black men.

Darron Clarke was born in Trinidad in 1991 and is represented by Major Model Management. Clarke lives and works in New York.

About the Work

The image darron.gif is the negative of a photograph of Darron Clarke, covered in Rodell Warner projections, shot by Arnaldo James. The photograph was animated by Warner and is presented including additional animated GIFs.

Ronald Williams – Swagga, 2013, digital illustration

This is the last of our features on the artists in Digital. Look out for other posts on this groundbreaking exhibition.

Bio

Ronald Williams was born in Barbados, in 1990. He attended the Barbados Community College where he attained a BFA degree in 2013. Williams has had a number exhibitions, both in Barbados and internationally. His most recent include Finite Project Altered When Open (2015) at the David Dale Gallery in Glasgow Scotland, and 300 dpi (2015) at the ArtSplash Gallery in Barbados.

Ronald Williams – Party Shot, 2013, digital illustration

About the Work

This series explores the role that sports and the black athlete/figure play in society; placing an emphasis on the perceptions and stereotypes about the black image. Using the technique of digital collage, a wide variety of popular based images is manipulated and compiled together to make the artwork, which takes the form of a sportsperson.

Ronald Williams – The Savage, 2013, digital illustration

While we wait for the production of a longer video on the Digital exhibition, we are pleased to present this teaser video with interviews with three of the artists in the exhibition.

And here is the full length video on the Digital Exhibition (April 24-July 4, 2016)

The National Gallery of Jamaica celebrates Child’s Month with special programming for its Last Sundays programme for the month of May.  The programme will feature a musical performance by Stephanie, which will appeal to all audiences, and, for the younger patrons, special readings by three children’s book authors: Tanya Batson-Savage, A-dZiko Simba Gegele and Kellie Magnus. The current exhibition Digital will also be featured.

Stephanie Wallace-Maxwell, known professionally as Stephanie, is a singer and songwriter, whose sound is a fusion of R&B, Reggae, Soul, Dancehall, and Pop; having grown up on a rich variety of music. Stephanie has toured internationally as both lead and backing vocalist with the band Groundation and has also worked with the legendary producers Sly and Robbie for Sony Music Japan, as a member of the group UNITZz, which has had two tremendously successful albums, J Paradise and J Lovers. Stephanie’s musical journey continues to blossom into the realization of a dream that has stuck with her since conception: to make an indelible mark on the world.

Kellie Magnus is a children’s book writer, founder of Jackmandora, a children’s book imprint and currently works for Jamaica Country Lead, Fight for Peace, an NGO that helps young people from violent communities to realize their potential. She will be reading from the widely acclaimed Little Lion series of books which she co-authored with Michael Robinson and which are geared towards children 8 years and under.

Tanya Batson-Savage, in her own words, loves mangoes and stories, and stories about mangoes. She has written for the stage, screen and radio. Her love of stories developed while she was seated at her grandmother’s feet where she developed a love for folk tales that shines through in her first collection of stories of children Pumpkin Belly and Other Stories.  Her career has crisscrossed the cultural landscape including cultural policy, teaching, cultural criticism, journalism, advertising, and publicity. But really, she would rather spend her time eating mangoes.

A-dZiko Simba Gegele is a prize-winning writer whose work has been published in diverse international anthologies. Her work has gleaned multiple awards throughout her career.  A-dZiko’s poetry and prose have previously appeared in The Gold Anthology, So Much Things to Say: 100 Calabash Poets, Iron Balloons: Hit Fiction from Calabash Writers Workshop as well as on several online literary magazines and journals.  Her debut novel All Over Again (2013), published by Blouse & Skirt Books, won the inaugural Burt Award for Caribbean Literature (2014).

As is now customary for Last Sundays, the doors will be open to the public from 11 am to 4 pm and Stephanie’s performance starts at 1:30 pm. The second part of our programming: the readings by Kellie Magnus, Tanya Batson-Savage and A-dZiko Simba Gegele will start at 2:00 pm. Admission and guided tours will be free. Contributions to our donations box are however appreciated and help to fund exhibitions such as Digital and our regular Last Sundays programming. The Gift Shop and Coffee Shop will also be open for business.

The National Gallery of Jamaica is presenting a special edition of its Last Sundays on June 26, 2016, on the occasion of the 2016 Kingston on the Edge (KOTE) urban arts festival. The programme features music by Heavyweight Rockaz and, in collaboration with New Local Space (NLS), there will be an interactive video performance by the Martinique-based artist David Gumbs. There will also be opportunity to tour the current exhibition, Digital, and to view the permanent exhibitions.

Since meeting in early 2000 while still attending college, Wayne “Unga Barunga” Thompson and Jason “WelshBass” Welsh have been in studio producing rhythms that demonstrated their versatility in making sweet one-drop and dub-style beats, as well as dancehall rhythms. They have both worked with Jesse Royal and Tanya Stephens; Unga has toured with Jimmy Cliff and Beres Hammond, and WelshBass has worked with Stephen Marley and Jah Cure. They always had a desire however to perform together live, and in December 2014 at Wickie Wackie Live, the “Drum ‘n’ Bass” duo debuted as Heavyweight Rockaz. Their collaboration with Nattali Rize from Australia, a joint EP titled New Era Frequency was released late 2015, following their North American tour in June of that year. “From then ‘til now, the mission has been to unify people through the synergy of our music – bringing joy and hope,” says Unga. From the studio to the stage, Heavyweight Rockaz captures the sounds of today to create music for the ages.

Heavyweight Rockaz

David Gumbs, a native St Martin, challenges the “Perceptions Offscreen” — the unseen, the cycle of life, the nature within, and digital rhizome macroscopic universes — across a dynamic multimedia oeuvre, including painting, photography and experimental video. He studied at the Visual Arts School in Fort-de-France, Martinique, and majored in interactive multimedia conception at Les Ateliers, L’ENSCI in Paris. His work has been shown internationally, including recently: Video Islands, Anthology Film Archives (New York, 2015); Reflexions, 14°N 61°W Contemporary Art Space (Fort-de-France, 2014); Transforming Spaces, National Art Gallery of the Bahamas (2014); Trinidad+Tobago Film Festival (2014); Beep Bop Boop New Media Festival (Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, 2014); and the Martinique Biennial, Fort-de-France (2013). Since 2009, Gumbs has taught multimedia, trans-media and motion design at the Visual Arts School in Fort-de-France, Martinique. He recently completed the Davidoff Art Initiative’s Beijing Residency and will be part of NLS’ 2016 Summer Residency. He is one of the artists featured in the Digital exhibition.

David Gumbs -Water and Dreams (2016), still from video on view in Digital

As is now customary for Last Sundays, the doors will be open to the public from 11 am to 4 pm and the musical performance by Heavyweight Rockerz will start at 1:30 pm and will be followed by David Gumbs’ performance. Admission and guided tours will be free. Contributions to our donations box are however appreciated and help to fund exhibitions such as Digital and our regular Last Sundays programming. The Gift and Coffee Shops will also be open for business.

The closing event for the National Gallery of Jamaica’s Digital exhibition will be a panel discussion and Twitter chat on the possibilities and potential of digital art and its role in redefining contemporary art. This panel discussion will be held at the National Gallery on Saturday, July 2, 2016, starting at 1 pm and will feature four digital artists, Corretta Singer, David Gumbs, Shane McHugh and Danielle Russell. The latter three are are represented in the Digital exhibition.

The panel discussion will be organized around four major discussion points:

1. What Makes Digital Art ART? – an exploration of definitions, understandings, commonalities and peculiarities of digital art.
2. The Challenge of New Media –  a discussion of how material value is treated in or can be ascribed to digital artworks; what are the conventional expectations of the ‘art object’ and how do the media used for digital art challenge these expectations?
3. Exposure, Accessibility and Audience Reach – Does digital art afford greater/lesser potential for the aforementioned for the artists/designers as well as the audience? What are the ramifications concerning copyright and other legal protection for the creators of digital artwork?
4. Rethinking Patronage – to what extent can the conventions of collecting artwork be applied to digital art? Is there a possibility that the traditional art collector may become marginalized as more artists produce in this way or can the rise in prevalence of digital artwork provide more diverse ways of encouraging varieties of patronage?

The panel discussion will be accompanied by a Twitter chat for members of the audience and persons who are not able to come to the gallery for the event, including some of the artists in the Digital exhibition. All that is required is that they follow the National Gallery of Jamaica’s Twitter account, @natgalleryja and include #NGJDigital in their comments or questions. Participants in the Twitter chat can begin tweeting by 12 noon on the day.

The panel discussion is free and open to the public. Persons in attendance will also have a final opportunity to view the Digital exhibition.

The National Gallery of Jamaica (NGJ) is proud to announce that it will be holding the second edition of its workshop programme, WRITIVITY, which begins on Monday, August 8 and will continue until Friday, August 12, 2016. Inaugurated last year, the WRITIVTY workshop is designed for grade 10 and 11 students, who are preparing to sit Visual Arts examinations for the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC). The workshop is coordinated by the NGJ’s Education Department and forms part of the Gallery’s summer programme schedule.

The main goal of WRITIVITY is to assist students with the development of a visual arts reflective journal, which is a key component of CSEC’s School Based Assessment (SBA) submission. By participating in WRITIVITY, students will be taught how to properly prepare entries for the journal, analyze art pieces and conduct art related research, within sessions utilize the NGJ’s art collection and document resources.

All activities for the WRITIVITY will be held at the National Gallery of Jamaica from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Persons interested in the workshop should contact the NGJ in order to register. The cost of registration is one thousand dollars ($1000) and due to limited space, applicants are being encouraged to register early. For additional information, kindly contact the National Gallery’s Education Department at 922-1561 / 3 (Lime landline), or 618-0654 / 5 (Digicel fixed line). Emailed queries should be sent to info@natgalja.org.jm.

The National Gallery of Jamaica’s Last Sundays programme for July 31, 2016, will feature the soft launch of the Kingston – Part 1: The City and Art exhibition and a musical performance by Jason Worton.

Kingston – Part 1: The City and Art is the first instalment of a two-part exhibition series that explores the role of Kingston in the development of Jamaican art and, conversely, the actual and potential role of art in the development of the city of Kingston. Inspired by Kingston’s recent UNESCO designation as a Creative City of Music, the exhibition makes the case that Kingston has been the crucible for many other aspects of Jamaican culture, such as the visual arts. Featuring works of art from the late 17^th century to the present as well as documentary photographs, the exhibition looks at how Jamaica’s turbulent but culturally fertile capital city has generated circumstances and opportunities that have propelled the development of Jamaican art, from the natural resources to the economic activities and institutions. The exhibition also explores how artists have been inspired in their work by the events, personalities and tales that have defined life in the city, starting with the 1692 Port Royal earthquake. Kingston – Part 1: The City and Art is curated by National Gallery Assistant Curator Monique Barnett-Davidson and continues until October 30, 2016.

Sidney McLaren – Scene on Harbour Street (1972), Collection: NGJ

Jason Lee Worton, Jamaican songwriter and musician, spent the last few years touring with Reggae Revival Act Protoje and the Indiggnation, while making a name for himself as an eclectic member of the Reggae scene. Working as a journeyman multi-instrumentalist, he has backed many current and past reggae stars, earning the nickname the “Jamaican Jimi Hendrix.” As the leader of his own band, Worton has appeared at prestigious events such as the Jamaica Jazz and Blues Festival, and been a mainstay at small local venues such as Jamnesia and the Red Bones Blues Cafe. He also plays frequently for yoga studios and events in the growing Jamaican yoga community. He has now returned to focusing on his solo project, many of his songs centring around his “DubRock Reggae” sound. He also delves into acoustic material and eastern inspired meditational music. Worton continues to explore musical styles and instruments, and is an avid surfer, yogi, and farmer/apiarist.

Jason Lee Worton

The National Gallery of Jamaica’s doors will be open from 11 am to 4 pm on Sunday, July 31, 2016 and the programme will start at 1:30 pm, with a curatorial introduction to the exhibition and the musical performance of Jason Worton. As is customary, admission will be free and there will also be free tours of the Kingston exhibition, but contributions to the National Gallery’s donations box are always appreciated. The National Gallery gift and coffee shops will be open for business and proceeds from these ventures help to fund programmes such as Last Sundays and exhibitions such as Kingston.

While we install the Kingston – Part 1: The City and Art exhibition, which opens on July 31, we share with you the catalogue introduction by the NGJ ED, Veerle Poupeye, as one of several posts on this project:

The city of Kingston is, in many ways, the crucible in which modern Jamaican culture is forged and it does no injustice to the cultural contributions of other parts of Jamaica, or the Jamaican Diaspora, to recognize its seminal role. Kingston is after all the birthplace of reggae, which has given Jamaica its global cultural visibility. By virtue of being Jamaica’s capital and largest population centre, Kingston is home to major cultural institutions and organizations, public and private, and generally provides a social and economic environment in which the arts can thrive. Given the fraught social dynamics that have shaped Kingston, the city also created an environment in which the arts had to thrive, as a key part of the population’s survival strategies.

This exhibition is our contribution to the conversation about Kingston as a Creative City – a UNESCO designation the city received in 2015 for its role in music – but presented from the perspective of the visual arts. The initial exhibition brief was to explore the role of Kingston in the development of Jamaican art and conversely, to explore the role, actual and potential, of art in the development of Kingston. The exhibition was assigned to Assistant Curator Monique Barnett-Davidson, as her first solo-curated exhibition, and we could think of no one better, given her previous research, curatorial work, and publication on street art. We soon realized however that what we had originally planned was too big a subject for a single exhibition and we decided that the present exhibition would be the first of a two-part exhibition series, with the second part, which will presented in 2017, focusing on the built environment and the role of art in urban development and renewal.

If we are to understand the role of Kingston in the development of Jamaican art, we must first ask what it is that makes Kingston, “Kingston.” What is distinctive about the city? How did Kingston come about? Why did it become Jamaica’s capital? What factors have shaped its social and cultural life? This introduction cannot delve deeply into this subject–there are major publications that do so, such as Colin Clarke’s Kingston, Jamaica: Urban Development and Social Change 1692-2002 (2006), which has been a very useful resource for this project–but it is necessary to note a few key points.

All major cities are accidents of history, which came about because of favourable geographies and circumstance. Kingston, we all know, was established as a settlement after the destruction of Port Royal by an earthquake and tsunami in 1692, when survivors moved to safer ground on the mainland side of the harbour. The location of the original settlement was named, rather ignominiously, Colonel Barry’s Hog Crawle, referring to the previous agricultural use of the area. Cities often emerge near major waterways and the large, well-protected natural harbour of Kingston, which is furthermore strategically located in the northern Caribbean, made the city an ideal candidate to serve as a major centre for settlement, travel and trade. The fan-shaped Liguanea Plains, which are easily accessible by sea and land, provided ample space for urban expansion and although water was and is, as such, relatively scarce, rivers, agricultural lands and other critical natural resources were nearby and sufficiently reliable to support a large population. By 1716, Kingston was already the biggest settlement and trade centre in Jamaica, rivalling the nearby capital city Spanish Town, and in 1802, Kingston received its city charter. Seventy years later, in 1872, after prolonged lobbying by Kingston’s increasingly powerful business interests, Jamaica’s administrative capital was transferred to Kingston. Today, Kingston is the largest English-speaking city south of the USA (although Patwa is arguably the city’s first language), with an official population of 662,426, as per the 2011 national census.

For the purposes of this exhibition, we define Kingston as it is known today, administratively, as the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation, or the Corporate Area. This includes Port Royal, which is today a fishing village and heritage site; the old part of the city near the waterfront or Downtown Kingston; the business and hotel district of New Kingston; and the sprawling communities of St Andrew, which stretch into the hills and mountains that frame the city and into the lowland wetlands to the west.  In perhaps typical Jamaican fashion, Kingston is “larger” than its actual size and the city is also defined by its interconnectedness with other local and global sites, from the dormitory communities of the adjoining parishes of St Catherine and St Thomas and the rural areas that supply the city’s markets, to the Jamaican diaspora communities in North America and England.

A significant proportion of Kingston’s population has rural origins, directly or in the previous generation, and the rapid expansion of Kingston’s inner cities in the 1940s and 50s was mainly due to rural-to-urban migration, with a significant inflow of rural poor in search of economic opportunity. Kingston has also been a major gateway into and out of Jamaica, with its harbour and two airports, and a site of passage for arrivants and emigrants alike. As such, it is a place of settlement and belonging, but also of displacement and alienation, where national and diasporic identifications and aspirations actively collide.

Kingston is known, perhaps unfairly, as a city plagued by crime and violence, a potentially dangerous place to be avoided by those who do not possess the savvy to navigate the terrain. As Charles V. Carnegie reminds us in his contribution to this catalogue, Kingston’s contemporary layout reflects deep social fissures, which is of course the main source of crime and violence, and the lived experience of the city is vastly different for those of different socio-economic backgrounds and, closely related, for those who walk and those who drive. Michel de Certeau, in his famous essay Walking the City (1984), argues that “the city” is shaped by the tensions between the strategies of governments and others in positions of power to impose structures, rules and controls, and the subversive tactics of the populace who appropriate, use, challenge and undo these systems on a daily basis. The experience of life in Kingston begs for further analysis along the lines of this theoretical framework and the city’s traffic situation alone would make an excellent case study.

Although the city started out as safe haven for those who survived the Port Royal disaster, Kingston has its own natural vulnerabilities: the old city was almost completely destroyed by an earthquake and fire in 1907 and Kingston has been affected by other highly destructive natural disasters, such as hurricane Charlie in 1951 and hurricane Gilbert in 1988. For a city its age, Kingston has only few historical buildings. Unlike other major Caribbean cities, such as Havana and Santo Domingo, it is a place where history is felt and alluded to rather than actually seen. The awareness that nature is capable of unleashing destruction on the city with little or no warning adds to the sense of precariousness that pervades Kingston life and recent reports that Kingston may be among the first major cities to be affected by global warming and sea level rise only adds to this.

These factors—the tensions between order and chaos, between the pull of the local and cosmopolitanism, between rich and poor, between empowered and disempowered, between security and vulnerability, and between stability and precariousness—can make life in Kingston deeply unsettling but also account for the city’s rich cultural energy. This exhibition explores how this dynamic is reflected in the visual arts. It is not meant to be a structured visual history of Kingston; instead, it explores how Kingston has generated many of the circumstances and opportunities that have propelled the development of art in Jamaica and, secondly, how visual artists have been inspired by Kingston life.

The exhibition is organized around five broad themes, with the understanding that there is significant overlap, and these themes are elaborated on in the curatorial introductions to each section elsewhere in this catalogue. These themes are: 1. Nature’s Bounty, which examines how the natural resources of Kingston and its environs have been used in the visual arts; 2. Crossroads, which is named after one of Kingston’s most famous areas and explores the relationship between art and tourism, trade and commerce; 3. Institutions and Collections, which looks at the city’s cultural institutions and corporate and private art patronage;  4. Art on the Streets, which juxtaposes street art and public monuments; and finally, 5. Stories to Tell, which explores the artistic representation of some of the events, people and tales that characterize life in the city.

Many of the works of art in this exhibition were selected from the National Art Collection but we also borrowed from several artists, as well as corporate and private collections. I wish to thank these lenders for their generosity and support. I also wish to thank all who have worked on this exhibition—detailed credits can be found at the back of the catalogue— but I should single out the exhibition curator Monique Barnett-Davidson for her perseverance and dedication to what has been an inevitably challenging but rewarding project. It is exciting to see young curators finding their own voice and I trust that our viewers will enjoy and engage with what this exhibition has to offer.

Veerle Poupeye, Executive Director

Bibliography

Austin, Diane. Urban Life in Kingston, Jamaica: The Culture and Class Ideology of Two Neighborhoods. New York: Gordon and Breach, 1984.

Campbell, Charles, Honor Ford-Smith and Veerle Poupeye. Anything with Nothing: Art from the Streets of Urban Jamaica. Kingston: National Gallery of Jamaica.

Barnett, Monique. “Pon di Cawna.” De Mi Barrio a Tu Barrio: Street Art in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. Munich: Goethe Institut and Gudberg, 2012.

Clarke, Colin G. Kingston, Jamaica: Urban Development and Social Change 1692-2002. Kingston: Ian Randle, 2006.

De Certeau, Michel. “Walking the City.” The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984, 91-110.

Wardle, Huan. An Ethnography of Cosmopolitanism in Kingston, Jamaica. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 2000

Sidney McLaren – King and Barry Street (1971), Collection: NGJ

The Jamaican anthropologist Charles V. Carnegie, former head of the African-Caribbean Institute of Jamaica/Memory Bank, has contributed to the following essay to the catalogue of Kingston – Part 1: The City and Art exhibition, which opens on July 31:

For its first two-hundred-plus years as the island’s principal city—up until around the 1920s—much of Kingston’s population lived in close proximity to each other within or on the fringes of the city centre: an area just 1,080 acres in extent in 1890.  Rich and poor rode together on horse-drawn and, later, electric tramcars beginning in the 1870s.  Despite sharp legal distinctions between slave and free and marked divisions of class, color, and religion, people of different rank routinely crossed paths for work, worship, commerce, recreation, healthcare, and to bury their dead.  Beginning around the 1930s and gaining momentum in the following decades, the city’s elites dispersed themselves to increasingly distant suburbs.  A pattern of urban sprawl, similar to that in North America, took hold. What does it mean and why does it matter that for the most recent period of its history Kingston’s poor and the more well off come into direct contact so much more infrequently than they once did?  What’s been the impact, and can we now begin to assess the consequences, of residents of the city no longer trodding the same piece of ground day by day: not routinely encountering each other in the same space?

King Street, near Parade, Downtown Kingston, on a Sunday

In making my way about Kingston these days on foot and by bus, I am struck both by the cultural expressiveness, energy and imagination so evident in the streets, and the realization of how much of this is new and news to friends Uptown.  My accounts of the commonplace wonders of street life—those elegantly outfitted mannequins posed dramatically atop booming, four-foot high speaker boxes along the sidewalks on Orange Street, the cleverly improvised performances of male vendors of women’s lingerie, the welcome arrival of this or that fruit in season at Coronation Market—are received Uptown as reports from distant foreign shores.  Many Uptowners, I’ve discovered, have rarely if ever taken a bus in Kingston, almost never go downtown; don’t know the number or routes of buses that serve their own neighbourhoods; and see nothing amiss with their ignorance.  Sadly, automotivity and the physical retreat to the suburbs have reinforced a certain social disengagement: places close at hand have become as places far away, former neighbors now seen as people who scarcely matter.

David Pottinger – Snapper Time (1970), Collection: NGJ

Not that residential proximity in earlier times necessarily led to broad acknowledgement of the voice and imagination of the poor, or to greater mutual understanding across the social divide.  Even otherwise sympathetic accounts, such as the series of newspaper articles published over a thirty year period around the turn of the twentieth century urging state action and social reform on behalf of the poor, treated them primarily as objects of inquiry and concern whose poverty and deprivation needed redress: people largely to be spoken for rather than being allowed to speak for themselves.[1]

The distantiated stance on the part of Kingston’s elites towards the culturally vibrant working class majority population of the city has only become more marked over the past 70 years.  One effect of this disengagement (supported by misconceived programs of urban renewal undertaken elsewhere in the world) has been to create a mindset bent on effecting purely physical transformations and a remaking of the built environment.  Numerous, elaborate plans for the physical renovation of the city have been devised since the late 1950s by private and state interests, but without serious attempt to engage with or accommodate input from Downtown residents.  Creation of the revealingly named “New Kingston” beginning in the late 1950s, redevelopment of the waterfront in the 1960s and 70s, and the revitalization drive of the Kingston Restoration Company (KRC) starting in the 1980s, are just some of the incomplete results these efforts have yielded.  Surely, the paradoxical contrast between these stalled, atrophied grand schemes of redevelopment, on one hand, and the ceaseless, irrepressible vitality of Kingston’s dispossessed, on the other, is worth contemplating.

Parade, Downtown Kingston, on a Sunday

In varied ways, many of the artists represented in this show point us to an alternative starting point for thinking about the city, its past, and possible futures.  They offer perspectives grounded in a loving appreciation of Kingston’s cultural ethos, the aesthetics and tempo of its streets, the resourcefulness, worth, and sensibilities of its people.  This vantage point on the city, this perspectival shift, need not be the exclusive preserve of artists.  It remains very much accessible to all of us if we but seek to avail ourselves of it.

Charles V. Carnegie

Department of Anthropology

Bates College

[1]  Moore, Brian L. and Michele A. Johnson. “Squalid Kingston” 1890 – 1920: How the Poor Lived, Moved, and Had Their Being.  Kingston: The Social History Project, Department of History, University of the West Indies, Mona, 2000.

Hilton Nembhard – Rasta Head (c1970), Collection: NGJ

Here is the first of five sectional introductions to the main themes in the Kingston – Part 1: The City and Art exhibition, which opens on July 31. The sectional introductions were written by the exhibition curator, Monique Barnett-Davidson, Assistant Curator at the NGJ:

Natural resources have been used for the creation of artworks in Jamaica for all of the island’s known history. The Jamaican Taino and their ancestors, who had begun settling in the island from as early as circa 650 AD, utilized wood, charcoal, plant fibres, animal bone, stone and clays. Later arrivals to the island, mainly Europeans and Africans, also imported and syncretised art-making traditions and techniques and in doing so made great use of the natural bounty this land of wood and water had to offer. The objects featured in this section explore the use by local artists of four materials that are available in Kingston and its environs: tortoise shell, wood, alabaster gypsum, and clay.

Rectangular Tortoise Shell Casket with Two Combs (1679), Collection: NGJ

The 17th century tortoise shell objects in this exhibition exemplify a creative industry that thrived in Port Royal Jamaica from circa 1672 to 1692, until the earthquake disaster. The name “tortoise” is a misnomer, since these objects are made from sea turtle shells while tortoises are their land-dwelling relatives. Four species of sea turtle that appear in Jamaica’s coastal waters but the shell most suitable for the creation of these objects is the Hawksbill Turtle shell. The tradition of using these shells to create decorative objects no longer continues, as the animals are now legally protected. However, one cannot deny the mastery and elegance of the examples featured in this exhibition. The Port Royal tortoise shell objects, most of them coomb cases and trinket boxes, appear to have been produced as mementoes and have their place of origin and production year inscribed on them. Some also feature early versions of Jamaica’s Coat of Arms. It has been argued that they qualify as Jamaica’s first examples of “tourist art.”

Jamaica’s long tradition of sculpting has benefitted greatly from the island’s numerous woods such as cedar, mahogany, guango and the formidable lignumvitae. Most of these trees grow in Kingston and its environs and lignumvitae trees, in particular, thrive on the Liguanea Plains. The featured works by Hylton Nembhard, Mallica “Kapo” Reynolds, Edna Manley and Winston Patrick provide but a small sample of the variety of beautiful and powerful woodcarvings that have been produced by many artists in Jamaica and specifically in Kingston. We cannot prove the origin of the woods used in the works featured here but it is likely that Kingston-based artists also used woods that were harvested in the area. Lignumvitae trees are now legally protected, with restrictions on the harvesting of wood for carving, because of the status of the Lignumvitae flower as a national symbol.

Cecil Baugh – Monkey Jar (c1990), Collection: NGJ

Clay is the most researched and documented material, represented here by the works of Cecil Baugh and an unknown yabba maker. The Liguanea Plains feature extensive red earthenware clay deposits, known as Liguanea Clay, which have been used in pottery production since the days of the Taino and are still used today by the makers of the flowerpots that are sold on the streets of Kingston. Cecil Baugh’s work is characterized by his promotion and use of indigenous clays and slips, as well as the development of sophisticated glazes from local materials, such as minerals collected from the Hope River, which runs from in the hills surrounding Kingston to the area’s south coast. Through his tireless experimentation, Baugh was able to introduce a range of colour combinations and textures that characterized his pots. His syncretised approaches to ceramics broadened the technical and aesthetic qualities of contemporary Jamaican works of clay for generations after him and for the ones to come.

John “Doc” Williamson – Sacrifice of Isaac (1980), Collection: NGJ

John “Doc” Williamson, rounds out this section with his sensitively carved work in alabaster gypsum – a curiously dense yet fragile stone that has been used by Jamaican craftspeople to make a variety of other curios traded to locals and tourists alike. Alabaster is mined in Bull Bay near Kingston.

Monique Barnett-Davidson

Isaac Mendez Belisario, Sketches of Character: French Set Girls (1837-38)

Here is another feature on our current exhibition, Kingston – Part 1: The City and Art, which opened on July 31. It was written by the exhibition curator, Monique Barnett-Davidson:

Like any major capital city, Kingston is a proverbial land of opportunity and a microcosm of social development in Jamaica. And like its predecessor Port Royal, it is a point of intersection, the juncture of a myriad of commercial and cultural pathways. One needs to look no further than the intensely trade- and business-oriented areas of Downtown, the Waterfront, our natural harbour (the seventh largest in the world), or the Crossroads and Half Way Tree areas. Artists have always been active participants and beneficiaries in these intersections, by participating in these exchanges and commercial opportunities, and by representing them in their work.

This section features pre-twentieth century itinerant artists such as Frenchman Adolphe Duperly, who operated his commercial photography and lithography studio, Adolphe Duperly and Son, at 85 King Street in Kingston. Duperly published a number of images of early Jamaican places, people and events such as the Daguerian Excursions (c1844), a series of lithographs of island scenes that were originally produced as daguerrotypes. Duperly is generally credited as the one who introduced photographic technology to Jamaica in the 1840s.

Duperly also collaborated with the Kingston-born lithographer and painter, Isaac Mendes Belisario who is famous for his 1837-1838 lithograph publications Sketches of Character in Illustration of the Habits, Occupation and Costume of the Negro Population in the Island of Jamaica. Despite the problematic ideological questions raised by Belisario’s images, the Christmas Amusements and Cries of Kingston have become icons of heritage that inform the memory of our enslaved, apprenticed, and later emancipated Jamaican fore-parents, as they worked and celebrated the gift of life and culture during times of great colonial oppression.

Kay Sullivan – Star Boy (1972), Collection: NGJ

The development of tourism in Kingston and other parts of the island in the late 19^th and early 20^th century also created opportunities. Artists such as the Millers (father and son both named David), who lived at 8 Bray Street in East Kingston and capitalised on the tourist trade by carving and selling a variety of wooden curios from tiny carved animals to large figurative works of fantasy and caricature. Their unique artistic talents were soon recognized and they are today regarded as major figures in Jamaican art history.

Several pioneering modern Jamaican artists, such as John Dunkley, Cecil Baugh and Albert Huie left their birthplaces in rural Jamaica to seek their fortunes in the only city in Jamaica which could facilitate the artistic aspirations of so many—another dimension to rural to urban migration. John Dunkley from Savanna-la-Mar, having spent his early life as a sailor and migrant worker in Cuba, Costa Rica and Panama, returned to Jamaica in 1926 and opened a barbershop on Princess Street in Kingston. The unusual painted and sculpted decorations he produced for his barbershop, like the work of the Millers, attracted the attention of the emerging Kingston art establishment, and specifically of the nearby Institute of Jamaica’s Secretary Delves Molesworth, and led to him being recognized from early on as a one of Jamaica’s most significant and original painters.

John Dunkley, Diamond Wedding (1940), Collection: National Gallery of Jamaica (Gift of Cassie Dunkley)

The young Albert Huie, migrating from Falmouth in the parish of Trelawney in 1936, was also guided to the profession by Molesworth, and initially taught and mentored by the expatriate Armenian artist Koren der Harootian, who lived in Kingston in the 1930s. Huie is now recognized as the “father of Jamaican painting.” And it was in the area now known as Mountain View that seventeen-year-old Cecil Baugh, who was originally from Bangor Ridge, Portland, began his first apprenticeship as a potter in the early 1920s, initially producing traditional utilitarian pottery, for which there was a significant market in Kingston.

David Pottinger – Snapper Time (1970), Collection: NGJ

Several artists took Kingston as their main subject. The St Thomas-based artist Sidney McLaren and the Kingston-born and-based painter David “Jack” Pottinger both created vivid depictions of city life. Pottinger is best known for his sombre but dignified depictions of street life in central and west Kingston; McLaren presented a more upbeat, colourful picture of the hustle and bustle of the city. Perhaps the contrast between their work stems from the different perspectives of a “town man,” who had first-hand experience of life in what quickly became Kingston’s inner cities, and a visiting “country man,” who was fascinated by the marvels and modernity of city life.

In searching for the most defining Jamaican subject matter, artists have been drawn consistently to one particular set of subjects, markets and market vendors as icons of economic enterprise and self-reliance, and there are many examples in Jamaican art that depict this subject (which is also one of the most common subjects in other Caribbean art generally). Many of these art works merely record (and romanticize) the market environment but some add other layers of meaning to the subject. Osmond Watson’s classic The Lawd is My Shepherd (1969), for instance, moves far beyond the conventional Jamaican market scene depiction and represents the vendor as a person of faith and spiritual endurance.

Monique Barnett-Davidson

Osmond Watson – The Lawd is My Shepard (1969), Collection: National Gallery of Jamaica

Here is another feature on the themes that structure the Kingston – Part 1: The City and Art exhibition, written by the exhibition curator, Monique Barnett-Davidson:

A simple bus commute or walking tour of the city can bring one into an even more direct engagement with Kingston’s artistic heritage. Street and public art proliferate in the city, whether as officially commissioned statues, monuments and murals, or more informal expressions on community walls, vehicles or vending stalls. These works are experienced on a daily basis by the people who use, traverse, relax or congregate around these spaces and often command their surroundings as iconic landmarks.

As Jamaica’s capital, Kingston is home to a number of public monuments. Their narratives reflect memories of historic triumph, expressions of hope in the face of adversity, or simply reflection in the wake of tragedy; exemplified by Edna Manley’s Negro Aroused sculpture, the monuments of the National Heroes Park, and the Secret Gardens monument, which are all located in Downtown Kingston. Secret Gardens was commissioned by the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation, the local government authority, to commemorate children who die under tragic or violent circumstances and the local media recently reported that no more space was left to add further names—a very sad reflection of the vulnerability of children in Jamaican society.

Some of these monuments, such as Laura Facey’s Redemption Song at the Emancipation Park in New Kingston, are major aesthetic and technical feats, undertaken by fine artists, architects and engineers. Redemption Song was very controversial when it was first unveiled as Jamaica’s de facto Emancipation monument in 2003 but it is but just one of several monuments that  have been controversial—a reflection of the passions and contentions that surround public commemoration in a socially turbulent society. The first such controversy pertained to the proposed National Monument to commemorate the first anniversary of Independence in 1963, a project that was initiated by the art patron A.D. Scott and to be executed by the noted sculptor Alvin Marriott. The monument, which was to be erected at the Harbour View Roundabout, was never completed as a result. Another major controversy involved the symbolically charged Bob Marley statue by Christopher Gonzalez, which had to be removed before it was unveiled near the National Stadium in 1983 because of the negative public reaction. It was replaced by a more conventional statue by Alvin Marriott in 1985 and the Gonzalez statue is presently on view at Island Village in Ocho Rios, a touristic site.

Jamaican street art in many ways serve the same function as, and sometimes shares the space with official monuments. Street art generally tend to reflect a combination of commemoration and valorization specific to a community’s identity, circumstance and culture and some of it simply serves to assert the life views and aspirations of an individual, such as a vendor or driver. Mural portraits of community members, gang and community leaders, national heroes, international figures and musicians are in abundance, such as those found at the Lyndhurst Road recording studio of late dancehall artist, Sugar Minott. Some of these portraits are commemorative and serve to honour and remember community members who have passed away, often under violent circumstances. These too have sometimes been controversial, since the Police sometimes remove murals that are deemed to be associated with gang violence, without much consideration for the sensibilities of families and communities in mourning.

Kingston is not a conventionally “pretty” city, especially in the inner-cities, and Kingstonians arguably respond to their drab concrete environs with colourful wall murals, painted and spray-painted decorations on houses, buses and vehicles that flash by. Artistic social interventions such as the recent Paint Jamaica murals at 44 Fleet Street, capitalize on this culture of colouring the city as way of creating positive and productive relationships among artists, businesses and residents.

Monique Barnett-Davidson

Phannel Toussaint – National gallery Ballroom, Devon House (1980), Collection: NGJ

Here is another feature on the Kingston – Part 1: The City and Art exhibition:

As we speak of “crossroads” and opportunities, we have to recognize that Kingston is also the centre of cultural infrastructure in Jamaica. This includes the two main visual arts institutions, the Edna Manley College and the National Gallery of Jamaica, and several major corporate art collections. Jamaica’s main private art collections are also located in Kingston. This Kingston-centeredness is slowly changing as governmental and corporate authorities as well as other private interests have been employing strategies to de-centralize the infrastructural dominance of Kingston. The 2014 establishment of the Montego Bay Cultural Centre, which houses the National Gallery of Jamaica’s Montego Bay branch National Gallery West, is one such example. That being said, this section of the exhibition acknowledges a selection of those Kingston-based entities that have been key pillars for the development of visual art practice and promotion in Jamaica, and have also contributed to urban development and renewal.

Sidney McLaren – Devon House (1979), Collection: NGJ

The Institute of Jamaica, which was established in 1879, is the oldest cultural institution in Jamaica and has been pivotal in the development of national art exhibition programming and art educational opportunities, especially from the 1930s to the present. The National Gallery of Jamaica has its origins in the pioneering art collecting and exhibition programmes of the Institute and presently operates as one of its divisions. Established in 1974 at Devon House on Hope Road and then relocated to the Roy West Building on the Kingston Waterfront in 1982, the National Gallery of Jamaica functions as the custodian of carefully developed collections of Jamaican art, representing more than ten centuries of artistic history in our country. Other Institute of Jamaica divisions that have been involved in the visual arts are the Junior Centre and the National Library of Jamaica, before the latter attained autonomy. The Junior Centre hosted Edna Manley’s seminal free adult art classes that started in 1939 and served as a meeting place for the members of the emerging nationalist school, and it continues to offer children’s art programmes today.

Whitney Miller – Little North Street (1963), Collection: Edna Manley College

The Jamaica School of Art and Crafts was established in 1950, initially at 1 Central Avenue and from 1957 also at North Street, before being moved to a new building at the school’s current location at Arthur Wint Drive, near New Kingston. Now incorporated into the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, it is the largest art school in the English-speaking Caribbean. Whitney Miller and J. McLeod, along with Robert Sawyer were a part of the school’s first body of full-time students and, in the case of Sawyer, lecturers in the 1960s and they utilized the surrounding Kingston communities as inspiration for studio exercises that reflected the talent and sophistication of the emerging national aesthetic.

Andy Jefferson – Riverton City (1999), Bank of Jamaica Collection

During the 1960s and 1970s, corporate entities such as the Bank of Jamaica, Pan-Jamaican Trust Limited and the law firm Myers, Fletcher and Gordon began to embrace collecting Jamaican art as a part of their cultural obligations and public mandate, additionally supporting visual artists through other forms of sponsorship for further education and other resources. A corporate collection that rivals the National Gallery collection in size and scope is the art collection of the national bank, the Bank of Jamaica, which was launched in 1975, when the bank moved to its current, then new building on the Kingston Waterfront. Initially, the development of Bank of Jamaica collection was spearheaded by a committee chaired by the master painter Barrington Watson and this committee’s initiatives involved several major commissions to Watson and other artists of his generation.

George Rodney – Marcus Garvey Drive (n.d.), AD Scott Collection, NGJ

Several private collections also emerged around in the 1960s and 70s. One major private patron and collector was the Jamaican civil engineer A.D. Scott, who opened the Olympia International Art Centre near Papine in 1974, around the same time as the National Gallery and the Bank of Jamaica collection, as part of a pioneering effort to integrate art gallery, apartment and hotel functions. He later donated a major selection from his collection to the National Gallery of Jamaica, part of which can now be seen in two permanent galleries.

Monique Barnett-Davidson

Here is the final of our features on the Kingston – Part 1: The City and Art exhibition:

In addition to concrete structures and infrastructures, stories from the documented and lived experiences of generations of Kingston inhabitants and visitors, contribute to this city’s character, to its celebrity and its infamy. The events, personalities and tales that have shaped this city are part of its collective imagery and have provided major inspiration for artists, some of whom are themselves among the city’s key personalities. A variety of stories have already been explored in the preceding galleries. However, this section focuses on a distinct selection of narratives that are particularly relevant to Kingston events and experiences.

Kingston and its environs have been the sites of some of the deadliest natural disasters in human history and this has been recognized and recorded by documenters and artists alike. The apocalyptic destruction of Port Royal in 1692, was re-imagined by Carl Abrahams in several works produced in the mid-1970s. The 1907 earthquake which almost obliterated Kingston is memorialized forever by several archival photographs from the period which can be found at institutions such as the National Library of Jamaica, another Downtown Kingston institution situated on East Street. Despair in the aftermath of Hurricane Charlie, the deadliest storm of 1951, is expressed in two oil paintings created in the same year by poet and playwright Roger Mais, and his seemingly broken and dejected figures are almost camouflaged within the debris left in the storm’s wake, becoming one with the devastation.

Several works in this section comment critically on the social life of Kingston. The works of Roy Reid, Edna Manley and later, Stanford Watson and Ikem Smith for instance, question ongoing issues of social inequality, economic downturn, violence and civil unrest. Michael Parchment’s No Woman Nuh Cry (2005), a visualization of the 1975 reggae ballad of the same name performed by Bob Marley and the Wailers, reiterates that critical value of endurance in the face of adversity and atrocity resulting from the wave of violence that permeated Jamaica’s inner-cities in the 1970s. Interestingly, the reggae music and the visual arts communities have benefitted greatly from the creative insights of personages like Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer and a number of other Jamaican musicians, many of whom originated from Kingston or migrated to the city to seek their fortune at Kingston’s active entertainment scene and recording studios. It was in Kingston at the National Stadium on Arthur Wint Drive that the historic One Love Peace Concert took place in April 1978. The concert took place during the climax of a deadly political war between gang supporters of the People’s National Party (PNP) and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). Jamaican photographer Howard Moo-Young captures on film the most memorable highlight of the show, when Bob Marley during his performance of the song Jammin invited the two political leaders to the stage—the then Prime Minister Michael Manley of the People’s National Party and the then Leader of the Opposition, Edward Seaga of the Jamaica Labour Party–and encouraged them to join hands before the audience as a symbolic gesture towards peace and unity.

Adherence to deep spiritual convictions appear to provide balance to otherwise turbulent social phenomena in Kingston, as evidenced by the diversity of religious communities that are based here. Interestingly, some of Kingston’s most prolific artists were also religious leaders, such as Mallica “Kapo” Reynolds and Everald Brown. Everald Brown moved to Kingston from Clarendon in 1947, eventually settling at 82 ½ Spanish Town Road. An adherent of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, he formed the Assembly of the Living as “a self-appointed mission” of his church and started producing art to decorate and spiritually enrich his church. Brown moved his family to Murray Mountain in St Ann to escape the escalating urban violence. Kapo, who left his home in Byndloss in rural St Catherine and moved to Trench Town and later Waterhouse in Western Kingston, founded the Revivalist church community, the St Michael Tabernacle of which he was the Patriarch Bishop. Almost all of Kapo’s work is directly or indirectly related to his Revivalist beliefs. A reference to Kingston’s Jewish community is made in Maria LaYacona’s portrait of the industrialist and art patron Aaron Joseph Matalon, standing inside Shaare Shalom Synagogue located at 92 Duke Street, one of the oldest synagogues in the Western Hemisphere. Such an image reflects the legacy of Kingston’s Jewish community who have been present in the island since the fifteenth century and the immense contribution to cultural and social development made by them, as exemplified by the Matalon family business enterprises.

State visits are always key events in a capital city such as Kingston, in some instances attracting massive crowds of onlookers; some of them travelling great distances to the city to witness famous arrivals. Queen Elizabeth II was the first reigning sovereign to visit the island. Accompanied by her consort the Duke of Edinburgh Prince Phillip, she arrived in 1953. The Polish artist Michael Lester, who in that same year relocated to Montego Bay, was commissioned to create the official painting of the visit. Lester captured the day of departure for the Royals, where he was permitted the freedom to position himself to the best advantage in order to capture the details he needed complete the commission. The arrival of His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie of Ethiopia in 1966 at the Palisadoes Airport (now named the Norman Manley International Airport) was one of the most dramatic in Jamaican history as an estimated 100,000 Rastafari from across the island descended upon the airport to welcome and celebrate the Ethiopian Monarch hailed by them as the earthly re-incarnation of God. Clinton Brown’s painting Victory March (1976) similarly celebrates the divinity of the Ethiopian king, leading a throng of celebrants into what appears to be Zion, the Rastafari equivalent of “Heaven.”

Stories to Tell ends with perhaps one of the greatest Jamaican films of all time, The Harder They Come, released in 1972 and starring reggae singer Jimmy Cliff as the film’s tragic protagonist, Ivanhoe Martin. Written by Perry Henzell and Trevor Rhone and directed by Henzell, the film’s celebrity is derived from its all-Jamaican production and casting, as well as its reggae soundtrack, which garnered much more international attention for the home-grown music genre. The film’s gripping narrative about an aspiring but naïve young man coming to seek a fortune in Kingston but falling prey to the grim realities of poverty in a big city, was based on an actual story (the life of the notorious gunman Rhygin) and presented a highly relatable Jamaican tale for many Jamaicans and viewers overseas. The film’s cinematographic approach produced the most comprehensive set of Kingston vistas ever portrayed in film; from depictions of “uptown” communities, to the inner cities, business centres and the areas around the Kingston Harbour.

Monique Barnett-Davidson

Dr the Hon. David Boxer, OJ, with artist Hope Brooks, at the conferment ceremony at his home on August 9, 2016

The Board, Management and Staff of the National Gallery of Jamaica wish to express their delight at the announcement that the following artists and associates of the National Gallery are among the recipients of the 2016 National Honours, which were announced on Independence Day, August 6. They are: Dr David Boxer, CD, who is conferred with the Order of Jamaica; Senator Thomas Tavares-Finson, QC, Cecil Cooper, and Basil Watson, who are receiving the Order of Distinction (Commander class); and Alexander Cooper, who is receiving the Order of Distinction (Officer rank).

Dr David Wayne Boxer, CD is an eminent Jamaican art historian, curator, artist and collector. He was educated at Cornell University and the Johns Hopkins University, where he obtained his PhD in Art History. Dr Boxer joined the National Gallery of Jamaica in 1975 as Director/Curator and held this position until 1991, when he became Chief Curator. He retired from the National Gallery in 2013. During Dr Boxer’s tenure, the National Gallery developed from a fledgling institution to what is now the largest and most prominent national art museum in the English-speaking Caribbean, with an extensive collection of Jamaican and other art and an active and diverse exhibitions programme. Dr Boxer is widely recognized for his scholarship on Jamaican art, particularly on the work of Edna Manley, the Intuitives and early Jamaican photography, on which he has published extensively. Dr Boxer is also an internationally recognized artist, whose mixed media work addresses postcolonial politics and existential angst by means of complex references to art history and visual culture. Dr Boxer is conferred with the Order of Jamaica for his “invaluable contribution to the National Gallery of Jamaica and the development of Jamaican art.” He was previously conferred with the Order of Distinction (Commander class), and is also the recipient of the Gold Musgrave and Centenary Medals of the Institute of Jamaica. Dr Boxer, who has been ailing, received the Order of Jamaica today, Tuesday, August 9, at a special ceremony at his home.

Senator Thomas Tavares-Finson, CD, QC, Chairman of the NGJ

Senator Thomas George Lewis Tavares-Finson, QC, is a noted Jamaican politician, attorney-at-law and art collector. He was educated at McMaster University; the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London; and the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple. Senator Tavares-Finson has been a nominated commissioner of the Electoral Commission of Jamaica since 2006 and previously served as a member of the Electoral Advisory Committee from 2005-2006. Senator Tavares-Finson is presently the President of the Senate and was called to the Inner Bar earlier this year. He was recently appointed as the Chairman of the National Gallery and had also previously served on its Board. Senator Tavares-Finson is conferred with the Order of Distinction (Commander class) for his “distinguished contribution to the Electoral Commission and the legal profession.”

Cecil Cooper, CD, at his studio in November 2015 (photograph courtesy of Donnette Zacca)

Cecil Harvey Cooper is a noted and influential Jamaican painter, art educator and singer. Cecil Cooper was educated at the Jamaica School of Art, now the Edna Manley College, and also attended that Art Students League and the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He served as the head of the Painting department of the Edna Manley College from 1981 to his retirement in 2009. He has exhibited widely in Jamaica and internationally and his work is represented in major art collections, including the National Gallery of Jamaica collection. Cecil Cooper is also a classical tenor, renowned for his powerful voice and operatic delivery. He has previously served as a Board member of the National Gallery of Jamaica and was recently reappointed to the Board. Cecil Cooper is conferred with the Order of Distinction (Commander class) for his “invaluable contribution to the arts.”

Basil Watson, CD

Basil Barrington Watson is an internationally recognized Jamaican sculptor who was educated at what is now the Edna Manley College. Basil Watson, who is also a superb draughtsman, is acclaimed for his daringly balanced, dynamic depictions of the human form. His many public and private art commissions in Jamaica including the statues of Merlene Ottey and Herb McKenley at the National Stadium; the sculpture “Balance” at the Doctors Cave Bathing Club in Montego Bay; and various sculpture commissions for the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica, including “Emerging Nation” in Holruth Park. Mr  Watson has previously served on the National Gallery Board. He is the son of the late Prof. the Hon. Barrington Watson, OJ, Jamaican master painter. Basil Watson is conferred with the Order of Distinction (Commander class) for his “outstanding contribution in the field of Jamaican art.”

Alexander Cooper, OD, at this studio

Joshua Alexander Cooper is a major Jamaican painter who emerged during the Independence period. He was an early student of the then Jamaica School of Art and Craft in the 1950s and also attended the New York School of Visual Art and the Art Student League. While his diverse oeuvre also includes gestural abstractions, Alexander Cooper is today best known for his whimsical depictions of street life in Downtown Kingston in times past. Mr Cooper has previously served on the National Gallery Board. Alexander Cooper is receiving the Order of Distinction (Officer rank) for his “outstanding contribution to the arts.”

The Board, Management and Staff of the National Gallery of Jamaica extend their heartfelt congratulations to Dr David Boxer, Senator Tom Tavares-Finson, Cecil Cooper, Basil Watson and Alexander Cooper on their well-earned National Honours.