Beginning from August 10 to August 14, 2015, the National Gallery of Jamaica (NGJ) will be hosting a five-day journal workshop, titled WRITIVITY, for students preparing to sit Visual Arts examinations for the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC). The workshop is being coordinated by the NGJ’s Education Department as a part of its summer programming.

WRITIVITY will focus on guiding students through approaches to developing the reflective journal, which is a key component of the School Based Assessment (SBA) submissions for CSEC Visual Arts. The reflective journal typically requires students to document, in pictures and in text, the progression and development of their SBA artworks as well as the associated research. WRITIVITY aims to assist the students’ understanding about how to approach this task, by utilizing the NGJ’s’s permanent collections as points of reference for critically assessing works of art and artists, in order to create different types documentation about them. The workshop also aims to familiarize the participants with the research resources of the Education Department, which manages a small but unique collection of exhibition catalogues and various art-related books and other documents.

Activities for the WRITIVITY workshop will be held daily from 9:30 am to 1:30 pm at the NGJ, 12 Ocean Boulevard, Block C, Kingston Mall (entrance on Orange Street). Interested persons should call or email the NGJ in order to register. The workshop is free of cost but space is limited, so applicants are encouraged to register as soon as possible. For more information, please 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.

Osmond Watson – City Life (1968, Collection: NGJ). This oil painting on canvas suffered from significant flaking and paint loss

In the early years of its operations, the NGJ has employed conservators, Trevor Burrowes and Stanley Barnes, and more recently the NGJ has benefited from various short-term conservation projects. We are now developing a long-term, in-house conservation programme, as part of our dcollections management. Here is the first section of a two-part article on tropical conservation by Joelle Salkey, a Jamaican art conservator who has recently joined our staff.

When defined in the scope of art and heritage conservation, the tropical climate presents a major source of problems for the display and storage of material collections. While tourists flock to the warm balmy climate, conservators scramble to find cost effective climate controls to maintain lower temperatures and reduced humidities. This is due to the fact that the unchecked tropical climate falls drastically outside of the conventional climate control specifications, of 21 degrees Celsius with 55% Relative Humidity (RH), established by twentieth century conservation professionals.

The obsession with identifying the ideal environment for artwork and museum objects assumes that the farther you stray from the ideal target the greater the damage posed to collections.^[1] However tropical climates typically register temperatures averaging 24-27 degrees Celsius with a relative humidity of 65-70%. Following this, tropical temperatures are conducive to increasing the rate of decay in museum objects, with the rate of chemical and biological activity doubling for every increase in temperature of 10 degrees Celsius^[2].

To make matters worse, tropical regions are disaster prone, suffering from more occurrences of hurricanes and earthquakes than other climate regions. Natural disasters are unpredictable and although they cannot be prevented, risk management offers a line of defence for a tropical collection. The concept of risk management is appearing ever more frequently in conservation literature^[3], indicating that the old adage “prevention is better than cure” is very important in preserving the longevity of a collection.

Osmond Watson – City Life (1968, Collection: NGJ), afer its restoration at the Western Centre for Arts Conservation, Denver, Colorado, in 2010. This conservation project was funded by the US Ambassadors’ Fund.

A risk assessment – whether formal or informal, extensive or conducted on just a small section of a collection, is a useful tool used in museums and other cultural institutions to prioritize the execution of preventive conservation methods. The goal is to hopefully prevent damage or, at least, to limit the extent of the damage. By estimating and calculating risks, museums and conservators can create measures to counteract hazards and to the best of their ability protect objects of cultural heritage.

The creation of risk assessments leads to a better understanding of the museum objects and how they respond in their various environments. Relative humidity and temperature are two of the most dangerous risks to an object’s permanence. Hence through risk assessment in conservation the museum or cultural institution can better evaluate suitable ranges of temperature and humidity to store and display objects.

With regards to the museum environment, museums and collectors face the challenge of finding a balance between the ideal climate and financial feasibility. This challenge is easier to accomplish if the objects being stored or displayed are of a similar makeup. For example, if a wooden sculpture is placed (as it should be) in storage with similar wooden objects, it is easier to follow the recommended storage temperature of 12-18 degrees Celsius and a humidity of 50-60%^[4]. However, complex or composite objects consisting of more than one material in their makeup, are a bit more difficult to correctly store at their ideal temperature. A broader range is given to composite objects, designating 16-18 degrees Celsius in temperature and a 40-55% humidity range.

A painting is considered a composite object, simply as it is composed of many different materials adhered together. Understanding the various components of a painting aids significantly in identifying the correct storage environment. In their composition, paintings traditionally consist of about three layer categories: the support layer, the preparation layer and the image layer. Each layer reacts differently to various temperatures and humidities. The support layer in traditional painting is identified as the wooden stretcher or panel along with the stretched canvas. The preparation layer includes the ground size that is put on to prepare the canvas to accept the artist’s design. The image layer consists of the paint layers and the varnish layers. The incorrect preparation of any layer can severely affect the longevity of the painting. Each layer is also individually vulnerable to different risks presented in the environment that houses the painting.

The devastating effect of humidity and temperature is more evident in heritage objects made from organic material. Plants and animals contain a high proportion of water. Naturally their products, such as paper, cotton, leather, fur etc. are hydroscopic- meaning they are affected by moisture^[5]. These materials will give off moisture to and absorb moisture from the air until there is an equilibrium point- a point where no more moisture can be absorbed and no more can be released.   If the air around where the object is stored is dry, the artwork will release moisture until it is brittle and shrinks, warps or cracks. If the air around the object is moist, the art object will absorb moisture until it is distorted, cockles and cracks.

In the case of traditional paintings, the most susceptible components to humidity are the wooden stretcher or panel board and the canvas. As these elements comprise the support layer of the work, the other layers will over time begin to exhibit stress due to excessive fluctuations. In uncontrolled dry environments, shrinkage and cracking develop in colour pigments as binders lose moisture, while in uncontrolled damp environments, natural fibres swell encouraging softening of adhesive bonds and flaking.

There is a great challenge to museums and collectors wanting to practice preventive conservation in tropical environments, as there can often be several agents of deterioration acting simultaneously.^[6] To clarify, the warm climate encourages problems due to humidity; humidity in turn encourages physical, biological and chemical damage. Humidity-driven physical damage can manifest itself as flaking of paint pigment from the surface of a painting. In warm humid environments RH-responsive materials, such as the size, gesso or binders in which the pigments are mixed, lose strength resulting in eventual paint loss.

Biological damage can occur when the humidity (65% and above) provides a comfortable environment to encourage the growth of mold or pest reproduction and nesting. Naturally, all livings things absorb nutrients, reproduce and excrete – three actions that when observed in the context of priceless works of art make conservationists cringe.

In some ways the chemical damage is linked to the biological deterioration of artwork. Excretions can oftentimes interfere with the delicate chemical structure of the surface of a painting. Other forms of chemical damage include occurrences of air pollution, in which gaseous chemicals mix with water found in the atmosphere. The resulting mixture settles on the surface of paintings and causes acid damage.   Environmental issues such as fossil fuel combustion and waste produced by industrial processes release air pollutants such as oxides of sulphur and nitrogen into the atmosphere.^[7]

Dust often carries a mix of organic material and chemical particles which could over time affect the surface layer of paintings, introduce biological threats or encourage pests to feast on the organic material found within the paintings.

Joelle Salkey is a recent graduate of the St. Petersburg State University of Culture and Art, in St Petersburg, Russia, were she completed her masters degree in Museology and Protection of Objects of Culture and Natural Heritage. She is also a graduate of the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts where she earned her BFA in Painting. Joelle has received training as a conservator for paintings and murals, and has worked on restoration projects throughout the island.

NOTES

^[1] Michalski, S. The Ideal Climate, Risk Management, the ASHRAE Chapter, Proofed Fluctuations and Toward a Full Risk Analysis Model. Contribution to the Experts’ Roundtable on Sustainable Climate Management Strategies, held in April 2007, in Tenerife, Spain. The Getty Conservation Institute. P. 1

^[2] Teygeler, R. Preservation of Archives in Tropical Climates. An annotated bibliography, Comma, Paris, 2001. P. 38

^[3] Waller R. Conservation Risk Assessment: A Strategy for managing resources for preventive conservation. p.12

^[4] Первак В. Э. Обеспечение сохранности этнографических коллекций в музей. Методическое пособие. Министерство культуры Российской Федерации Российский Этнографический Музей. Санкт-Петербург 2011. С. 15

^[5] Museums Australia Victoria, Temperature and Humidity, http://www.mavic.asn.au/assets/Info_Sheet_4_Temperature_and_Humidity.pdf (April 2014)

^[6] Teygeler R. Preservation of Archives in Tropical Climates. An Annotated Bibliography Paris/The Hague/Jakarta, International Council on Archives/National Archives of the Netherlands/National Archives of the Republic of Indonesia, 2001 http://cool.conservation-us.org/byauth/teygeler/tropical.pdf (October 2013) p. 10

^[7] United States Environmental Protection Agency, Sulphur Dioxide http://www.epa.gov/oaqps001/sulfurdioxide/ (June 2015)

Works of art from the National Gallery in London in storagte at the Manod Quarry in Wales during World War II

Here is part two of the article on tropical art conservation by Joelle Salkey. The final section of the article includes tips for private collectors on how to safeguard their collections.

As fatalistic as this article has made tropical RH concerns out to be, with proper risk management and good housekeeping most crises can be avoided. However, in cases where the heritage object is delicate or fragile, good housekeeping may not be sufficient to ensure the object’s preservation. In such cases specific knowledge of the materials and techniques is required to aid its preservation. Tropical collections differ greatly from other collections around the world in that objects in such collections tend to consist of more organic materials, and a greater majority is classified as ethnographic objects. Problems can occur when the specific characteristics of the objects and their materials, as well as the conditions under which they are kept, are ignored.

In January 2014 American curator Cash Brown blogged about her experience at the National Museum in Myanmar^[1]. Myanmar has a tropical monsoon climate. Despite a fairly well maintained exterior of the museum, Brown noticed severe damages to most of the works from the collection which were not endemic to the region. She noted that works of photography, works on paper and oil paintings showed signs of degradation ranging from mild to severe, while the musical instruments, lacquer ware, wooden, stone and ceramic artefacts fared better. The museum objects that were made from locally found materials are chemically acclimatized to the conditions found in Myanmar. Those that were not native to the climate were ravaged by high humidity, and fluctuating temperatures made possible by the lack of proper climate control and supervision.

The National Museum in Myanmar

This phenomenon of acclimatization was first documented in London, when in preparation for WWII the National Gallery in England decided to secure their collections in limestone quarries in Wales. After the war, the collections were inspected and all found to be in good condition. They were removed from the temperature and humidity-controlled quarries and then re- introduced into the museum environment^[2]. This relocation was observed to have a disastrous effect on the condition of the collection, as various artworks began to rapidly exhibit various forms of distress and deterioration after relocation. After some investigation it was concluded that the works of the collection had acclimatized to the constant environment presented in the quarries, which differed greatly from the inconsistent museum climate. It is important to note that the museum’s exterior environment plays an equal role in the stability of the interior environment and also has to be factored into preventive conservation and risk management controls.

Severe disasters pose a serious threat to the conservation of artefacts as they are often unpredictable or unpreventable. In the case of earthquakes, measures can be taken only after the catastrophic event has already occurred, although proper mounting and storage practices can help to prevent damage. Hurricanes and tropical cyclones form over tropical waters, in areas of high humidity, light winds and warm sea surface temperatures (26.5 degrees celsius and greater)^[3]. There has been a very pronounced increase in the number of tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic since the late-1980s. This trend has been identified by scientists as a side-effect of greenhouse warming.^[4]

Flood damage at a Chelsea gallery after hurricane Sandy

The most common types of damage caused by storms and hurricanes involve flooding, and structural damage caused by the increased wind pressure. The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Damage-Potential Scale^[5] is used to determine the potential destruction caused by a storm in accordance with its assessed strength, and has become a very useful tool for risk management of tropical collections. According to the scale, if a storm is classified as Category 1, some minor physical damage to shrubbery and property can be expected. If risk management is applied accordingly, a collection can be protected against the increased rainfall, ensuring all leaks and structural infractions are corrected and secured.

As the severity of the storm increases, the risk management plan must become more specific to the types of collections, whether wood, metal or composite collections. For example, when faced with a Category 4 system, it can be expected that the risk of flooding will increase, as city runoffs are unable to contain the volume of water caused by heavy rainfall and storm surges. This then indicates that the potential damage to the collection by water damage is potentially higher than that of earthquake damage. All measures should be taken to elevate the collection or move them to a higher and more secure location. Hydroscopic objects should be given priority above non-hydroscopic works. They should be kept in conditions as close as possible to their accustomed climate in the museum environment. The instinct to cover all objects in plastic should be avoided as this could create localized climates within the plastic, and encourage mold growth.

Once risk management procedures are put into place and followed accurately the potential longevity of a collection should be ensured. The challenge is now to distinguish what environmental conditions and risk management procedures work with the tropical environment to protect tropical collections. This calls for a greater understanding of the risks posed to the region and the creation of effective disaster plans for the works found in the tropical collection.

Protecting Works of Art in the Home

In the home, disaster and risk management plans are just as effective as in the museum setting. While the average art owner or collector might not have access to sophisticated environmental monitoring equipment or HVAC controlled environments, he or she can assess the damage potential to any work of art and make provisions to ensure its safety. There are several agents of deterioration common in any household setting that should be given attention. As mentioned extensively in this article, temperature and RH are considered agents of deterioration, however in a home setting there are often other agents that take priority over fluctuations in climate.

In preventive conservation literature there are ten identified agents of deterioration: theft, physical forces, water, light and UV damage, neglect, temperature, RH, fire, pollution and biological attacks. A domestic collection might face a higher threat of damage by way of theft or physical impact than a museum collection. While fire and water damage are more obvious forms of deterioration, neglect is actually the most common and effective agent of deterioration found in the home. Even occasional attention to the artwork is beneficial, making it easier to notice damage, potential threats and to carry out the necessary corrections. However, too often art collections blend into domestic environments and are forgotten until damage has occurred or the collection has been completely destroyed.

Safeguarding a domestic collection requires some simple recommendations. Some helpful tips are:

1. Identifying your collection. Knowing the makeup of the work of art is crucial to protecting it. For example, if a valuable sculpture is made from plaster, its location on an open terrace or on a lawn will ensure its destruction in a short amount of time. Plaster is very porous and dissolves in water and humid environments unless covered in a protective coating.
2. Finding safe locations for your collection. Entry ways and areas of high traffic are difficult locations to display works of art and should generally be kept clear. Paintings, especially delicate watercolours, should be hung away from direct sunlight, as light can fade the work over time.
3. Knowing the environmental risks and preparing for them. As we are in the hurricane season, a family disaster plan should be extended to precious valuables and works of art. Once a safe room has been determined, paintings should be stacked and stored at an elevated height of about 3ft from the floor.
4. Creating a cleaning regime. Make a cleaning schedule and follow it systematically. Gently clean all surfaces with a microfibre cloth and avoid vigorous mechanical or chemical cleaning where possible (however, leave the cleaning of art works that show signs of deterioration, such as flaking, to professionals)
5. Being observant. Look out for issues in the work, such as cracking, flaking or bleaching. Once these issues are identified, remove the work from its setting to a safe location, and lastly…
6. Contact a professional. Once damage has been identified, it’s best not to attempt to fix the work on your own. If the damaged work is truly valuable, a botched repair might decrease its value and affect its longevity.

To conclude, preventive conservation and risk management strategies are effective methods of ensuring the safety of tropical collections. Little can be done to control the external tropical climate, and controlling the internal environment through HVAC systems might not be financially feasible. In such cases, rather than focusing on climate control, one can concentrate on other risks posing a threat to the collection. Simple tasks, such as regular cleaning and designating a secure location for artworks, can go a long way in ensuring that such objects can be enjoyed by many generations to come.

NOTES

[1] Brown C. Myanmar Time Warp, http://cashbrown.org/tag/art-artefacts/ (April 2014)

[2] Lambert S, The Early History of Preventive Conservation in Great Britain and the United States (1850–1950) », CeROArt [En ligne], 9 | 2014, mis en ligne le 22 janvier 2014, consulté le 28 avril 2014. URL : http://ceroart.revues.org/3765 (October 2013)

[3] Graham S. Riebeck H, Hurricanes: The greatest storms on Earth, November 2006 http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Hurricanes/hurricanes_1.php (April 2014)

[4]Vecchi G. Knutson T. Historical Changes in Atlantic Hurricane and Tropical Storms http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/historical-atlantic-hurricane-and-tropical-storm-records (May 2014)

[5] The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/sshws.pdf (July 2015)

The National Gallery of Jamaica is pleased to present Young Talent 2015, an exhibition which features ten artists living in and from Jamaica and under forty years old, namely: Greg Bailey, Alicia Brown, Katrina Coombs, Di-Andre Caprice Davis, Monique Gilpin, Domanie Hong, Howard Myrie, Richard Nattoo, Avagay Osborne, and Cosmo Whyte. The exhibition will open on Sunday, August 30, 2015 and will be on view at the National Gallery until November 14, 2015.

The first Young Talent exhibition was held in 1985, as part of JAMFEST 85, when Jamaica hosted the International Youth Conference. Young Talent 85 featured eleven young artists, including Basil Watson, Omari Ra, Khalfani Ra, and Petrine Archer-Straw. As part of the National Gallery’s strategies to uncover and support new developments of Jamaican art, Young Talent exhibitions have been organized intermittently since then, in 1989, 1995, 2002, and most recently in 2010, and many well-known contemporary Jamaican artists had their first major exhibition as part of the Young Talent series. Young Talent V in 2010 was particularly ground-breaking and launched a new generation of artists who have since revolutionized the Jamaican art landscape, such as Ebony G. Patterson, Phillip Thomas, Leasho Johnson and Oneika Russell. The National Gallery has also staged the New Roots exhibition in 2013, which was treated as a spin-off from the Young Talent series and featured artists such as Matthew McCarthy, Olivia McGilchrist, Camille Chedda, and Deborah Anzinger.

To support what is presently an exceptionally energetic and innovative contemporary art scene in Jamaica, the National Gallery now intends to present Young Talent exhibitions every two years, in the years alternating with the Jamaica Biennial. For the present exhibition, Young Talent 2015, the National Gallery opened the selection process with a call for submissions and entries were received from thirty-five artists, from which ten were selected. While most of the selected artists already have an exhibition record, Howard Myrie, Avagay Osborne, and Domanie Hong have just graduated from the Edna Manley College, which continues to be the main engine for development and innovation in Jamaican art.

Young Talent 2015 includes a healthy range of artistic media and practices, including new and more traditional media, including GIF collages, fibre-based work and representational painting, which coexist productively as part of Jamaica’s emerging contemporary art language. While some of it is also deeply personal, most of the work selected for Young Talent 2015 is explicitly or implicitly political—tackling challenging subjects such as gender violence, social dysfunction, power and marginalization, the politics of the body, and displacement and forced migration—and reflects the complex and unsettling cultural and political events and debates that shape the “post-postcolonial” world. One striking feature of the exhibition is the artists’ engagement with the materiality of their work, which is mined judiciously for its visual poetry and political implications. The result is a compelling and though-provoking exhibition, which should produce healthy debate about current artistic and cultural trends and about the broader social and political questions raised.

The August 30 opening function of Young Talent 2015 is presented as part of the National Gallery’s Last Sundays programme, with doors open from 11 am to 4 pm and the opening function at 1:30 pm. There will be no guest speaker and instead we will be screening a short video documentary on the participating artists. This will be followed by a musical performance by Jah9. As is customary, the event is free and open to the public but donations are welcomed, as these play an important role in funding projects such as Last Sundays and exhibitions such as Young Talent 2015.

This is the first of a series of short features on the artists in the Young Talent 2015 exhibition, which opens on August 30:

Greg Bailey was born in 1986, in Trelawny, Jamaica. He obtained a BFA in Painting from the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts. Bailey is currently based in Kingston, Jamaica.

Artist’s Statement

Painting is the frequency through which I communicate my reactions towards the impulse of society. I am intrigued by social-constructs and the ambiguities of the reality it imposes on the human psyche. My consciousness of context and content channels my interrogations toward the provocative nature of Jamaica’s social welfare; its legacies, its atrocities and how, interestingly, its history lingers in its present. The act of painting is the process through which I go about to create an elusive atmosphere within a two-dimensional structure—an atmosphere where sensibilities are stimulated by using elements such as colour, image, symbolism and emotion.

This is the conceptual mind-set behind this current body of work. The pieces are conversations about the phenomena of a two-sided culture that are extremely different and although they exist within the very same space, they never collide. For instance, Jamaica is rated as one of the most beautiful countries in the world while at the same time it is rated as one of the most violent. In the same breath, it is declared an independent state while at the same time it has the slowest growing economy in the Caribbean; so slow that it cannot sustain itself in many sectors even though it is among the top three Caribbean countries with the greatest concentrations of minerals that are most valuable on the international market.

These opposite extremes is what has lured me into painting beautiful renditions of not so beautiful realities. Realities of deception, the cultivation of decadence, self-hate, self-glorification as well as the lack of vision to identify with and combat the reoccurrence of past atrocities.

Here is the second in our short posts on the artists in the Young Talent 2015 exhibition, which opens on August 30:

Alicia Brown was born in St Ann, Jamaica in 1981. She attended the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, Kingston, Jamaica, and received a diploma in Art Education in 2003 and a BFA in Painting in 2009. Alicia also attended the New York Academy of Art in New York and obtained an MFA in Painting in 2014.

Artist’s Statement

The use of mimicry as a tool for creative invention, imitation and expression plays a vital role in formulating cultural identity. This is evident in the formation of subcultures, resulting from class distortion associated with colonialism. The desire for social acceptance and the search for missing pieces of self is the gateway to copying dominant cultures. This desire becomes a fantasy that is embraced while reality is rejected.

My work invests itself in a social critique, addressing issues of social construct, colonialism, pop culture, Western trends and their impact on Caribbean identity. I reference Dutch 16^th and 17^th century portraiture, where aspects of this history are appropriated and re-contextualized in their representation. I use portraiture as a tool to imitate this model, incorporating both traditional and contemporary painting languages as dialogue on identity.

Here is another in our short posts on the artists in the Young Talent 2015 exhibition, which opens on August 30:

Katrina Coombs was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1986. She holds a BFA in Textiles and Fibre Arts from the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in 2008 and has completed her MFA in Creative Practice at the University of Plymouth through the Transart Institute in 2013. Katrina lectures part time in the Textiles and Fibre Arts Department at the Edna Manley College.

Artist’s Statement

My work is governed and guided by my emotions as I attempt to understand and search for the woman that I am. Each artwork represents a part of me that is hidden from myself an others. They embody my hidden voice. The artworks I create depict my experiences of birth, death, love, heartbreak, corruption, entrapment, destruction, joy, happiness and freedom. In this attempt to understand the Self and these experiences, the Other becomes ever more present. Through the use of fibrous material and techniques I explore the effect of the Other on the ‘I’.

This body of work emphasizes the social implications of insecurities and turmoil that a woman faces as she struggles with her daily life attempting to satisfy herself, partner, family and friends which create an enterprise for conflict. In this situation the Other would be the motherly instincts and desires of a woman. The works mimic the nature of the womb, which becomes an Other to the woman as she attempts to conform to its demands, as well as the emotional turmoil that accompanies its actions. The ‘I’ becomes absent as the Other prevails and creates a void of neurotic divergence within.

Di-Andre Caprice Davis – Overly Utopian Dreams (2007-2015)

We publish another of our short posts on the artists in the Young Talent 2015 exhibition, which opens on August 30:

Di-Andre Caprice Davis was born in 1986, Kingston, Jamaica. She is a self-described visual artist who is experimenting with new media technologies. She works and lives in Kingston.

Artist’s Statement

In my work, I combined a passion for digital aesthetic with furthering the exposure and understanding of how technology has affected our world. Although the images are highly personal representations of my dreams, they are abstract enough and open enough to allow individual interpretation. I have used animation techniques to show the power of artistic image manipulation; turning still images into hypnotic GIF art. I prefer to collage and compose several looping actions emphasizing the motions that mimic bodily rhythm. It is like an adventure in a second life exploring its outer limits with digital imaging tools.

Here is the fifth of our short posts on the artists in the Young Talent 2015 exhibition, which opens on August 30:

Monique Gilpin was born in 1985 in Montego Bay, St James, Jamaica. She graduated in 2006 from the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, where she majored in Painting and Photography. She currently lives in Montego Bay, where she works as Assistant Curator at National Gallery West at the Montego Bay Cultural Centre.

Artist’s Statement

The Porcelain Series is a dialogue between the concepts of stability and instability and also the traditional and contemporary realities of life. Born from my nomadic experiences within the last six years, my yearning for stability is embodied within the exploration of the human form in a three-dimensional space. Every minute of our lives is spent in physical and psychological dialogue with the space around us and the contorted bodies within these oversaturated three-dimensional spaces have been transmogrified towards semi-abstraction mimicking hard ceramic surfaces. The porcelain figurines in many older Jamaican homes seem to be ever-present and are symbolic of a stability that the younger generation of Jamaicans no longer seem to be able to achieve. The contortions and attempted transformation of the bodies represent the psychological struggle to achieve this stability.

Here is the sixth of our short posts on the artists in the Young Talent 2015 exhibition, which opens on August 30:

Domanie Hong (née Denniston) was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1989. She graduated from the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts with a BFA in Printmaking in 2015. She currently teaches at Hillel Academy High School.

Artist’s Statement

This body of work comprises of three concepts, journaling my personal life experiences and predictions of the future. The first concept, titled The Water Series, signifies the start of my journey. During pregnancy, the womb is filled with water enabling the creation of human life.

The second concept, The Red Series, depicts the psychosomatic nature of human emotions. The bright attractive colour sends mixed signals to the neurons in the hippocampus, which plays a role in emotions.

The third concept, The Desert and Textured Series, represents the end of a journey and expresses the notion of returning to dust.

This body of work represents a visual discussion of my struggles with self-worth and self-acceptance. These concepts are the unwanted realities of my life and represent a visual conversation with its cycles.

Here is the seventh of our short posts on the artists in the Young Talent 2015 exhibition, which opens on August 30:

Howard Myrie was born in 1982 in Cambridge, St James, Jamaica.  He is a recent graduate of The Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts where he received his BFA in Painting. He currently resides in St James, Jamaica.

Artist’s statement

In Jamaican culture, the issue of homosexuality is a volatile and controversial topic, with persons on both side of the debate having fiery passions and each side being sure that their perspective is the correct one. My work seeks to engage in the discussion through a variety of media such as video installation that is text based, wood carving with graffiti elements, and text on glass.  These media are used as a way of participating in the discourse, pointing to social ills and asking important questions that are worthy of attention, while allowing space for contemplation and reflection on personal attitudes.  The Instrumentalist theory of art states that art should do more than being decorative or beautiful; art should be able to facilitate change and make society and the world we live in a better place.

Richard Nattoo – Oblivion (2015)

Here is another of our short posts on the artists in the Young Talent 2015 exhibition, which opens on Sunday, August 30:

Richard Nattoo was born 1993, in St Catherine, Jamaica. Nattoo currently attends the University of Technology in Kingston, Jamaica, where he is pursuing the Bachelors of Arts in Architectural Studies.

Richard Nattoo – Athena’s Oculus (2015)

Artist’s Statement

Exploration has always been a constant in my life, and an integral part of my art and artistic processes. I create in an attempt to capture and deconstruct the common feelings and emotions of everyday life, so that I can examine their inner workings. At its core, my work attempts to capture the feelings and emotions I experience and to translate them into the surreal spaces that we all inhabit within ourselves. The goal is to explore feelings and emotions on murky cerebral levels and to construct the tumultuous and beautiful inner world that resides within all of us. I call this inner world the Silent Echo and my exhibitions have been about exploring this rich and textured place. A variety of mediums such as pen and ink, watercolour and most recently glass have been employed. Each exhibition is a chapter of the journey deconstructed.

Richard Nattoo – Silent Intuition (2015)

Avagay Osborne – Untitled (2015)

Here is another of our short posts on the artists in the Young Talent 2015 exhibition, which opens tomorrow, Sunday, August 30:

Avagay Osborne was born in 1990 in Manchester, Jamaica. She is a recent graduate of the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, where she attained a BFA in Painting. She lives in Manchester, Jamaica.

Avagay Osborne – “Sorry” (2015)

Artist’s Statement

Self-recovery is the term applied to the process of healing, from general disturbances and trauma. Reflections on past experiences have provided a thematic substance to my work thus far. My work is a direct reflection, response and act of self-recovery from a series of personal events and near-traumatic experiences. I believe that though these experiences are personal they are also no doubt a part of overall human condition. My adolescent years were troubled and traumatic and at age 23, I went through another traumatic experience, I have endured some level of physical and emotional abuse during these periods and these traumatic experiences have influenced my works.

Avagay Osborne – Untitled (2015)

Cosmo Whyte – YOU Know WE Can’t Swim Right? (2015)

Here is the last of our short posts on the artists in the Young Talent 2015 exhibition, which opens today, Sunday, August 30. Doors will be open from 11 am to 4 pm. The function starts at 1:30 pm, and will feature a short documentary on the participating artists and a musical performance by Jah9. The exhibition continues until November 14.

Cosmo Whyte was born in St Andrew, Jamaica in 1982. He attended Bennington College in Vermont where he obtained his BFA, Maryland Institute College of Art for a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate and he graduated first in his class from the University of Michigan for his MFA. Cosmo Whyte is currently a professor at Morehouse College in Atlanta.

Cosmo Whyte – Town Crier (2015)

Artist’s Statement

“Terra Incognita…The New World is the third term—the primal scene—where the fateful/fatal encounter was staged between Africa and the West…. stands for the endless ways which Caribbean people have been destined to migrate.” (Stuart Hall, Cultural Identity and Diaspora, 1994)

My current body of work explores postcolonial identity through the lens of tourism, diaspora, globalization and migration. Through the process of installations of drawings, photographs and sculpture, I argue for the re-examination of identity as not fixed, but liquid and in a constant state of flux. Taken in its entirety, my work is interested in probing the following question: How has identity, sense of placelessness, or presence been altered by dislocation?

Cosmo Whyte – The Ginal

The work in Young Talent 2015 argues that the modern condition is migratory and as vast numbers of people continue to cross borders (sometimes at great loss) the question of citizenship and home becomes increasingly complicated. I have approached this show as a testing ground to explore parallels that exist between the mass migration of West and East African through the Mediterranean into Europe and Haitians being forced to leave Dominican Republic. None of the work on display is didactic but it rather looks on the black body as it is situated in a specific historical context when it comes to borders, migration, death by water, and survival.

Cosmo Whyte – Punch Drunk Love (2015)

The following was contributed by our Education Department:

In last few years, the NGJ Education Department has been quite keen on developing various innovative educational programmes, particularly during the summer period. Summer is always a good time to target programme formats to different groups, particularly within the demographic of youngsters aged eight years and older. This summer was particularly active, as we piloted some new approaches to our usual programming. Areas of special focus included more extensive community outreach as well as the utilization of the NGJ’s educational and research resources by our young stakeholders.

We began in early July, with our annual collaboration with the MultiCare Foundation’s Summer Art on the Waterfront programme, which has been ongoing since the 1990s. The workshops themselves were held at a location on Church Street, however, the coordinators scheduled two days in which the participants visited the NGJ and created artwork inspired by classics from the permanent collection.

Later that month, we collaborated with Paint Jamaica and the Parade Gardens community collective known as Life Yard, to hold the Fleet Street Summer Workshops from July 20 to 31. These workshops took place in Parade Gardens at 44 Fleet Street, in the vicinity of the remarkable Fleet Street murals, completed in 2014 under the Paint Jamaica programme. With their main task being the creation of designs for palette furniture built by the Life Yard family, it was a welcomed opportunity for the children in residence to engage in visual art activities within their community. The activities also included weekly yoga sessions, conducted by instructor Nadine McNeil a.k.a. The Universal Empress and President of the Jamaica Wrestling Federation, Kevin Wallen, both of whom graciously volunteered their time to the project. In the words of the Universal Empress:

It is a blessing whenever I am given an opportunity to share the gifts of yoga and mindfulness, especially with youth. Their level of attentiveness and absorption is truly a humble sight to behold… Having just completed my Kripalu Yoga in Schools training for which I received a full scholarship, my involvement with the camp was my way of paying it and playing it forward.

We ended the run of summer educational programmes with another project entitled Writivity, Journaling for CSEC, which was targeted to students preparing to sit Visual Arts examinations for the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate. Held from August 10 to August 14, a group of energetic teenagers from different schools across Kingston, St Andrew and St Catherine immersed themselves as young documenters and critics of art. Their activities focused on the development and submission of the reflective art journal, which is a requirement for all CSEC Visual Arts candidates.

It was a great summer for us indeed, with lots of laughter, sharing and learning. So as we gear up for September and beyond, we would like to thank the MultiCare Foundation, Paint Jamaica, the Life Yard family and the Caribbean Examinations Council office for helping us make these programmes a success. Special thanks also to yoga instructors Universal Empress and Kevin Wallen; Senior Education Officer at the Ministry of Education, Marlon Williams; as well as one of our regular collaborators, artist and educator Dale Bedasse.

Most of all, we would like to extend a loud and excited THANK YOU to all the children who participated in these programmes and shared so much with us this summer. It was a truly enjoyable and inspiring experience for us and we look forward to bringing you even more exciting and value-filled offerings. P.S. Note to Parents and Guardians: You Are Next!

(Photographs National Gallery of Jamaica and courtesy of Sabriya Simon Photography)

Interviews with the ten artists in Young Talent 2015 (August 30-November 14, 2015), National Gallery of Jamaica. Videography and director: Leevan Rainford; producer: Stephanie Channer.

The National Gallery of Jamaica’s Last Sundays programme for September 27, 2015 will feature the Young Talent 2015 exhibition and a performance by the Quilt Performing Arts Company.

Young Talent 2015 features ten artists under forty years old, namely: Greg Bailey, Alicia Brown, Katrina Coombs, Di-Andre Caprice Davis, Monique Gilpin, Domanie Hong, Howard Myrie, Richard Nattoo, Avagay Osborne, and Cosmo Whyte. Young Talent 2015 , which opened on August 30 and continues until November 14, is the sixth of what will from now on be a biennial series of exhibitions, which are designed to provide national exposure to new and emerging artists and to stimulate the development of Jamaican art in the process. Young Talent 2015 includes a healthy range of artistic media and practices, including new and more traditional media, such as GIF collages, fibre-based work and representational painting, which coexist productively as part of Jamaica’s contemporary art language. While some of it is also deeply personal, most of the work selected for Young Talent 2015 is explicitly or implicitly political—tackling challenging subjects such as gender violence, social dysfunction, power and marginalization, the politics of the body, and displacement and forced migration.

The award-winning Quilt Performing Arts Company has a mission to transform theatre by means of an exciting combination of different personalities, talents, emotions, experiences, visions, words and music – hence the company name, Quilt. Using “devised theatre” (or collaborative improvisation) as their main tool of expression, and under the leadership of Rayon McLean, the group’s main focus is to provide pieces with a strong social message that forces audiences to think and reflect, feel, laugh, and learn. For their performance on September 27, the company will be revisiting two pieces from their repertoire – Ancestral Spirits, which explores African-Caribbean ancestry, and Missing, which is about men who have been lost to society – and they will also improvise in response to works in the Young Talent 2015 exhibition.

As is now customary for Last Sundays, the doors will be open to the public from 11 am to 4 pm and the Quilt performance starts at 1:30. Admission and guided tours will be free. Contributions to our donations box are, however, much appreciated and help to fund exhibitions such as Young Talent 2015 and our Last Sundays programming. The gift and coffee shop will also be open for business.

Rhoda Jackson -Washing by the River – (1945, Collection: NGJ)

The Jamaican painter and designer Rhoda Jackson is usually mentioned in accounts of Jamaican art history, but has not received the more comprehensive attention her work warrants – her story is one of a number of untold stories in Jamaican art. While filling this gap requires a longer term research project, we are now presenting this short, initial feature on her work. We invite members of the public who have information about her life and work, and photographs of her extant work in painting and design, to contact us, so that we can expand and update this feature.

Rhoda Jackson (1913 – 1971) was a Jamaican artist and designer who was active from the mid 1930s to the 1960s. She was born in Gilmock Hall, St Elizabeth and was based in Mandeville for most of her life.  She attended the Hampton High School in Malvern, St Elizabeth in Jamaica and subsequently trained in art at the Reading University Arts School in England, and the Art Student League in New York City. Her uncle Cyril G. Jackson was a watercolourist of some note and was also based in Mandeville.

Rhoda Jackson – souvenir tea towel (Jamaica)

Rhoda Jackson is best known for the murals and designs she did mainly for the tourism industry, for instance at the Tower Isle Hotel, where she also had regular exhibitions. She also did designs for embroidery, including for the Allsides workshop, and other textiles and designed advertisements, postcards and book covers. She was one of the first professional designers on record in Jamaica – the art deco furniture designer Burnett Webster being another.

Richmond Barthe – portrait of Rhoda Jackson (c1960, Collection: NGJ)

There are many things about Rhoda Jackson’s life that warrant further research: during her student years in England, for instance, she was friendly with the famous Scottish photojournalist George Rodger, one of the founders of the Magnum photographic cooperative. Rodger visited her in Jamaica in 1950 and made several noteworthy photographs of the island during his visit. The African-American sculptor Richmond Barthé, who owned a house in St Ann and lived in Jamaica from 1947 and for about 20 years, did a portrait bust of her circa 1960. Rhoda Jackson also appears to have been friendly with the English painter Eve Disher, who was a repeat visitor to the island.

Book cover design by Rhoda Jackson

The following appraisal of Rhoda Jackson’s work is adapted from Veerle Poupeye’s doctoral dissertation Between Nation and Market: Art and Society in 20th Century Jamaica:

“Rhoda Jackson was an undeniably talented and innovative designer. Her work represents Jamaica by means of a repertory of iconic images consisting of picturesque gingerbread cottages, idyllic fishing beaches and waterfalls, and rollicking cane-fields and mountain-scapes, peopled with pretty ladies, dandyish men and cute children, depicted in frilly “native” costumes. Her work is colorful and forms are simplified and stylized into patterned compositions that often have a tapestry-like quality. This made her designs very versatile and suitable for large panoramic paintings and small embroidery motifs alike.”

“Jackson is best known for tourism-related work but she was also involved in the mainstream art world. She taught art at the prestigious St Hilda’s High School for Girls in Brown’s Town, St Ann where Gloria Escoffery was among her students. Her work was included in Institute of Jamaica exhibitions and she was a member of its influential Art and Crafts Committee, which also included Edna Manley and among others spearheaded the establishment of the Jamaica School of Art”

“It is nonetheless telling that, other than some complimentary reports on her exhibitions, there was no substantive critical response to her work in the local press, while significant efforts were made to engage Edna Manley’s work at an intellectual level. She is also virtually unmentioned in the later art narratives. This suggests that her work has not been taken seriously as significant “art” by Jamaica’s emerging art establishment.”

Albert Huie – Noon (1940, Collection: NGJ)

“Jackson’s iconography, with its focus on rural life, is similar to that of the nationalist school but the tone of her work could not be more different. Her painting
Washing by the River (1945) was bought by the IoJ and is part of the permanent exhibition of the NGJ, compares strikingly with Albert Huie’s Noon (1943). Jackson’s painting depicts women and children washing clothes in a river while Huie’s features a group of sugar factory workers who are lounging under a tree while on their lunch break, with the factory and a mountainous landscape in the background. In Jackson’s painting, the figures are frolicking, carefree and anonymous “natives” while in Huie’s they are dignified modern workers and citizens.”

Rhoda Jackson – detail of mural at the People’s Museum, Spanish Town, n.d.

“A mural Rhoda Jackson produced for what was then the Jamaica Folk Museum, now the People’s Museum, depicts plantation life as if it was an idyllic picnic, with picturesque water wheels and handsome, nicely dressed and cheerful field workers.That this appears to have been a commission from the Institute of Jamaica in itself warrants some critical attention and illustrates the ambiguous position the Institute has held between colonial and modern national culture.”

“One of the reasons why Rhoda Jackson is not more recognized as a Jamaican artist seems to be that the cheerful, touristy depictions of Jamaica she produced did not match the nationalist ideology that dominated mid-twentieth century Jamaican art and art history. The artists of the nationalist school and Independence generally  sought to distance themselves from any tourist aesthetic. As the art and theatre critic Norman Rae wrote in Ian Fleming Introduces Jamaica (1965):

‘Jamaican painters generally do not aim at the titillatingly decorative ‘native’ object or art/craft, the stylish decorations designed for the tourist market that one finds proliferating in many other Caribbean and tropical countries. The ever-present determination not to let the glittering island vistas lead them astray makes them avoid this. (169-170)’

“That this statement was made in what was, for all intents and purposes, a guide book, points towards the complex and contradictory dynamic that has existed between mainstream art and tourism, which has after all always provided a market for Jamaican art, and complicates the relationship between the seemingly contrasting cultural ideologies of those two worlds.”

Rhoda Jackson’s outlook may have been “colonial” and her work may have perpetuated stereotypes modern Jamaican artists have sought to challenge but she is certainly worthy of more attention as an artist, if only because of how her work and ideological choices compare with those of contemporaries such as Albert Huie or Edna Manley.

The National Gallery of Jamaica (NGJ) is pleased to partner with the Edna Manley College’s 2015 Rex Nettleford Arts Conference to present a panel discussion on the various critical issues addressed by the artists in its current Young Talent 2015 exhibition.

The panel discussion will take place at the NGJ on Friday, October 16, 2015 from 11 am to 12:30 pm. Featured artists Greg Bailey, Alicia Brown, Katrina Coombs, Monique Gilpin, Domanie Hong, Howard Myrie, Richard Nattoo, Avagaye Osborne and Cosmo Whyte will be present to discuss their bodies of work and the panel will be moderated by the NGJ’s Senior Curator O’Neil Lawrence, and Assistant Curator Monique Barnett-Davidson.

The NGJ has intermittently held Young Talent exhibitions since 1985 when Jamaica hosted the International Youth Conference. The fifth in that series held in 2010 was a ground-breaking exhibition featured artists such as Ebony G. Patterson, Phillip Thomas, Leasho Johnson and Oneika Russell who have dramatically changed the Jamaican artistic landscape. Its spin off exhibition New Roots in 2013 featured artists such as Matthew McCarthy, Olivia McGilchrist, Camille Chedda and Deborah Anzinger and brought to the fore a new set of voices willing to break down the barriers between artist and viewing public experimenting with greater interactivity.

The current emerging contemporary artistic language is represented in this exhibition by a healthy range of media from traditional painting and fibre based work to more experimental forms such ads GIF collages. The artists in Young Talent 2015 all show a willingness to experiment within their media as well as engage with the difficult issues, such as gender violence, social dysfunction, forced migration and marginalization, within the current social environment.

The Young Talent 2015 exhibition opened on August 30 and continues until November 14, 2015, is in keeping with the NGJ’s mandate to support artistic development and to provide opportunities for young artists. Due to the current innovative spirit and energy within Jamaica’s contemporary art scene, the NGJ plans to hold this exhibition every two years.

Admission to the NGJ will be free on October 16 and free guided tours of the Young Talent 2015 exhibition will be offered before and after the panel discussion. Conference registration is not required to attend this panel discussion.

For more information on the Rex Nettleford Arts Conference, please click here.