Art Bytes

Camille Chedda and Gaulin

 

Currently on view in Due West, an exhibition at the National Gallery of Jamaica West in Montego Bay.

Previously exhibited at the Olympia Gallery in the AIRTS 2024 exhibition.

The work references the composition of the1850s painting Ophelia by Sir John Everett Millais. I created this drawing based on recognizable wild flowers, wildlife and the built environment in Jamaica. I had completed a public art project in May last year under the theme A Feral Commons, curated by Tairone Bastien (more details about the theme here: https://aferalcommons.com#blog-item-777 ). The project was done in a community in Parade Gardens on Tower Street where there is a police barricade and an abandoned park beside a gully. I worked on this project for 2 years and the park is now rehabilitated. One of the main things I chose to focus on was the value of the Rice and Peas Bush as a plant that is often overlooked and the community who also felt neglected, as reflected in the previous state of the park. Gaulin birds were a common sighting in the park and in the polluted gully nearby.

I started this drawing after that project ended (June 2024) as a way of thinking through other troubling things that the public artwork was not able to resolve for me. I started to look at the gully as a site of tragedy (see image of bird in polluted gully water), and during Beryl and often during heavy rain flooding, there are incidents of drownings, people and animals being washed away in various gullies in Jamaica. The drawing was a way for me to channel several ideas into one. Histories of neglect, states of stagnation, tragedy of the commons, etc.

Art Bytes

Currently on view in Due West, an exhibition at the National Gallery of Jamaica West in Montego Bay.

Previously exhibited at the Olympia Gallery in the AIRTS 2024 exhibition.

Simone Cambridge, a 2022 Curatorial and Art Writing Fellow at NLS, a Kingston art gallery, is now exhibiting Straw Heritage: “It Comes from the Head” at the National Art Gallery of the Bah

Jamaican artist Arthur Simms’ A Totem for the High Line is now installed at the 16th Street Spur Preserve in New York City’s Chelsea District.

The National Gallery of Jamaica has named Ashley James as guest curator for its 2024 Kingston Biennial which opens December 15th. Titled Green X Gold, the biennial will be the closing highlight of the 2024 Gallery’s 50th anniversary. The exhibition will cover works on the environment, nature, and land, inspired by the Jamaican flag’s ecological symbolism. 

The National Gallery of Jamaica will host a five-day Writivity workshop from August 12th to 16th  to help students sitting the Visual Arts CSEC exams with their reflective journals. The reflective journal is a part of the School-Based Assessment and the final grades of the CSEC exam.

Jamaican artist Garfield Morgan has another exhibit in Canada. This time his work is on display at the Don Wheaton Family YMCA in Edmonton.  until October 31st.

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