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.
