Events' Realm

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, Deborah Anzinger, and Storm Saulter.

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.

Kingston

Jamaica

Orange Street

National Gallery of Jamaica

Young Talent 2015

Every Saturday, for the month of November 2015, the National Gallery of Jamaica (NGJ) will be hosting a workshop series entitled “Saturday Art-Time: the Parents’ Edition.” Co-ordinated by the NGJ Education Department in recognition of November as Parents’ Month, the workshop series will serve as a means of creating awareness for parents and their families, regarding the use of art museums and exhibition spaces for recreation, expression and cultural interaction. 

The workshop series is a spin-off from the Saturday Art-Time child art programme, which is currently on hiatus until 2016. Through the programme - which has had over five hundred youngsters registered since 2009 - a number of families have come to value the work of the NGJ; particularly in providing an outlet for their children’s artistic expressions, as well as to engage them with an integral aspect of their cultural heritage, through the museum’s national collection of Jamaican art.

With this in mind, the NGJ would like to provide a broader range of parents with an opportunity to become a part of a vibrant and growing cultural community, and to foster the development of a museum-going culture in Jamaica in the process. Participants in the workshop series will learn how to make their family visit to any art museum, gallery or exhibition fun and educational, by engaging their child in simple activities that will excite as well as inspire.

The Saturday Art-Time: Parents’ Edition, will take place on Saturdays, November 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th. Cost of registration is JA$600.00 per workshop or JA$2000.00 for the entire series. The workshop duration on each day will be from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm. For further information, please contact the NGJ at 9221561/3 (Flow landline), or 618-0654/5 (Digicel fixed line). Emailed queries should be sent to info@natgalja.org.jm. You can find and ‘Like’ the National Gallery of Jamaica as well as the NGJ Education Department on Facebook and read our blog at nationalgalleryofjamaica.wordpress.com. See you there!

Saturday Art-Time: the Parents’ Edition

A.D. Scott boasted the largest comprehensive collection of artworks from various traditional and contemporary Jamaican artists in the mid-seventies.

AD Scott Collection

Mallica " Kapo"  Reynolds showcases a wide range of subject matter and iconography, in painting and sculpture.

The Mallica "Kapo" Reynolds Exhibition

Permanent gallery of Edna Manley's work at the National Gallery of Jamaica.

Events at National Gallery of Jamaica, Jamaica

Young Talent 2015

Saturday Art-Time: the Parents’ Edition

AD Scott Collection

The Mallica "Kapo" Reynolds Exhibition

Edna Manley Exhibition