By Sana Rose, Contributor 
'Sweet Sop Tea' Phillip Supersad stoneware: Winner of Exquisite Teas Viewer's Choice No. 1 Award. - Contributed
THE ANNUAL juried and invitational
exhibition Tea, Glorious Tea! is now in its second staging at the Revolution Gallery. This year, the show brings together mainly ceramists, sculptors and fibre arts and mixed media artists from Jamaica and Canada.
The participants are young, veteran and mid-career artists. The Jamaicans are Gene Hendricks Pearson, Phillip Supersad, Walford Campbell, David Dunn, Patrick Hall, Marjorie Keith, Angella Brown, Wazari Johnson, Nosbourne Lee, Denise Forbes, David Betton, Devon Garcia, Pat Kentish-Skeete, Margaret Stanley, David Marchand, Tukula Ntama, Tony Barton and Ireko Baker. International participation comes from Edna Del Zoppa and Natalie Kurzuk from Canada.
FASHION SHOW
Opening night featured a tea party and a fashion show where the jewellery of Jennifer Gibbs, who recently returned from her Commonwealth Foundation Award trip to New Zealand, were showcased. Last year's viewer's choice and Red Rose Tea Trophy awardee, Margaret McGhie, has her own solo
display in a separate room with works comprised of simple
geometric forms and patterning inspired by the sea especially shells but also recalling flowers.
The first staging of Tea, Glorious Tea! saw the ceramists putting a truly creative spin on the very familiar object the teapot. This year, even though well-made clay teapots adorn the gallery, we see the mixed media artists and sculptors taking the imaginative edge over the ceramists although the latter copped the top awards. On opening night, veteran ceramist Phillip Supersad took home the Exquisite Teas Award for first place selected by the viewers for his Sweet Sop Tea, while young ceramist Wazari Johnson's Caribbean Sunset was the recipient of the Viewer's Choice No. 2 sponsored by Grace, Kennedy & Co. Ltd.
TEXTURE AND COLOUR
Neither of these two pieces really pushes the envelope in terms of an unexpected interpretation of the teapot form but compared to other ceramists in the show with the exception of Patrick Hall and Marjorie Keith, they do introduce texture and colour in a stimulating way. Supersad takes his inspiration from the sweet sop, choosing to recreate the fruit's textural protuberances in a bumpy teapot body.
Johnson on the other hand, who returns to compete for the second time, reuses his orange and blue glaze mixture on a teapot that mimics the shape of a monkey jar. Rich colour is also seen in Gene Hendricks Pearson's Joy and David Dunn's delightfully. These formal marriages apart, Marjorie Keith's Something Old that unites the teapot form with traditional coal iron of generations past, creates a strong form but did not capture the public's attention sufficiently to receive a prize. The jury selected arguably the most creative ceramic offering Patrick Hall's Hydrant, an extruded clay form that curves in on itself, heightening the stakes technically and conceptually.
Gallery curator Carol Campbell and jury member remarked that the piece was selected because, "It is a well-made design and a complete idea. We were amazed that it actually works!" Patrick then marries functionality with
creative engineering.
Hall also captures our attention with his two other pieces, Bamboo Joint No. I & III, which as the names suggest take their cue from the form of the bamboo plant.
From the three metal sculptors - Denise Forbes, Nosbourne Lee and David Betton - who are participating in the competition for the second time, Lee and Betton once again take their welded steel teapots to another level. Lee maintains his allusions to a kind of scientific engineering, which in Chalice Choice especially reinterprets the teapot form into a visually engaging apparatus. Betton in his Warm Water Well, another engineering marvel creates tension with a bucket of sorts hung from a metal "cord", dangling inside of the cylindrical metal "well". Devon Garcia offers wood reliefs but focuses on the cocoa plant with a narrative approach that takes us to the market and under the tree where a woman relaxes and a rat makes mischief.
MIXED MEDIA
The mixed media artists are truly the most vibrant in the show. Natalie Kurzuk returns with her teabag narratives in Memory & Desire I & II that combine intimacy due to their small scale and simulated pages from a journal feel with tactility. Edna Del Zoppa, a Canadian loom weaver, takes the teabags and creates a blouse that has been mounted on a mannequin titled By Another Other Name" while Jamaicans Margaret Stanley, Tukula Ntama and David Marchand take us into the ritual of tea drinking from the prime English behaviourisms to the quaint tea cloth, cup and saucers that frame the setting.
David Marchand opts for unfired clay that has been painted and moulded into a tea party in his High Tea on a Native Isle while Ntama and Stanley use found objects to create multi-layered surfaces and meanings. Ireko Baker, in Tea Fetish makes use of mainly natural found objects - wood, tea and stones - to create a sculpture that conjures up fantastic references embodying an eye looking towards love, truth, harmony, justice, peace and tranquility; words that have been printed on bags of tea.
This year's Tea, Glorious Tea! is not as vibrant as last year's exhibition. Greater efforts were made by the artists last year to rethink and re-engineer the familiar teapot form which resulted in more interesting ideas. The objective of the show remains the same.
The press release put out by the gallery stated that, "At the heart of the concept is the desire for curator Carol Campbell to provide the opportunity for artists to explore fresh new ideas regarding the familiar teapot and to expose the local art community to an alternative approach to artmaking".
This year, this aspect of the show is much tamer as the artists generally did not respond to this call decisively. In the end, only Patrick Hall, Marjorie Keith, Nosbourne Lee and David Betton really made an effort to take on this challenge in a significant way. The objective of the show however, overlooks other artists who may not tackle the formal considerations of the teapot form - which the awards are geared towards - but rather the concepts and implications of the tea drinking ritual. Interestingly, the mixed media artists in the present display have offered the most visually stimulating.
The exhibition closed September 25.
