Margaret Reckord Bernal, Contributor
RICARDO MAKYN, Staff Photographer. -
Jennifer Lee (left) of Facey district in St. Catherine, with a yabba used to carry water in the 1800s, talks with Valery Facey at the opening of the National Gallery's 2004 Jamaica National Biennial at the Jamaica Gallery on Sunday, December 12.
THE NATIONAL Gallery of Jamaica entered its 30th year of operations in 2004. The vision it produced for this milestone year was characterised by a combination of commitment and resourcefulness the same qualities that guided the institution in its three decades of building a progressive national consciousness of the rich if hidden artistic wealth of this island.
As our premier cultural institution, the National Gallery has in many ways held up a mirror to the nation, and presented in confrontable, precise form the aspirations and ambitions which are ever-evolving and coalescing in the nation's collective consciousness.
"Art," says Picasso, "is a Lie which tells the Truth!"
The National Gallery undertook considerable challenges in the year 2004. In addition to a full roster of administrative duties, demands from home and abroad for information and direction, often with considerable research implications, and a cadre of professional visits in addition to the regular student tours the National Gallery undertook four exhibitions in the last 12 months. Three were of major proportions.
The Curator's Eye I, which opened January 18, 2004, challenged conventional notions of what could be called Art, and how it would be constructed. It required the Gallery to maintain co-ordination between the National Gallery team at home base, the 14 artists (not all on island ), and the guest curator who is a full-time gallery director in New York. The visitorship and comment, which this inaugural exhibition received, underscored its success and holds promise for the next in the series due in 2006.
BROTHER EVERALD
BROWN RETROSPECTIVE
The Brother Everald Brown Retrospective, which opened on Emancipation Day August 1, had been under discussion and planning since the late 1990s. The Rainbow Valley a tribute to the great self-taught artist Brother Brown (1917 2002) took long years of research and original oral history interview and scholarship even before the actual exhibition year started.
Under the direction of the Exhibition Curator, the National Gallery team undertook intense months of preparation, collection of materials and original photographs from local and overseas owners, building special exhibit spaces within the multi-chambered Kingston Mall Gallery building and lobbying from the acquisition of important works to enrich permanently the national collection.
The pursuit and eventual purchase of the exhibition's centrepiece the brilliant 1969 piece 'The Earth Is the Lord's' would itself make a graduate thesis which would illuminate the combination of painstaking detective work and persistent lobbying by which a national collection is assembled, or in this case reassembled.
Indeed, many elements of this important retrospective exhibition demonstrated all the National Gallery's collective teamwork and the cleanly executed sharing of responsibilities between the curatorial, design, documentation, and installation teams, which were necessary to mount three major exhibitions in one year.
Of note here is the persistently small staff numbers at this national institution, and the dedication and personal sacrifice which undertakings such as the three major 2004 exhibitions required. The length of service of the core team, headed by a director emeritus whose career span mirrors that of the institution, also underscores that the mission of this institution is held by them in special regard.
The final exhibition for 2004 was the National Biennial the last in a long tradition of national art exhibitions, which have, since the 1938 All Island Exhibition presented an opportunity for the national scrutiny of the island's art movement and output.
This second National Biennial attracted several prestigious awards, medals and monetary prizes for the 161 works exhibited. These entries comprised a mix of 98 invited and 63-juried artists selected by a curatorial team from the National Gallery, with invited judges. Increasingly the categories on display here reflect the diverse and specialised media in which Jam-aica's artists are working. They include painting, drawing, original prints, collage, sculpture, assemblage, installation, ceramics fibre arts animation and photography. The popularity of assemblage, installation and multimedia artworks in this exhibition attests to the role the National Gallery has played in gradually introducing contemporary, multifaceted and thought provoking new ideas into its gallery offerings.
2004 NATIONAL BIENNIAL
The lively response to the 2004 National Biennial has deservedly rekindled interest in the role of national institutions as catalyst "for new inclusive ways of seeing", and as threshing grounds for diverse and often elusive possible approaches to communicating "values and attitudes", for "enlightened entertainment", for the creative cross-talk between separated communities.
The National Gallery's curatorial successes of 2004 underscore the intense dedication of this institution to exploring and harnessing the widest areas of creative energy and excellence in today's Jamaica. The focus of the gallery in yet another arena is perhaps as important.
The National Gallery in 2004 continued its endeavours in the schools outreach programmes with round-the-year schools' tours, lectures and research support by the education desk. In addition, the summer workshop programme, long a fixture in the gallery's downtown outreach, was in 2004 again in evidence.
Sustaining a school summer camp in 2004 was again achieved by the gallery calling for extra support from its loyal cadre of patrons and supporters, as well as volunteers from the art community. To its credit, the gallery has been able to, in seemingly miraculous fashion, engage assistance from many quarters and has kept up this very important event for youth too often impoverished by their urban surroundings.
SCHOOL TOURS
Additionally, the gallery's ongoing school tours programme, with minimum charges and accompanying guided talks through the many-chambered building has kept the sense of welcome and adventure before the island school population. Throughout 2004, the steady colourful lines of school uniforms, in many hues, and the accompanying shushed chatter and irrepressible giggles, have kept the gallery's halls alive.
These on-site gallery visits are of real importance in the daily curriculum of the widely varied school children who visit. They introduce and share first hand the nation's visual treasures, its portraits of itself. They allow exciting encounters between the children and real-life artists and role models who look like them. They expand the confidence and knowledge offered first hand, to these young minds. They supplement and enrich a sometime dry curricula and offer welcome respite to teachers and students alike, with "a new bigger classroom" to explore.
The year's record of exhibitions of curatorial excellence and the sustained requests for and participation in the National Gallery educational programmes, clearly underscore a year of fine performance by the National Gallery of Jamaica. It has sustained commitment to exhibitions of high standard and broad interest, and its educational programmes despite ongoing challenge. The National Gallery's stewardship of Jamaica's rich heritage in the visual arts will continue to excite and nourish visitors to its downtown Kings-ton home base and hold out new possibilities for the ongoing development of the city just outside its doors, the island beyond and its people.
