Young Talent 2015: Monique Gilpin

Monique Gilpin – Porcelain Disposition II (2014)

Monique Gilpin – Porcelain Disposition III (2015)

Monique Gilpin – Porcelain Disposition IV

Monique Gilpin – Porcelain Correlation (2015)

Monique Gilpin – Lives Matter (2015)

Here is the fifth of our short posts on the artists in the Young Talent 2015 exhibition, which opens on August 30:

Monique Gilpin was born in 1985 in Montego Bay, St James, Jamaica. She graduated in 2006 from the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, where she majored in Painting and Photography. She currently lives in Montego Bay, where she works as Assistant Curator at National Gallery West at the Montego Bay Cultural Centre.

Artist’s Statement

The Porcelain Series is a dialogue between the concepts of stability and instability and also the traditional and contemporary realities of life. Born from my nomadic experiences within the last six years, my yearning for stability is embodied within the exploration of the human form in a three-dimensional space. Every minute of our lives is spent in physical and psychological dialogue with the space around us and the contorted bodies within these oversaturated three-dimensional spaces have been transmogrified towards semi-abstraction mimicking hard ceramic surfaces. The porcelain figurines in many older Jamaican homes seem to be ever-present and are symbolic of a stability that the younger generation of Jamaicans no longer seem to be able to achieve. The contortions and attempted transformation of the bodies represent the psychological struggle to achieve this stability.