“Daylight Come…Picturing Dunkley’s Jamaica” to open at National Gallery’s on Last Sundays on May 27, 2018

The National Gallery of Jamaica’s Last Sundays programme for the month of May will mark the opening of a new exhibition Daylight Come…Picturing Dunkley’s Jamaica. It will also feature a special ensemble musical performance as part of Lupus Awareness month activities.

Daylight Come…Picturing Dunkley’s Jamaica complements the John Dunkley: Neither Day nor Night exhibition which opened on April 29.This retrospective of Dunkley’s work was curated by independent curator Diana Nawi, formerly of the Perez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), and Nicole Smythe-Johnson, independent Jamaican curator and writer. Originally shown at PAMM in 2017, this version includes six works that were not part of that initial exhibition.

John Dunkley – Diamond Wedding (1940), Collection: National Gallery of Jamaica (Gift of Cassie Dunkley)

This new exhibition Daylight Come… explores themes such as tourism, immigration and the emergence of cultural nationalism in Jamaica during Dunkley’s lifetime. The exhibition provides further context to Dunkley’s creative output; exploring the works of his contemporaries David Miller Snr and David Miller Jnr, Carl Abrahams, Albert Huie, David Pottinger, Ralph Campbell and Henry Daley among others. This exhibition will be on view until July 29, 2018.

The Millers in 1964

May is Lupus Awareness Month and the special musical performance this Last Sundays serves as one of the activities to raise awareness to this life-altering disease. The music, poetry and dance that will be performed are all inspired by the emotional states experienced by someone with Lupus. The various performers include members of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Jamaica, the Jamaica Youth Chorale, the Porter Centre for Knowledge and The Music House.

Edna Manley – Prayer/Kneeling Figure, (1937)

As is now customary for our Sunday programmes, the doors will be open to the public from 11 am to 4 pm and the special musical performance starts at 1:30 pm. Admission and guided tours will be free. The gift and coffee shop will also be open for business.

 

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NGJ to Stage Tribute to Albert Huie

Albert Huie - Crop Time (1955), Collection: NGJ

 

On January 31, 2010, Jamaica received the news that Albert Huie, a major figure in the development of Jamaican art and, indeed, one of Jamaica’s most outstanding painters and printmakers, had passed away in Baltimore. Nearly one year later and on the eve of what would have been Huie’s ninetieth birthday, the National Gallery of Jamaica pauses to pay tribute to this outstanding Jamaican Master and pioneer of modern Jamaican art.

The National Gallery’s tribute to Huie will take the form of an informal function on Thursday, December 30, starting at 12:30 pm, in the presence of the Artist’s daughter Christine Huie-Roy and some of his closest friends. We will also open, on that occasion, a special tribute exhibition consisting of works of art by Albert Huie from the National Collection. The exhibition provides an overview of Huie’s oeuvre from the late 1930s to the late 1990s, essentially spanning his entire artistic career, and illustrates Huie’s unparalleled ability to capture, in print and in paint, the beauty of the Jamaican environment and the spirit of its people – an artistic legacy we cherish and honour.

Members of the public are invited to join us for the Albert Huie tribute on December 30, which will include special tribute, poetry and music, and a reception, as well as the opportunity to view the Albert Huie tribute exhibition and the 2010 National Biennial.

Remembering Albert Huie (1920-2010)

This post is the NGJ’s tribute to Jamaican master painter and printmaker Albert Huie, who passed away on Sunday. It was written by David Boxer, Chief Curator, and Veerle Poupeye, Executive Director.

Albert Huie - Crop Time (1955), Collection: National Gallery of Jamaica

Albert Huie was born on December 31, 1920 in Falmouth, Trelawny, and moved to Kingston in 1936. Within months of his arrival in Kingston he completed his first painting The Dancers. This precocious painting by the sixteen year old was to be the “launching pad” of a prodigious career.  Huie himself related his “discovery” by H. Delves Molesworth, the then Secretary of the Institute of Jamaica:

In the beginning I bought enamels in small tins from a hardware store and this was the medium I used to paint The Dancers after I had observed the scene in a downtown piano bar. Not long afterwards, I took this painting along with a couple others and my sketches, to the Institute of Jamaica to show them to Delves Molesworth. I was almost thrown out of the  Institute. Mr. Molesworth himself interceded, looked at what I had brought to show him and expressed an interest. He invited me to his house and commissioned a portrait to be done of his wife. During this time he began introducing me to his circle of friends, which included the Manleys. His property adjoined Drumblair. My long association with the Manleys began after this.

Albert Huie’s first landscape was painted at Drumblair and is in fact titled Drumblair. A regular visitor to Drumblair in the late thirties, Huie also recalled that his first woodcut was done in Edna Manley’s studio.