Spiritual Yards – Gallery 5: Errol McKenzie

Errol McKenzie – Jesus Married to Satan: 30,000 Acres of Dead Food Kingdom of Darkness (1996), Wayne and Myrene Cox Collection..

Errol McKenzie – Balance of the Root of Christ (1998), Wayne and Myrene Cox Collection..

Errol McKenzie – Her Hair Is Music (2008), Wayne and Myrene Cox Collection..

Errol McKenzie – Rise of the Moon Mother (2008), Wayne and Myrene Cox Collection..

Errol McKenzie – Moon Pelican (2003), Wayne and Myrene Cox Collection..

Spiritual Yards: Home Ground of Jamaica’s Intuitives – Selections from the Wayne and Myrene Cox Collection, continues until January 29, 2017, and explores the spiritual yard tradition in Jamaica, through ten Intuitive artists whose work is steeped in that tradition. The works of art and documentary material in this exhibition were selected from the Wayne and Myrene Cox Collection, a specialized collection of Intuitive Art. Here is the final of our posts on the artists in the exhibition, along with video footage, courtesy of Wayne Cox.

Errol McKenzie (b1954) lives in Walderston in the hills of Manchester. His belief system is is based on his very own spiritual concepts. Aspects of his philosophy, for example, hold the moon as “the centre of energy and eternal power” and women as natural-born leaders. Nowhere is this best expressed by him than in the design of his home called Black Moon Island, home of the “Moon Mother”– an organically shaped stone-house which utilizes concrete wood to create a number of interconnected chambers of varying shapes. As an artist, McKenzie’s body of work includes woodcarvings, cemented free forms, stone arrangements and paintings, all of which display surrealistic elements. Similar to other Jamaican self-taught artists like Brother Brown, Errol McKenzie has a fair amount of international acclaim, having been featured in a number of overseas exhibitions as well as in international publications on “outsider art” such as Raw Vision magazine. Locally, McKenzie’s work has been widely exhibited including the National Gallery of Jamaica’s Intuitives series and Redemption Songs: The Self-Taught Artists of Jamaica (1997) organized by the Diggs Gallery, USA. He was awarded a Bronze Musgrave Medal in Art by the Institute of Jamaica in 1997.

 

YARD POWAH by Wayne Cox – Part II

Pastor Winston Brown (Photo Wayne Cox – all rights reserved)

Here is part II of Wayne Cox’s catalogue essay for the exhibition Spiritual Yards: Home Ground of Jamaica’s Intuitives – Selections from the Wayne and Myrene Cox Collection, which opens on December 11. Part I can be found here.

Pastor Winston Brown

Pastor Winston Brown created the Garden of Eden attraction at his home on the main road just east of Hope Bay, Portland. It is by far the most vibrantly colored of Jamaica’s yard shows. At the roadside, he has signs with spiritual messages, seals, rows of zinc panels, even his whole house, all covered with unique patterning. He preaches occasionally in the area, sermonizing on his visions.

Vincent Atherton (Photo Wayne Cox – all rights reserved)

Vincent Atherton and Errol Lloyd Atherton

Errol Lloyd Atherton lived back in the countryside in Albany, St Mary. He knew the power of carved effigies from his father Vincent who carved to help him gain control over unpredictable forces. Vincent carved highly evocative heads, the tops of which were carved out or burned out, becoming vessels. In 1999, he carved two figures—one to propitiate the century leaving and another to welcome the new one arriving.  His son Lloyd was known as “Powah” in part because of the “powah” his yard possessed.^[1] He participated in Kumina-influenced “Bongo” meetings that brought forth spirit possession, particularly, by the ancestors.

Errol Lloyd “Powah” Atherton (photo Wayne Cox – all rights reserved)

Lloyd displayed numerous stands on bamboo poles, many holding highly charged figures carved by his father or himself. On some he added material such as dried herbs, libations, metal objects and toy figures. The zinc at the border of his yard was painted with messages to please the ancestors. He hung a three-meter long strap of metal he says was an earlier relative’s gong. A gowned figure hung in effigy from a tree high above his front gate. He incised panels of zinc fencing, some in the shape of crosses, with designs and spirit words. Backlit by the sun, the panel’s spirit message would shine through. He placed round objects reflecting the power of the circle passed down from the Kongo cosmogram that evokes the redemptive healing of the daily movement of the sun where the day’s troubles are lifted each night during one’s time with the ancestors when the sun goes below the ground.^[2]  

“Spiritual Yards: Home Ground of Jamaica’s Intuitives – Selections from the Wayne and Myrene Cox Collection” Opens on December 11

The National Gallery of Jamaica is pleased to present Spiritual Yards: Home Ground of Jamaica’s Intuitives, which features selections from the Wayne and Myrene Cox Collection. The exhibition opens on Sunday, December 11, with the formalities starting at 1:30 pm, starting with opening remarks by Wayne Cox and followed by a musical performance by the Nexus Performing Arts Company.

The theme of Spiritual Yards was proposed by Wayne Cox, who co-curated this exhibition, and explores how many of the artists who have been recognized as Intuitives are rooted in popular religious and spiritual practices, especially the Revival religions and also Rastafari. Several produced or contributed to so-called spiritual yards, also known as home ground, or sacred spaces that featured ritual and symbolic objects and images that are meant to engage or represent the spirits, which was either the start of their artistic practice or remained as its main focus. As Wayne Cox has rightly argued, these spiritual yards are often their most outstanding works of art and their cultural significance in the Jamaican context warrants further exploration. Spiritual Yards features the work of ten such artists, namely Errol Lloyd “Powah” Atherton, Vincent Atherton, Everald Brown, Pastor Winston Brown, Leonard Daley, Reginald English, Elijah (Geneva Mais Jarrett), William “Woody” Joseph, Errol McKenzie, and Sylvester Stephens, along with photographs and video material on their life, work and spiritual yards from the Wayne and Myrene Cox archives. Spiritual Yards will be on view until January 29, 2017.

Wayne Cox and his wife Myrene have collected and documented the work of Jamaica’s Intuitives for 30 years. Their homes in Port Maria and in Royal Palm Beach, Florida, serve as important repositories of the work of these artists. Works of the Wayne and Myrene Cox Collection have been widely exhibited internationally. Wayne has written exhibition catalogue essays for a number of exhibitions, including Intuitives III at the National Gallery of Jamaica. He has presented at symposiums including Taking the Road Less Traveled: Built Environments of Vernacular Artists at the Kohler Art Center and Uncommon Visions at the American Folk Art Museum in the United States. In 2005, Art and Antiques named the Coxes to their list of the “Top 100 Art Collectors in the United States.”

In what is now an established Holiday Season tradition at the National Gallery of Jamaica, the programme on Sunday, December 11 will include the award-winning Nexus Performing Arts Company, with a performance which will start right after the short 1:30 pm opening function for Spiritual Yards. The Nexus Performing Arts Company was formed in 2001 by Hugh Douse, Artistic Director, voice tutor, singer, actor, conductor, songwriter, and a former Director of Culture in Education. The group has a broad musical repertoire that draws on Gospel, Negro Spirituals, Semi-classical, Popular music including Reggae and show tunes, African and Classical music of the European and African traditions. The performance by Nexus will take the form of a musical tour of the galleries, with selections inspired by the Spiritual Yards exhibition.

Since the last Sunday of December of 2016 coincides with Christmas Day there will be no Last Sundays programme on December 25. The programme presented on December 11 thus takes the place of what would have been our Last Sundays event for December. Admission on December 11 is free but donations are always welcome. The gift and coffee shop will be open for business and the gift shop is well stocked with Jamaican-made art and craft items and a wide selection of Christmas cards that feature outstanding examples of Jamaican art. Proceeds from these ventures and donations help to fund the National Gallery’s programmes and exhibitions.