Virtual Last Sundays to ft. Nexus

To close the year, for our December Last Sundays the National Gallery of Jamaica will be having a special holiday performance by the Nexus Performing Arts Company on December 27, 2020 at 1:30pm. The video performance will premiere on our YouTube and IGTV platforms for you to enjoy.

Formed in 2001 by Hugh Douse, the Nexus Performing Arts Company is known for their powerful vocals and cultural performances. The company’s repertoire is drawn from several genres; gospel, Negro spirituals, semi-classical, popular music including reggae and show tunes, and African and classical music of the European and African traditions. Their costumes are vibrant, colourful and centre around cultural dress of the musical genres they embody. Nexus has performed on both local and international stages at the Jamaica Jazz and Blues Festival, the Beres Hammond Moment In Time Concert, the 2009 Jamaica Reggae Industry Awards Show, Jamaica’s National Honours and Awards Investiture Ceremony, the 2008 National Independence and Olympic Grand Galas, the IAAF World Junior Championships Opening Ceremony, the Cricket World Cup 2007 Opening Ceremony, and the National Actor Boy Awards.

In anticipation for the closing of this year 2020, we take the opportunity to wish all our patrons and their loved ones Happy Holidays, and a blessed New Year when it comes, from the Management and Staff of the National Gallery of Jamaica. This year has been unprecedented, forcing many Jamaicans and the rest of the global community to change the way we operate. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been challenges, lessons learnt and thankfully, moments of triumph. The pandemic continues, but the NGJ remains committed to the service of our fellow citizens and the world.  

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Last Sundays to ft. Nexus

The National Gallery of Jamaica’s Last Sundays programming for December 29th, 2019 will feature the Nexus Performing Arts Company as well as a selections from the National Collection related to music, movement and forms of resistance.

Bringing the year to a spectacular close, the award-winning Nexus Performing Arts Company is back for what has become a staple of our December Last Sundays programme for the last six years. 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. Join them as they take us on a lyrical tour of the works on display filled with song, dance and theatrical performances, a truly festive way to close 2019.

The National Gallery of Jamaica will be open from 11:00 am to 4:00 pm, with the Nexus performance beginning at 1:30 p.m. As per usual on Last Sundays, admission is free, but contributions to our Donations Box, located in the lobby, are appreciated. These donations help to fund exhibitions and our Last Sundays programming. The National Gallery’s Gift Shop and Coffee Shop will also be open for business.

 

Last Sundays – December 31, 2017, ft. Nexus

PARKING INFORMATION
Ocean Boulevard, which is the normal access road to drive to the NGJ on Orange Street, will be closed on Sunday, December 31, in preparation for the New Year’s fireworks that night. UDC has kindly made complimentary parking arrangements for visitors to our Last Sundays programme in the parking garage across from the NGJ main entrance, with the understanding that those who park there will leave by 4 pm (or moved to paid parking for those who are staying for the fireworks). To access the NGJ, please proceed on Port Royal Street (or Harbour Street, if coming from the West) and turn on Orange Street, where there will be crowd control barriers. Please indicate to the security guard on duty that you are a guest of the NGJ Last Sundays programme and you will be directed to the parking garage. Feel free to call us at 922-1561 or -3 if you need any assistance.

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The National Gallery’s final Last Sundays event for 2017 will take place on New Year’s Eve, Sunday, December 31 from 11 am to 4 pm, with the featured performance starting at 1:30 am. Visitors will have the opportunity to view the National Gallery’s current exhibitions, Explorations V: Portraits in Conversation and Explorations VI: Engaging Abstraction. The featured performance will be by the Nexus Performing Arts Company.

The Explorations exhibition series, which was launched in 2013, explores big themes and issues in Jamaican art and features mainly works from the National Gallery Collection, which are reinterpreted in these thematic contexts. Explorations V: Portraits in Conversation examines the significance and conflicted politics of artistic portraiture in the development of Jamaican art from the 18th century to the present, looking at issues such as race, class, gender, as well as the ideas about art and the artist that are reflected in the portrait. Its counterpart, Explorations VI: Engaging Abstraction, examines the at times contentious role of abstraction in modern and contemporary art from Jamaica and the Caribbean. Abstraction became an established part of the local art practice in the 1960s but is often dismissed as alien to Caribbean culture, which has a strong focus on content and iconic local subject matter. More recently, abstraction has also found new life in the age of time-based, digital media. A special feature in the Explorations VI exhibition is the Kingston staging of David Gumbs’ Xing Wang interactive video installation, which was originally shown as part of the 2017 Jamaica Biennial at National Gallery West in Montego Bay. David Gumbs is an artist from St Martin who lives and works in Martinique.

In what is now an established Holiday Season tradition at the National Gallery, the featured performance on Sunday, December 31 will be by the award-winning Nexus Performing Arts Company. 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 place in the exhibition galleries, presented as a musical tour, with selections inspired by the Portraits in Conversation and Engaging Abstraction exhibitions.

Admission on Sunday, December 31 will be free and free guided tours will also be offered. The gift and coffee shop will be open for business and contributions to the donations box are welcomed. Revenues from our shops and donations help to fund programmes such as the Explorations exhibitions and our Last Sundays programming.

Special Viewing of Spiritual Yards, with Nexus Performing Arts Company

 

The National Gallery is pleased to present a special viewing of its current exhibition, Spiritual Yards: Home Ground of Jamaica’s Intuitives – Selections from the Wayne and Myrene Cox Collection, on Sunday, January 15, 2017. The Most Honourable Edward Seaga will deliver remarks and the collector Wayne Cox will be in attendance. The critically acclaimed Nexus Performing Arts Company will offer an exclusive musical tour of the exhibition.

The Spiritual Yards exhibition, which opened on December 11, 2016, consists entirely of works of art and documentary material from the art collection of Wayne and Myrene Cox, a specialized collection of Jamaican Intuitive art. The exhibition explores the “spiritual yard” tradition in Jamaica, which is an important yet insufficiently documented part of Jamaica’s popular cultural heritage, and focuses on ten Intuitive artists who produced sacred images and objects for such yards and in most instances. The December 11 opening function also featured a musical tour of the exhibition presented by the critically acclaimed Nexus Performing Arts Company, whose deeply moving performance brought to life the cultural significance of the exhibition and the messages contained in the artists’ work. The performance was so powerful that it was decided to offer it a second time on January 15, 2017.

The National Gallery of Jamaica will be open from 11 am to 4 pm on January 15, 2017 and the function and musical tour will start at 1:30 pm. Admission will be free and the public is invited. Spiritual Yards continues until January 29, 2017. The exhibition catalogue is available for sale in the National Gallery gift shop.

“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.

Last Sundays on December 27, Featuring Nexus and Masculinities

The National Gallery of Jamaica’s Last Sundays programme for December 2015 is scheduled for Sunday, December 27, from 11 am to 4 pm.

Visitors will have the opportunity to view the recently opened Explorations IV: Masculinities exhibition, which explores how concepts of masculinity have been represented and articulated in Jamaican art. The exhibition, which was curated by Senior Curator O’Neil Lawrence, features works of art from the colonial era up to the present and in a variety of media, by Isaac Mendes Belisario, A. Duperley and Sons, Edna Manley, Albert Huie, Archie Lindo, Osmond Watson, Ebony G. Patterson, Phillip Thomas, Marlon James and many others. Also on view is a selection of Recent Acquisitions and most sections of the permanent exhibitions will also be open, and provide a wide-ranging overview of Jamaica’s artistic and cultural history.

In what is now an established Holiday Season tradition, the featured performance on Sunday, December 27 will be by the award-winning Nexus Performing Arts Company and will start at 1:30 pm. 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 place in the exhibition galleries, presented as a musical tour, with selections inspired by specific works in the Masculinities exhibition.

Admission on Sunday, December 27 will be free and free guided tours will be offered. The gift and coffee shop will be open for business and contributions to the donations box are welcomed. Revenues from our shops and donations help to fund programmes such as the Explorations IV: Masculinities exhibition and our Last Sundays programming.