Artists: Ashraph, Edward Bowen, Susan Dayal, Jade Drakes, Jackie Hinkson, Horacio Hospedales, Che Lovelace, Joshua Lue Chee Kong, Martin Mouttet, Paul Kain, Wendy Nanan, Richard Mark Rawlins.
Line is the first in a series of experimental exhibitions that will explore what happens when a selection of artists is given a single format, and a single theme or starting point from which to work. Line was chosen as the first theme in this series because of its elemental nature in art – it can be a starting point from which ideas are generated; a simple element that has the potential to become more complicated and detailed as it multiples, curves or thickens.
A line can be defined in a literal sense – a mark that outlines something, fills something in, or marks a boundary – these are real lines that exist, physically. Or, a line can be contour or implied; a division created by the absence or presence of other elements, or created by an edge. Line in shadow; pattern that creates line, or a line marked by a shift of colour. Lines can be representational as well, as with the idea of division, whether mental or emotional.
Line was co-curated with Melanie Archer.
Che Lovelace
2017
29 x 70″
Assorted Pigment on Board
Martin Mouttet
2017
Oil on paper, acrylic gesso, cedar wood, marine ply, BRC welded wire, red electrical wire, fired clay, vétiver roots
29”L x 6.5”B x 72”H .
Born in 1965, Richard Ashraph Ramsaran is a conceptual artist from Trinidad and Tobago. He goes by the name Ashraph. His first solo exhibition was in 1991; several group and solo exhibitions followed over the years. In 2008, he held a conceptual show titled, “A Carnival Band” at the National Museum and Art Gallery. In Trinidad, he’s shown at Y Art Gallery: The Mask exhibition in 2013, and Black Indian in 2015, and at the Frame Shop: the Bat exhibition in 2014, and A sailor is a Sailor is a sailor in 2017. He has also exhibited in St. Lucia, Curaçao and London.
Born 1963, Eddie Bowen studied at Croydon College, UK from 1981-1985. He has since been living and working in Trinidad, often letting his environment in San Souci, be his muse.
“A line is the continuation of a dot, a point, deliberately articulated to construct meaning and language, line is the visible extension of human abstracted thought.” – Edward Bowen
Horacio Hospedales is a Trinidad-born multi-media artist who has been practicing for twenty-five years. While exhibiting his fine art in Manhattan, he became a muralist and decorative painter working mainly on exclusive homes throughout New York, Connecticut and New Jersey in the USA. There was a break in his creative career when he returned to Trinidad in 2004 for family obligations but has returned to making since 2013.
The concept was to approach ‘Line’ as a found object – a useful and primitive tool that may or may not be suited to the development and communication of an idea.
“I became absorbed with the building process of interlaced lines from the construction of a single line to the layering of 144 objects to form one line.” – Horacio Hospedales
Susan Dayal was born in Trinidad in 1968. She studied Sculpture at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee, Scotland.
Susan makes sculpture using the technique known locally as wirebending. The female torso and the mask are recurring themes that are used to explore the imagery of Trinidad Carnival, folklore, feminism and tropical flora and fauna.
Wendy Nanan, born Port of Spain 1955, BFA 1979,has been working and showing continuously both in Trinidad and abroad since 1986. Some of her most notable shows and imagery to enter the Trinidadian iconography are from the cricket drawings, the Banana sculptures, and the Idyllic Marriage series. The Books and Stupas show, the Baby Krishna series and more recently in 2016 the shells and pods exhibition. Considered one of Trinidad’s treasured senior fine artists her personal vision is that of the contemporary West Indian artist observing a post-colonial creolised society through the lens of a traditional East Indian background, but rooted firmly in feminist ideology.
Photo by Andil Gosine
Artist Statement
“Our national collective memory is short. We never stop to take stock of where we are, or where we’re going. Unfortunately, I think we’re doomed to repeat our mistakes. It is my job to respond to this phenomenon. Polite Line Do Not Cross, can be read as a collection of notes from my current multiple work trajectories and narratives of black identity, race, nationalism and class concerns. These topics don’t make for readily saleable objects when it comes to art in a society that values provincial fare over the more problematic ‘think’ and ‘conceptual’ works of contemporary art practitioners. PLDNC, is a is a combination of Finding Black, (on-going), Resting on our Laurels, 2016 and A Dress to the Nation 2017. Taken together, they form a personal protest against a system of commodification. Crossing the polite line of things we don’t discuss, the piece challenges the viewer to go further than surface appreciation and nostalgic yearnings for a time when things were supposed to be better.” – Richard Mark Rawlins
This painting is connected to a motif that has been recurring in my work over the last three years or so: the window – specifically, the louvered slats or jalousie windows at my studio space in Chaguaramas. Increasingly, over the past three years of my working there, the
space has become a presence in my paintings. While arranging still
life objects to be painted close to or in front of these prominent windows, they themselves started to become an important part of the composition. I found myself drawn to how the lines, intervals, and gaps created by the windows helped structure the scene I was painting. When looking at the windows, you are in fact looking at both the physical structure and geometry of the window slats themselves, as well as the scene outside in the distance.
In successive paintings, I have arranged the divisions of the window spaces in more imaginative ways, making the slats into varying thickness, or colours or making their edges sharp or soft. The formatting of these elements is playful yet controlled, making a useful improvisation possible. The piece in question here is part of this ongoing experimentation where I depict the windows as real objects, as well as more imaginative or abstract forms that allow flexibility. – Che Lovelace
“My Work is informed by the present social, cultural issues that exist within the space of Trinidad. I find ideas within the streets of port-of-Spain through the observation of the street dwellers. These persons become noble characters in my imagination to be catalogued and referenced at a later stage. I find the source of this “visual richness” within this space is due to the fusion of cultures African Spanish Indian French, that have settled upon this island.
The pieces I have named “the panty line” consists of five panels produced with graphite, acrylic pen and ink. The work is based on the abductions and abuse of the women in our society. I came up with the concept of having numerous types of panties being hung high off telephone pole-lines and coconut trees in an open air sky, while being haunted by a line of black birds whom symbolize the perpetrators of these heinous acts. This is to represent a crime that seems to happen in broad daylight right over our heads.”
-Paul kain
Paul Kain born in Trinidad studied at the Open Window Art Academy in Pretoria South Africa obtaining a four year diploma in fine arts and visual communication and one year at Rhodes university in Grahamstown eastern cape South Africa. participating in numerous group exhibitions and has held to two solo exhibitions.
“Map of sensations like a nerve map
Looking to the inside map
The main parts of the is map are the brain, heart, belly, the main centers of action in my life.
Depicting sexualisation by showing unity, power, energy, the layers and millions of things that go into making you and driving you every day. The privates, through which I became a woman, a mother and it has a big impact on my life. Power, energy, implosions, explosions, deeper layers.” – Jade Drakes
Jade Drakes is a Trinidadian craftsman with a fondness for all things craft and animal, especially the dog. She was born in Venezuela of Trinidadian and Italian parentage and moved to Trinidad at a very young age. In her early 20s, she set off to America to study stuff and work like a bitch. She studied Metalsmithing and Theatre at Slippery Rock University, where she learned to work with animal horn and bone under Professor Robert J. Bruya – ‘The Road Kill King’. She went on to study Bench Jewellery and Stone Setting at North Benet Street School. When the economy tanked, she went off to her father’s homeland to improve on her stone setting skills but instead found herself charmed by Alchimia, a contemporary jewellery school in Florence, where things were crazy (just the way she likes them). Jade draws her inspiration from nature, old shops that sell old things, old ladies, old men, museums, books – especially children’s books, female contemporary artists, insects and conversation.
Martin Mouttet, born in 1973, grew up in Sevilla, Brechin Castle, and was educated at St. Mary’s College, Port of Spain and Presentation College, Chaguanas.
In 1991 he joined Aquarela Galleries and in 2011, together with Geoffrey MacLean and Isabel Brash opened Medulla Art Gallery.
Self-taught, Mouttet’s cynical artistic expressions have often been considered controversial. He uses his personal experiences in his work, revealing his emotions of being trapped by religious and social traditions. He uses different mixed media in his presentations.
He says: “There is a menacing reticence that looms that I find very hard to digest and my work embodies the dismantling of this unspoken sordid truth”.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
When I contemplated what “Line” meant to me, immediately a plethora of idioms, phrases and words came to mind, but these resonated with me the most – “bloodline”, “timeline”, “guideline”, “draw the line” and “cross the line”.
I think of the power of that mark and when combined with others whether in the formation of words, symbols, people, buildings or things. It has the capacity to be potent in its execution and intensity to elevate or decimate.
We live in a world that is fundamentally patriarchal and I want to challenge and expose this imbalance and oppressive system that continues to dictate the moral and political attitudes to the detriment of a multifaceted society, particularly toward women and children.
My piece is a conversation with my younger self that seeks to remind us that there is truth and authenticity that goes beyond our own definition and traditions.
Joshua Lue Chee Kong (b. 1988) is an interdisciplinary artist, archivist and researcher from Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. His work focuses on Caribbean narratives around creolization and the way it has shaped the social fabric of the Caribbean region.
He studied at Savannah College of Art and Design where he received his BFA in graphic design and his MFA in Interdisciplinary Studies of Art, Media and Design from OCAD University. Joshua has participated in artist residencies at Red Gate Gallery, Beijing in 2015 and at Vermont Studio Centre, Vermont in 2017. At Medulla Art Gallery, Trinidad, he has had two solo exhibitions titled Moulded Memories in 2014 and Paradise in 2016.
His work had been published in Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas, ANNO book, See Me Here: A Survey of Contemporary Self-Portraits from the Caribbean, The Draconion Switch e-magazine and two of his photographic images appeared on the cover of the August 2012 TIME magazine.
