Untitled Genesis Series - Contributed
TRICIA GORDON-JOHNSTON is a Jamaican artist
living and working in Kingston. Her work, 'Untitled Genesis Series', is being shown in Curator's Eye II at the National Gallery of Jamaica. Here she discusses her work with Dr. Jonathan Greenland, executive director of the National Gallery of Jamaica.
Where did this piece come from?
The work is 'process-orientated' in that it has come through the process of delving into my personal concerns. Painting for me has for a long time been a cathartic experience. Speaking through the art, I explore my experiences and concerns as a woman, specifically, in this case, about pregnancy.
The piece consists of four fragments of soft sculpture. It is somewhat informed by 'minimalism' and other conceptual art movements. I use achromatic reds in speaking about the internal body and the process of pregnancy. The works also allude to cultural, socio-political and personal signification, whether as energy, danger, allusions of internal matter, function or waste of the human or animal body. I create texture with layering: applying multiple stains and saturation of the materials. The scale of the works is invading, confronting and is informed by the concrete space of the room.
The work is introspective. It aids in my own signification of experience. It is my hope and desire that the viewers will respond to the immediacy of the work via the scale, colour and surfaces. The surfaces are a complex of density, atmospheric vastness, enveloped linear composites, saturation, changing and ephemeral states and fragility.
These ideas all converge to speak as a metaphor, in an oblique manner, to discuss ideas of pregnancy and its attendant experiences, in an attempt to subvert associated and confined ideas and misconceptions.
What is your greatest artistic influence and why?
My greatest artistic influence would have to be Petrona Morrison. She is a mentor, she has tutored and guided me at The Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts since I was in first year there, I'm also greatly influenced by her work and her approach to work, delving into aspects of gender and identity, the way the work challenges scale, impermanent materials and the symbiotic relationship between fragments of materials
What do you think of the Jamaican art scene?
The Jamaican art scene is a little too focused on the commercial aspect of things. I'm grateful that The National Gallery and Mutual Life Gallery exist as spaces where there is a deeper and more relevant focus.
What has been your
greatest moment of artistic achievement?
That would have to be being selected for and being involved in The Curator's Eye II, being documented as a part of Jamaica's history and identity at this point in time.
What are your favourite materials?
I don't think I actually have favourite materials, I started out working with acrylic paints, and found them limiting, I've always needed to embody them with other matter. I've experimented with woods, plexi-glass, different types of paper, burning, corroding materials, water, metals, earth, amongst others and the materials used in the piece in The Curator's Eye II.
What is your favourite work of Jamaican art?
I think of Absence, an installation by Petrona Morrison. Experiencing that piece made me mourn for my grandmother who passed away when I was a child. I don't think I actually mourned for her, nor knew how when she died. It also helped me to celebrate her memory.
Where is your favourite place in Jamaica? (or it could be elsewhere)
That would have to be my home, with my family, all the love, support and security that engulfs me there.
Matisse or Picasso?
Neither, maybe Alberto Burri. What captivates me about his work is the way he uses materials as paint to speak about the human body. He was a doctor in the Second World War, but because of the mutilation of human beings in the conflict, he couldn't be a doctor anymore and so he became a painter. His paintings were about the mutilation of the body. He would use layers of burlap and cut into it, burn it, use pigment on top of it to signify the ravages of the body in war.
Where do you see your work in five years (or less)?
Hopefully at the National Gallery and the Mutual Life Gallery.
