The acclaimed Jamaican multi-media artist Petrona Morrison will be having a solo exhibition, entitled New Works, which opens at 10A West King’s House Road, on Saturday, September 14.
Petrona Morrison holds a BA (Fine Arts) from McMaster University and an MFA from Howard University. She has exhibited locally and internationally, in exhibitions such as the Havana Biennial in(1997; the Jamaica Biennial 2017, National Gallery of Jamaica,; and History and Infinity (Carifesta XIII), Nidhe Israel Synagogue Gallery, Bridgetown, Barbados in 2017. New Works is Petrona Morrison’s fifth solo exhibition in Jamaica and she also had a solo exhibition, South African Diary, at 198 Gallery in London in 2005. In 1994-95 she was Artist-in-Residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Other residencies include the Caribbean Contemporary Arts Center, CCA7, Trinidad (2000); Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Nebraska (2002); and Fordsburg Artists Studio, Johannesburg, South Africa (2004). She served as the Director of the School of Visual Arts of the Edna Manley College from 2006 to 2014, when she retired. She was awarded the Gold Musgrave Medal in 2014 by the Institute of Jamaica.
Petrona Morrison’s work has engaged deeply personal, as well as socio-political concerns through assemblages and installations, and more recently digital photography and video. New Works features composite digital collages, video, and an installation. The work in the exhibition dates from 2017 to the present and reflects her recurrent engagement with themes of fragility, resilience, and location. Inspired in part by the debates about Jamaica’s proposed national ID system, it consists of a series of “portraits” that reflect her ongoing concerns about genetics, personal experience, internal and external topographies and images, and the construction of identities and perceptions.
New Works is curated by the art historian, independent curator and critic Veerle Poupeye. Veerle Poupeye was educated at the Universiteit Gent in Belgium (BA and MA in Art History) and Emory University (PhD in Art History and Cultural Studies). She is specialized in Caribbean art and her publications include Caribbean Art, in the World of Art series of Thames and Hudson.
The New Works exhibition is held on a pop-up basis at 10A West King’s House Road (the present site of Itopia, across from the side entrance of the Canadian Embassy), where Petrona Morrison had a solo exhibition in 1989, at what was then the Babylon Jamaica Gallery. All are cordially invited to the opening reception of New Works on Saturday, September 14 at 6 pm, at 10A West King’s House Road. The exhibition will continue until Saturday, October 5 and can be visited, Mondays to Saturdays, from 12 noon to 7 pm. Catalogue information will be available online and will be accessible via this post. An artist’s talk is being scheduled and the date and time will be announced shortly.
Contact: Veerle Poupeye, email: vpcuratialprojects@gmail.com, website: vpprojects.wordpress.com
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