SCHEDULE


2020

February 24: Open calls for residency and fellowship programs

March 19: Guest Lecutre Series: Danielle Purifoy

March 31: Deadlines for program applications

May: Internship program international rotations

June 1: Caribbean Cross-Residency

July - Sept: La Práctica

Sept - Nov: Artist-in-residence

Nov - Dec: Exhibition programing

 






MONDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2022
SANITY TV: KINGSTON
AUTUMN KNIGHT

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2022



Image Credit: Western Front: Ross Karre Merve Kayan, Adele Fournet, and Autumn Knight

New Local Space is pleased to invite you to a live performance by interdisciplinary artist Autumn Knight

Sunday, December 11, 2022
6:30 - 8:00 p.m.
New Local Space
190 Mountain View Avenue
Kingston 6

This event is free and open to the public. Limited spaces available. Complimentary refreshments will be served. RSVP at Eventbrite.

The ongoing performance series Sanity TV, which Autumn Knight began in 2016 during her residency at the Studio Museum in Harlem, takes the form of an imaginary television talk show in which Knight plays the role of host. The performance is improvisational in structure: Knight moves through the crowd, giving the audience various prompts, asking questions and allowing the audience to know each other.

Autumn Knight is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist working with performance, installation, video and text. Knight’s video and performance work has been presented by institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art and The Kitchen. Knight is the recipient of the 2021-2022 Nancy B. Negley Rome Prize in Visual Arts and a 2022-2023 Guggenheim Fellowship.


FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2022
SIGHTING BLACK GIRLHOOD
CAMILLE CHEDDA | TISHANA FISHER |
MICHAELLA GARRICK | SASHA-KAY NICOLE HINDS | ONEIKA RUSSELL | ABIGAIL SWEENEY

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2022



Image courtesy Sasha-Kay Nicole Hinds

Join us for the opening of group exhibition Sighting Black Girlhood, featuring work by Camille Chedda, Tishana Fisher, Michaella Garrick, Sasha-Kay Nicole Hinds, Oneika Russell and Abigail Sweeney.

Opens Saturday October 1, 2022
4:00 pm to 7:30 pm
190 Mountain View Avenue, Kingston 6
Free and open to the public. Complimentary refreshments will be served.

The Sighting Black Girlhood project began in the throes the COVID-19 pandemic, a context that entrenched the inequities of current social systems in which Black girls’ suffering remains largely invisible. Pushed further into the domestic space as a result of the pandemic, the lives and specific violences faced by Black girls and young women have been further concealed.

Intervening in these processes, NLS invited artists to commune with a girl or young woman in their life over the course of several months, collaborating with her on her portrait. Centring the gendered experience of Blackness, Sighting Black Girlhood attempts, through portraiture, to redress imposed silence and invisible suffering.

As art educators, visual artists Camille Chedda and Oneika Russell both chose to create portraits of their art students Abigail Sweeney and Michaella Garrick respectively, who they in turn invited to create work of their own for this exhibition, enacting cross-generational care in the art community as a creative praxis and professional mode of working. Sasha-Kay Nicole Hinds and Tishana Fisher, both recent graduates of the School of Visual Arts, Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts created portraits of their peers, Ashtaina Stewart and Kamala Krishana Nakeisha Davis, respectively.

Sighting Black Girlhood is open from October 1 to October 31. The exhibition is part of an international collaboration conceptualised in partnership with the Center for Experimental Ethnography, University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia) and the Centre for the Study of Race, Gender & Class, University of Johannesburg.

About the artists

Camille Chedda was born in Manchester, Jamaica, and lives and works in Kingston, Jamaica. She graduated from the Edna Manley College with an Honours Diploma in Painting and received an MFA in Painting from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Her works have been featured in exhibitions at the National Gallery of Jamaica, NLS Kingston, the Olympia Gallery, and the Museum of Latin American Art. She is the recipient of awards including the Albert Huie Award, the Reed Foundation Scholarship, the inaugural Dawn Scott Memorial Award, the British Council’s TAARE Program Award, the Catapult SHAR Grant and the inaugural Jamaica Art Society’s In Focus Fellowship. She has been an artist in residence at Alice Yard in Trinidad, Art Omi in New York, and Hospitalfield in Scotland, and has completed the Catapult Stay Home Artist Residency and the HOMO Sargassum Art Residency. She recently participated in Documenta 15 in Kassel, Germany. Chedda is the Project Manager of the Rubis Mécénat’s InPulse Art Project, and lectures at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts.

Tishana Fisher recently completed her studies at The Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, with a bachelor's degree in fine arts painting and was awarded the “Dean’s Spirit award”. Fisher is a creative and dynamic individual who explores Painting and Mixed Media. Her paintings commemorates the personal experience of life, working primarily with grayscale and collage elements. Fisher has participated in exhibitions such as “And I Resume The Struggle”, and ‘Emerging Contemporary: Jamaica’. Fisher has also done murals for Kingston Creatives, J. Wray and Nephew and the Pepsi Jamaica “JAM I CAN Campaign”

Michaella Garrick was born in Mandeville, Manchester, Jamaica, and currently lives and works in Kingston, Jamaica. She recently completed her final year of studies at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, where she graduated with a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Painting. Garrick produces participatory sculptures using sugarcane to unpack and intervene in generational domestic trauma experienced by black women in a post-plantation society. Garrick has exhibited in the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts’ Final Year Show; Epilogue: fons et origo in June 2022. She recently completed a tactile mural at The School for the Blind and Visually Impaired in August 2022.

Sasha-Kay Nicole Hinds was born in St Andrew Jamaica, in 1995. Sasha-Kay Nicole is an Interdisciplinary healing artist from Jamaica. She graduated with an honours BFA in interdisciplinary Studies from the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, Kingston in 2021.Her works are autobiographical but highlight the lived experiences of many black women and girls in Jamaica, who are affected by the negative intersectional evils of race and gender. Deconstructing social and political concerns while simultaneously encouraging healing through indigenous African spiritual concepts that promote self-care and self-healing. In her practice, she takes an interdisciplinary approach to artmaking, often including photography and sound. But her practice has expanded to include other disciplines such as games, text, drawing, printmaking, digital projections, video art, and installation. Sasha-Kay Nicole has exhibited works in a few exhibitions namely: Manifestations, EMCVPA Student exhibition at CAG[e] Gallery, [Un]finished (2019), and I resume the struggle at Olympia Art gallery in Jamaica (2021-2022). In 2021 she was a part of the inaugural La Practica, a group residency at New Local Space (Kingston/Jamaica). She also placed 2nd in UNESCO Human Rights Competition in 2018.

Oneika Russell is a visual artist, art educator and cultural producer. She attended The Edna Manley College of the Visual & Performing Arts in Kingston, Jamaica from 1999 to 2003 where she completed a diploma in the Painting Department. She has also studied Interactive Media at Goldsmiths College in London under The Centre for Cultural Studies and completed a DA in Art at Kyoto Seika University in Kyoto, Japan in 2014. She received The Commonwealth Arts & Crafts Award in 2007 and has done residencies at Residency Unlimited in New York, Vermont Studio Centre in Vermont, Post-Museum in Singapore, NLS in Kingston. She has exhibited in countries such as Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago, Norway, Japan, US, Canada, UK and Germany. Major presentations include ‘At the Crossroads: Critical Film and Video from the Caribbean at Perez Museum of Art Miami' in 2016 and the 2018 DAKAR Biennial and Jamaican Pulse at The Royal West of England Academy, UK in 2017. Oneika has taught various digital art and fine art courses at the Edna Manley College between 2006 and is the Founding Director of Tide Rising Art Projects, an artist-led initiative.

Abigail Sweeney is a recent graduate from Dunoon Park Technical High School where she was a participant in the Inpulse Art Project, a creative platform and life skills development programme offering visual art courses led by local and international artists. During her three years in the program as a high school student she trained at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts. She works in screen printing and acrylic painting. Sighting Black Girlhood is Sweeney’s first exhibition.


THURSDAY, JULY 7, 2022
TEACHER, NUH TEACH ME NUH NONSENSE
BRAD PINNOCK
JULY 16 - AUGUST 15 2022




You are invited to the opening of Brad Pinnock's solo exhibition, Teacher, Nuh Teach Me Nuh Nonsense. Pinnock visits local betting houses where he collects ephemera such as betting slips, gambling receipts and cigarette boxes to create motifs within his art that “investigates the human predicament, particularly as it relates to black people's psychological struggles and the gamble of living under the continued effects of coloniality”. His horse and rider motifs are made as metaphors of a long colonial tradition in which "like horses, black people have been bred, sold and exploited for profit”. Pinnock contemplates the history of animal experiments in the field of behaviourism, particularly those studies done in Operant Conditioning. His video and collage work draw from archival footage and photographs to further unpack how these mechanisms have been routinely exploited in politics and mass media. The exhibition title is a nod to well-known Nigerian musician Fela Kuti, whose hypnotic track, Teacher Don't Teach Me Nonsense (1980) tackles many of the same themes addressed in Pinnock's work. Pinnock’s exhibition at NLS includes a large-scale outdoor horse sculpture of steel, wire and found materials, in conversation with smaller horse sculptures set in relation to the surrounding architecture. Also included in the exhibition is an immersive indoor installation which employs collage, designed objects and video.

Brad Pinnock (b. 1998, Kingston, Jamaica) graduated from the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in 2021 with a BFA in Painting. His most recent exhibitions include ...And I Resume The Struggle, Olympia Gallery, Kingston, Jamaica (2021) and INSITU II, Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, Kingston, Jamaica (2021). New Local Space, welcomed Pinnock for a 12-week residency with the support of a work stipend in the amount of JMD $300,000, an 800 sq. ft. studio space, access to audio recording studio Creative Sounds, and professional mentorship.

NLS programming is made possible in part through partnerships with the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development Next Generation Programme, and Creative Sounds Limited.


TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2021
TEXTURED LINES
JONI P. GORDON
DECEMBER 4 - DECEMBER 23 2021



Image courtesy Joni P. Gordon

NLS is pleased to present Textured Lines, a solo exhibition of sculpture, photography and sound by Joni P. Gordon. In her debut solo exhibition, Joni P. Gordon deconstructs her experience as an immigrant worker in the U.S. State Department’s Summer Work and Travel Program through sculpture, photography and sound. Having entered The Work and Travel Program while a tertiary student, Gordon’s work unpacks the experience of how students from low and middle income countries are recruited to work for minimum wage in the U.S. and elucidates the link between geopolitical power and racial discrimination.

Joni P. Gordon is a recent graduate of the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts School of Visual Art, where she completed a Bachelor of Fine Art degree in Photography. Her work has been exhibited in the School of Visual Arts Faculty Exhibition (2019), Rex Nettleford Arts Conference 2019 School of Visual Arts Faculty Exhibition (2019) and Resonances: Selections from 2019 School of Visual Arts Final Year Exhibition in collaboration with Kingston Creative. She was a participant of the inaugural La Práctica, a group intensive administered by NLS from 2020 to 2021 offering professional development to young artists. She was a Catapult Grant awardee and is a 2021 awardee of the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development Seed Awards, awarded to promising young artists in the first five years of their careers. Gordon was the Summer Artist-in-Residence at NLS from May to August 2021, receiving 800 sq ft of studio space, a $300,000 work stipend and professional support.

TUESDAY,NOVEMBER 19, 2019

ALL THAT DON'T LEAVE
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23



NLS is pleased to announce All That Don't Leave, curated by Ania Freer, the inaugural NLS Curatorial and Art Writing Fellow

Saturday, November 23, 2019
4:00 PM- 7:00 PM

This event is free and open to the public.
Complimentary refreshments will be served.

Ania Freer's six month curatorial fellowship culminates in a group exhibition that presents the unique craft practices and oral histories of seven artists working across Jamaica outside of mainstream knowledge. The exhibition will bring together the work of Albert ‘St John’ Phipps, Kemel Leeford Rankine, Cecil ‘Bingy’ Smith, Racquel Brown, Alexander ‘Bamboo King’ Dempster, Jeffett ‘Georgie’ Strachan and Jennifer ‘Eighty’ Stewart who work in media and practices ranging from basket weaving and crochet to sign painting and wood carving. Through her curatorial project, Freer aims to create a space of equitable commerce and an alternative system of understanding the cultural and economic value of these makers and their practices, as well as the social contexts and pressures in which they have developed their work and continue to exist.

Ania Freer is a documentary filmmaker based in Kingston, Jamaica whose practice centers on creating equitable systems of representation and commerce for indigenous craft makers and artists, most recently with the project Goat Curry TV during which she traveled across Jamaica archiving oral histories. Freer's work is currently on exhibit in the 2019 Summer Exhibition, National Gallery of Jamaica (Kingston, Jamaica).

Ania Freer’s NLS curatorial and art writing fellowship was supported by the following committee members: Dr. Erica James, assistant professor, University of Miami and editorial committee member for Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism; Henry Murphy, art production coordinator, Friends of the High Line; Raphael Fonseca, curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Niterói; and Rosanna McLaughlin, art editor, The White Review and Nicole Smythe-Johnson, writer and curator, Austin, TX/ Kingston, Jamaica.


NLS 2019 programming is made possible in part through a partnership with the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development Next Generation Programme.
MONDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2019

T'WAUNII SINCLAIR:
THE DIALECTICS OF TRUTH
SATURDAY, NOV 2



NLS is pleased to announce The Dialectics of Truth, the solo exhibition of current NLS artist-in-residence T'waunii Sinclair.

Saturday, November 2, 2019
4:00 PM- 7:00 PM

This event is free and open to the public.
Complimentary refreshments will be served.
Must be 18 years and older for admission.

The Dialectics of Truth is the first solo exhibition and final outcome of T'waunii Sinclair's nine-week residency at NLS. Sinclair takes his own encounter with the history of the Haitian Revolution as a point of departure to configure a process of personal truth-telling which he employs to build a visual vocabulary for ideas of black liberation. Through installation Sinclair attempts to confront and engage the viewer's perceptions of the machete, positioning it as a cultural relic of political and historical significance of the African diaspora. In this body of work Sinclair uses paint and corrosive gestures to mark machetes with slivers of narratives taken from the Haitian Revolution, in which one can visualise the ties between race, gender, violence and nationhood in histories of subjugation and black liberation.

T’waunii Sinclair (b. 1992, Manchester, Jamaica) studied Painting at the Edna Manley College of Visual and Performing Arts in Kingston Jamaica (2015). In 2017 Sinclair exhibited in the Jamaica Biennial, National Gallery of Jamaica (Kingston, Jamaica) and 2019 the group exhibition Dark Matter, Cage Gallery, Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, (Kingston, Jamaica).

NLS 2019 programming is made possible in part through a partnership with the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development Next Generation Programme.
FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2019

ONEIKA RUSSELL: THE GOLDEN FANTASY
MAY 4




Join NLS for The Golden Fantasy, a solo exhibition of recent work by Oneika Russell.


Saturday, May 4, 2019
5:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.
New Local Space, 190 Mountain View Avenue, Kingston 6

This event is free and open to the public. Complementary refreshments will be served.

Oneika Russell's work searches to describe and represent the hybridity and fragmented nature of a Caribbean experience and identity. Notions about the culture and space of the Caribbean from Western hegemonic spaces and the degree to which the Jamaican persona and body to perform supports flattened ideas about paradisal and exotic lands are major points for exploration in Russell's work. Revising the visual culture that supports the paradise industry is of significance in her work as well as exploring the tensions between the desired and the repulsive in popular tropes of paradise.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Oneika Russell received a diploma in Painting from The Edna Manley College in Jamaica. She completed an MA in Interactive Media at Goldsmiths College in London and a PhD in Film, Video and Media Art at Kyoto Seika University in Japan. Russell has completes residencies at Post-Museum in Singapore, Vermont Studio Centre in Vermont and most recently Residency Unlimited in Brooklyn, NY. Major exhibitions include Jamaican Pulse at The Royal West of England Academy, UK; The 2017 and 2014 Jamaica Biennial, Kingston; At the Crossroads: Critical Film and Video from the Caribbean at Perez Museum of Art Miami and the 2018 DAKAR Biennial, Senegal.

TUESDAY, MARCH 12, 2019

EMILY MOTTO: INTERVALS
MARCH 23




Join NLS for INTERVALS, a solo exhibition of recent work by Emily Motto and the final event of her residency at NLS.


Saturday, March 23, 2019
4:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.
New Local Space, 190 Mountain View Avenue, Kingston 6

This event is free and open to the public. Complementary refreshments will be served.

INTERVALS consists of a series of piecemeal compositions in cement and pigment on paper. These works were constructed incrementally while at NLS from shapes, outlines and collective gestures created in group workshops held during the residency. Motto has been exploring ways of making marks stand, and how they can be viewed, related, and used to articulate a space.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Emily Motto is a London-based artist working between sculpture, installation and drawing. She received her BFA from The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University and has received numerous awards including The Derek Hill Foundation Scholarship (2017 - 2018) and The Red Mansion Art Prize. Motto has recently completed residencies at The British School at Rome, Rome Italy (2017) and Beaconsfield Contemporary Art, London, UK (2016). Her work has been included in numerous exhibitions in the UK, Italy, Switzerland and Mexico. Recent solo exhibitions include Holdfast at Chalton Gallery, London (2018), Caught at Platform Southwark (2017) and Postures at RICE + TOYE, London (2015).

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 29, 2019

KEARRA AMAYA GOPEE:
TERRA NULLIUS
JANUARY 2




Join us for Artifact #3: Terra Nullius, a solo exhibition of recent work by Kearra Amaya Gopee and the final event of their residency at NLS.


Wednesday, January 2, 2019
6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.
New Local Space, 190 Mountain View Avenue, Kingston 6

This event is free and open to the public. Complementary refreshments will be served.

Artifact #3: Terra Nullius is the self-referential final peg of a three-part work that visualizes how personhood, family and intimacy are influenced by lineages of trauma and spirituality within diasporic Caribbean identity. This piece closes the Artifacts series, a trilogy exploring how migration and memory affects manifestations of the Anglophone Caribbean family from the pre-Independence period to the present, using Gopee's own family history as a point of reference.

Employing scrying and speculative non-fiction to demonstrate agency in crafting models of communication and care within the present, Terra Nullius abandons nostalgic desires for the biological family structure in favour of alternative kinships. Terra Nullius is “used in international law to describe territory that may be acquired by a state’s occupation of it.” Here, the state refers that of being, one that is constantly being renegotiated with the entry/exit of new modalities with which we engage each other and subsequently reconstruct the self.


ABOUT THE ARTIST

Kearra Amaya Gopee's practice focuses on the nature of violence and erasure, and the particularities of that which is inflicted on the Caribbean by the global north. Using personal experiences as a point of departure, she addresses themes of migration, intergenerational trauma, queerness and difference while seeking to complicate the viewer's understanding of economic and social marginalization in the postcolonial Caribbean. Through photography, animation, video, installation, coding, sound and handicraft, her observations are translated into ephemeral photographs, installations and objects. Her work interweaves the personal with the historical, the mythological with the material.

Gopee is a Trinidadian artist who has presented work in New York and across the Caribbean, at Alice Yard in Trinidad and Tobago, the Caribbean Studies Association’s conference in Haiti and at the Ludwig Foundation in Cuba. Most recently, they were a part of the Block Party at Jenkins Johnson projects, Brooklyn ny, And Home at Caribbean Cultural Center’s augmented reality exhibition. Gopee graduated from New York University in 2017, with a BFA in Photography and Imaging with a minor in Africana Studies. This year they completed a residency at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture

NLS' 2018 / 2019 programming is made possible in part through a partnership with the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development Next Generation program.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2018
J Bar
BLUE CURRY
FEBRUARY 6 - 27




NLS presents the opening of the J Bar, an interactive sculptural installation by current artist-in-residence Blue Curry this Thursday, February 8 from 5 - 8 p.m.

Inspired by the shape of the iconic ‘J’ from typography of Jamaica Tourist Board’s tourism campaigns, Blue has created an interactive sculpture which will also serve as a fully functioning bar. A built in speaker element will feature the result of his work at recording studio Creative Sounds influenced by his research into how reggae music has been hijacked as the representative music of leisure globally and turned into a cliché. Guests are invited to don the J Bar staff uniform and mix a cocktail or two.

Opening: Thursday, February 8, 2018
5 - 8 p.m.
New Local Space
190 Mountain View Avenue
Kingston 6


Blue Curry is an artist from Nassau, Bahamas currently living in London who works primarily in sculpture and installation. He uses an idiosyncratic language of commonplace objects and found materials to engage with themes of exoticism, tourism and culture. He has exhibited extensively, participating in the Liverpool, SITE Santa Fe and Jamaica Biennials, as well as in group shows at PPOW Gallery in New York, The Art Museum of the Americas in Washington DC, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Recently he has spent periods as resident artist at the National Gallery of The Cayman Islands, Centro León, the Dominican Republic and at Alice Yard, Trinidad. He was featured in the book The Sense of Movement: When Artists Travel and is currently showing work in Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of The Caribbean Archipelago at the Museum of Latin American Art, California, part of the Getty Foundation series of exhibitions,Pacific Standard Time LA/LA.

FRIDAY, APRIL 21, 2017
Strange, how glad I am to mourn
ROSANNA MCLAUGHLIN
SATURDAY, APRIL 22



Image courtesy Jillian Steinhauer

NLS is pleased to invite you to Strange, how glad I am to mourn, a talk and exhibition of posters by the Guerilla Girls presented by Rosanna McLaughlin. This event is presented as part of the Trans Atlantic Artists' Residency Exchange (TAARE) at NLS, sponsored by the British Council.

Opens: Saturday, April 22, 7 p.m.
Free and open to the public, complimentary refreshments

When the artist Ana Mendieta died in 1985, many believed her husband, the minimalist sculptor Carl Andre, guilty of her murder. Andre was cleared of second degree murder in 1988, and protests have continued to take place when his work is exhibited.

During McLaughlin’s time as a TAARE resident at NLS, she has been speaking with artists and writers involved in the protest history, as well as those who have spoken out against it. Much debate has gathered around how best to remember Ana Mendieta, and who has the right to mourn her. This talk will be an attempt to find a path through this fractious history.

McLaughlin will also be exhibiting some of the ephemera produced as part of the protests, including posters by the Guerrilla Girls, and zines produced for the recent London demonstration.

About Rosanna McLaughlin
Rosanna McLaughlin is a writer and curator based in London. Her work has been published in Frieze magazine, Artsy, The White Review and BOMB. She was shortlisted for the Fitzcarraldo Essay Prize, 2016. Between 2011-2013 she co-ran Hobbs McLaughlin Gallery.

About the TAARE programme

TAARE focuses on exchanges between the United Kingdom (UK), Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago, and is is open to visual artists, art critics and curators in the UK and in the Caribbean. The program provides research and practice-based residencies while developing trans-Atlantic connections.

This event is made possible with support from Creative Sounds Limited and the British Council.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 29, 2017
LEASHO JOHNSON:
BELISARIO & THE SOUNDBOY
FEBRUARY 4 - 17

NLS presents the debut solo exhibition of new work by Leasho Johnson. The opening reception takes place on Saturday, February 4 at alternative location 10A West Kings House Road.

In his newest paintings and sculptures Johnson inserts his dancehall-influenced female avatars into colonial depictions of plantation life in Jamaica culled from Isaac Mendes Belisario’s 18th century paintings. Johnson uses Belisario’s depictions to create a counterpoint to the music of Vybz Kartel as a means to question power heirarchies, legitimacy, and subjugation within Jamaican culture. In this body of work Johnson deftly moves between techniques he has employed for the last seven years ranging from Japanese anime, street art, graphic design, ceramic sculpture, and 18th century painting creating humour as a means to cutting commentary about social mores.

Leasho Johnson's recent exhibitions include Jamaican Pulse at the Royal West England Academy (Bristol,UK), Jamaican Routes, Punkt Ø Galleri F15 and Momentum (Moss, Norway), FLOAT, Transformer (Washington, DC), The National Biennial, National Gallery of Jamaica (Kingston, Jamaica) and Masculinities IV, National Gallery of Jamaica. He was recently awarded the Davidoff Initiative Artist Residency at Residencies Unlimited (New York) and recently completed residencies at Bluecoat (Liverpool) in partnership with NLS and RWA, as well as Caribbean Link, Atelier’s 89 (Oragestad, Aruba). He has been an invited panelist for The Caribbean Queer Visualities Symposium at Yale University presented by Small Axe (Connecticut), as well as for Transformer's Framework panel at Art Museum of the Americas (Washington, DC). His work has been reviewed in The Fader, the Washington Post, Caribbean Beat, ARC Magazine and the Jamaica Observer. Johnson received his BFA in Visual communication & graphic design from the Edna Manley College of the Visual & Performing arts.

FRIDAY, MARCH 11, 2016
FORUM: SIMON BENJAMIN
MARCH 12 - APRIL 15

NLS introduces FORUM, an exhibition of recent work by Jamaican-born, Brooklyn-based artist Simon Benjamin. This body of work is based on Benjamin's visit to the mystery-enshrouded, abandoned hotel The Forum in Port Henderson, just outside of Kingston. The work consists of a series of Photographs and site-specific installation at NLS.

The Forum opened its doors in 1973 and closed in 1978, coinciding with a tumultuous period of Jamaica’s history. For the artist's entire life the Hotel has been defunct and largely left to deteriorate with starts of re-usage in various capacities. For the first time on a visit back to Jamaica, Benjamin trespassed into the property to investigate and learn more about this building, the product of which is this exhibition.

Opening reception: Saturday, March 12, 2016 from 5:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.

Artist Talk: Sunday, March 13, 2016 from 6:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m., featuring invited panelist Judith Bruce, and moderated by LinYee Yuan.

PDF of essay on exhibition for ARC Magazine.

These events are free and open to the public.

FRIDAY, MARCH 20, 2015
INSIDES
CAMILLE CHEDDA
ONEIKA RUSSELL
PHILLIP THOMAS
PRUDENCE LOVELL
March 28 - April 28


NLS is pleased to present Insides an exhibition of new work by Camille Chedda, Oneika Russell, Phillip Thomas and Prudence Lovell. Insides is an exhibition of contemporary drawing by four exciting artists who engage this medium as a significant part of their art practice. Chedda, Russell, Thomas and Lovell present new approaches to an age-old medium, positing drawing as a valid means of contemporary expression. On view from March 28 to April 28.

Opening party: Saturday, March 28, 6 - 9 p.m.

This event is free and open to the public.


PHOTOS OF OPENING RECEPTION

SATURDAY, JANUARY 24, 2015
MAY NOTHING STAY HIDDEN
MALAIKA BROOKS-SMITH-LOWE
JANUARY 24 - FEBRUARY 16


The work presented in May Nothing Stay Hidden was created by Malaika Brooks-Smith-Lowe during her six week art residency at NLS. Brooks-Smith-Lowe explores the impact of migration on family, drawing from audio conversations, found photographic film as well as salvaged furniture discovered as she navigated his birthplace. Malaika Brooks-Smith-Lowe constructs an intimate portrait of the mindscape that surround migration as well as a persistent hope for transcending these complex emotions.

Artist Statement
Inspired by conversations with my grandfather, Derryck Brooks- Smith, this mixed media installation is an intergenerational investigation of the ambivalence of life. Born in Jamaica in 1940 Grandada was left in the care of an aunt and uncle, at an early age, until he could travel up to the US to live with his mother. This is a deeply familiar story of Caribbean people across generations. His experiences of separation and longing left him with dense emotions to navigate as he grew up. What wounds are left untended in the business of keeping dirty laundry tucked away? May Nothing Stay Hidden explores the burdens of a culture of non-communication through the lens of love, migration and memory.

This installation is composed of audio from a conversation with Grandada, wooden doors, glass panels, tea-dyed paper, LED lights, dried flowers, video and old medium format negatives found amongst his mother’s boxes. As his contemplations float through the space, visitors are invited to open custom-made light box cupboards and peek into a vintage canvas trunk.

About Malaika Brooks-Smith-Lowe
Malaika Brooks-Smith-Lowe is a Grenada-based artist of Jamaican decent. She has exhibited her work across the Caribbean at the National Gallery of Jamaica, the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival (Trinidad and Tobago), The Fresh Milk Art Platform (Barbados), and SO((U))L HQ (Jamaica). She received a BA in studio art from Smith College (Northampton, MA).

Listen to Malaika on IN podcast


PHOTOS OF OPENING RECEPTION

SUNDAY, AUGUST 17, 2014
NLS + ARC
(E)MERGE ART FAIR

Above: Image courtesy Mark King

NLS and preeminent Caribbean contemporary art publication ARC Magazine collaborate to present an exhibition at (e)merge art fair of work by James Cooper (Bermuda), Stephanie Cormier (Canada), Ian Deleón (Cuba/Brazil), Nadia Huggins (St. Vincent), Leasho Johnson (Jamaica), Becca Kallem (Washington, DC), Mark King (Barbados), Oneika Russell (Jamaica), Anabel Vasquez Rodriguez (Puerto Rico) and Storm Saulter (Jamaica). The exhibition connects a contemporary sensibility across national borders in which the delicate nature of humanity and its complex dependency on the economic, environmental and cultural context that it also has a hand in molding is forefront. The exhibition is curated by Deborah Anzinger and Holly Bynoe.

The fourth edition of (e)merge takes place October 2-5, 2014 at the Rubell Family’s Capitol Skyline Hotel, in Washington, DC. The (e)merge art fair connects emerging-art professionals from around the globe with collectors, curators and cultural decision makers in Washington, DC. The GALLERY PLATFORM features participating galleries in hotel rooms and other spaces on designated floors. The ARTIST PLATFORM features a vetted selection of works by independent artists throughout the hotel’s public areas and grounds. (e)merge’s two exhibition platforms inspire a new echelon of art collectors and provide curatorial access to the latest movements in emerging art.

(e)merge

October 2 - 5
Capitol Skyline Hotel


WEDNESDAY, MAY 7, 2014
CANOPY GUILD
RODELL WARNER
AFIFA AZA
AI YOSHIDA
AYANA RIVIÈRE
DI-ANDRE C. DAVIS
LEASHO JOHNSON
STORM SAULTER


New Local Space is proud to invite you to the opening of Canopy Guild a collaborative group exhibition of work by Rodell Warner, Afifa Aza, Ai Yoshida, Ayana Riviere, Di-Andre C. Davis, Leasho Johnson and Storm Saulter. These seven artists worked together for the last 7 weeks on a project conceived by Rodell Warner to bridge creatives in the Kingston art scene via digital patterns Warner created from nature photographs. Each artists reinterpreted Warner's patterns to create a piece for this exhibition. Please join NLS to witness the culmination of this ambitious project.

Opening reception: Friday, May 9 from 7 - 9 PM,
NLS, 190 Mountain View Avenue, Kgn 6

Exhibition runs from May 9 - May 31 (by appointment only)


Rodell Warner (b. Port of Spain, Trinidad, 1986) is an interdisciplinary artists that works primarily in digital media lWarner captures or appropriates photos of nature then digitally manipulates them. He has exhibited regionally and internationally at spaces such as Alice Yard and Medulla Gallery in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, CAG(e) Gallery, Edna Manley College in Kingston, Jamaica, and NIROX Projects in Johannesburg, South Africa. His work was featured in “Pictures from Paradise: A Survey of Contemporary Caribbean Photography” (Robert and Christopher, 2012).

DJ Afifa Aza (b. Spanish Town, Jamaica, 1981) uses her sonic explorations to end silence and continually critique social, political and cultural issues. Using her music to bob and weave through time, she juxtaposes simple and direct with the very problematic. Grounded in a strong Afrocentric worldview, Afifa’s metropolitan aesthetic emphasizes community while celebrating individual expression. She is co-founder and creative director of the SO((U))L HQ and Di Institute for Social Leadership, two emerging experimental spaces in Kingston Jamaica.

Ai Yoshida (b.Tokyo, Japan 1976) is a clothing designer who has been making contemporary clothing from vintage kimono fabric for the last 10 years. Her love of music and culture brought her to Kingston, Jamaica in 2004 where she produces music. Ayana Riviere (b. Barataria, Trinidad, 1984) has worked as a clothing designer for five years. Her work has appeared in Rolling Stone and she has been featured in the Jamaica Observer and Time Out London.

Di-Andre C. Davis (b. Kingston, Jamaica, 1986 is a self-described passionate mystery maker who immerses into her creative space to articulate her visions through the computer.

Leasho Johnson (b. Westmoreland, Jamaica, 1984) works in painting, ceramics, graphic and fashion design. Johnson renders the raw and rejected of contemporary Jamaican culture using techniques traditionally esteemed in Jamaica. He adopts Kawaii aesthetic from Japanese art to reference dancehall. He has shown locally at the National Gallery of Jamaica, and internationally at Kadé Gallery in the Netherlands, and Real Art Ways in Connecticut. He received his BFA in Visual Communication at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in Jamaica (2009).

Storm Saulter (b. Negril, Jamaica 1983) is a visual artist, screenwriter, cinematographer, and film director. He graduated from The Los Angeles Film School in 2001 with a focus in Cinematography and Editing. His work has been reviewed by the LA Times, NY Times, LA Weekly and the Huffington Post.

THURSDAY, APRIL 10, 2014
FLOAT
LEASHO JOHNSON
MARLON JAMES
RODELL WARNER
DEBORAH ANZINGER



New Local Space is pleased to collaborate with Transformer in their presentation of the exhibition FLOAT in Washington, DC. In the contemporary moment, “the nation” dominates much Caribbean image-making, often posited as a post-colonial response to oppressive, externally- derived constructions. This focus is shifted by the artists in FLOAT, and further curated into a détournement in which these hegemonic conceptions of social and national identity (and the status of “margin” itself) are declared compromised and inadequate. The proposed exhibition posits a renegotiation of identity; untethered by the limits normally placed on that now over-worked concept, and insistent on the recognition of the invisible but central role that the “margins” play in the making of our cosmopolitan present and future.

Curated by Nicole Smythe-Johnson.

About the Artists:

Leasho Johnson
Jamaican artist Leasho Johnson (b. 1984) works in painting and ceramics. Johnson renders the raw and rejected of contemporary Jamaican culture using techniques traditionally esteemed in Jamaica. His work included in the show is Ghetto Mother and Children, a ceramic avatar that adopts the Kawaii aesthetic from Japanese art to depict an inner-city woman surrounded by her bawling babies.

Marlon James
Jamaican artist Marlon James (b. 1980) works primarily in digital photography. James captures subjects that defy hegemonic conceptions of Jamaican-ness and/or are deemed unsuitable subjects for fine art. His images redefine his subjects, framing them as icons and stars.


Rodell Warner
Trinidadian artist Rodell Warner (b. 1986) is a largely, but not exclusively, digital artist. The works included in this exhibition are drawn from his most prolific body of work- gif images. Warner captures or appropriates photos of nature then digitally manipulates them— fragmenting, reflecting and animating them— until they become fluttering object-creatures navigating digital environments. These works question the relevance of authenticity and authorship in contemporary culture. They also traverse and blur the lines between the natural and digital worlds.

Deborah Anzinger
Jamaican artist Deborah Anzinger (b. 1978) uses paint, quotidian imagery and objects as well as living plants to create spaces that playfully co-opt the audience in the deconstruction and reimagining of the social and physical environments we occupy. Her work uses an almost psychedelic palette and a hand-painted digital aesthetic to reference primal concepts and instinctual recognition, especially those prehistorically required for sustenance and survival (eg. facial recognition and breast feeding in infants). Taking these symbols and displacing them in new contexts, Anzinger highlights the evolution of particular imagery into symbols that carry meanings of abundance, mystery and knowledge.

Opening reception: May 17, 2014
May 17 - June 21

Transformer
1404 P Street
Washington, DC 20005

Exhibition essay

MONDAY JULY 22, 2013
LAGAN: AN EXHIBITION OF RECENT WORK BY WILMER WILSON IV

Please join us for Lagan, a solo exhibition of recent work by Wilmer Wilson IV made during his two month art residency at NLS.

In legal contexts, "lagan" refers to cargo thrown into the sea with the intention of its retrieval. In his new work Wilmer retrieves and organises the submerged cargo of the street, the neighborhood, and the city. These sculptural arrangements echo forms encountered in everyday spaces in Kingston, Jamaica and Washington, DC. In this body of work, signifiers of age, decay, and blight are revealed to be richer, more complex vessels of time and space.

Opening party takes place Saturday, August 10 from 6 – 9 PM. The exhibition takes place from Saturday, August 10 – Thursday, August 15 (by appointment). For more information contact 406-9771 or NLSkingston@gmail.com.
MONDAY, MARCH 18, 2013
INTIMATE ENCOUNTERS
MARLON JAMES



NLS presents the first solo exhibition of Marlon James' photographs. James' portraits take us on a journey, via his inquisitive eye and voracious appetite for intimacy with his subjects, as he attempts to answer the question "who is a Jamaican?". Through these individualistic photographs we are presented flashes of subcultures and the mainstream that introduce us to a collective self we may not know.

Exhibition opens Saturday, March 23, 2013 until May 3 (by appointment).


A LIVE STREAMING CONVERSATION BETWEEN MARLON JAMES AND NLS' DEBORAH ANZINGER IS NOW ARCHIVED AT OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL.
LISTEN HERE


PHOTOS FROM OPENING RECEPTION