Clockwise from top left: Desanna Watson, Matthew McCarthy, Joni Gordon, Sasha-Kay Hinds

New Local Space welcomes four awardees to the inaugural La Práctica group residency: Desanna Watson, Joni Gordon, Matthew McCarthy, Sasha-Kay Hinds. The awardees each receive individual studio spaces, work stipends and critical support for their practices through a roster of visiting guest lectures. The program creates a space for communal sharing and learning where artists and practitioners build community and acquire the skills necessary to advance their practices and engage more nuanced conversations. Adjacent to their studio practices, the La Práctica curriculum draws on participants' interests and knowledge, supplemented by pedagogical exercises and visiting guest lectures.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Joni Gordon examines the dichotomy of racial discrimination experienced through annual Work and Travel Programs, such as Farm Work, which recruit tertiary students to The United States of America to work for minimum wage under the pretext of financial advancement. Through photography and abstract sculptural forms Gordon uses her own body to express the physicality of trauma and pain, centering her work around her own experiences with the Work and Travel Program. She intends to extend her research into other work programs that lure individuals overseas for minimum wage.

Sasha-Kay Hinds works through performance, video and photography to deconstruct her experience with teenage pregnancy. Employing costuming, and drawing from her training in both dance and theatre, Hinds' visual art practice sets forth her practice as both a means of escape and a way to confront trauma and isolation. Hinds' work explores her own identity and femininity while highlighting the lack of legislative support towards women's and girls' reproductive health, protections and rights against abuse.

Matthew McCarthy's work questions and tests the boundary between preparation and completion through a daily practice of journal writing interpreted as performative painting and choreographed to a music compilation. McCarthy aims to develop a performance work that observes the constraints of musical time while exploring improvisation.

Desanna Watson examines the historical journey of black women as property to their fathers, brothers, husbands and slave masters to become the largest demographic of recent home purchasers in Jamaica, with 59 percent of the total number of mortgages being disbursed to women. Watson will focus on a body of work exploring the factors that have contributed to the ownership and distribution of property in Jamaica. Her research interests include domestication and the privileges, or lack thereof, attached to skin tone, money and family name in the acquisition of property.

NLS 2020 programming is made possible in part through a partnership with the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development Next Generation Programme.

Ada M. Patterson is awarded the NLS 2020 Curatorial and Art Writing Fellowship. The Fellowship is a 5-month long mentorship program supporting a project proposed by the fellow. The Curatorial and Art Writing Fellowship is geared towards addressing the dearth of archival scholarship on the work of artists in Jamaica and the Caribbean by empowering young writers and curators with the tools to write these histories. Patterson will be mentored by Daniella Rose King (Adjunct Curator, Caribbean Diasporic Art, Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational, Tate, UK) and a supporting committee of regional cultural practitioners and academics comprised of Amanda McIntyre (Writer, Trinidad and Tobago), Dave Williams (Choreographer, Trinidad and Tobago), Jovante Anderson (Writer, Jamaica) and Ronald Cummings (Assistant Professor, Brock University).

Patterson proposes collaboration and intimate engagement with a divergence of queer performance practices in Barbados, between film, writing and conversation. Through these media Patterson aims to address the dichotomy between invisibility as a means of agency or mobility, versus bodies otherwise queered invisible or marked for social death. Considered through the shattered lens of crisis, Patterson’s work examines the precarious and crisis-(dis)oriented conditions which both underpin and undermine queer performance practices in Barbados.

ABOUT THE FELLOW
Ada M. Patterson received their Masters of Education in Arts at the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam and their Bachelors of Fine Art with honours from Central Saint Martins, London, UK. Their solo exhibitions include The Whole World is Turning at TENT, Rotterdam, Netherlands; and Things You Threw in the Gully at Roodkapje Rotterdam, Netherlands. Their Curatorial and pedagogical work includes Wukshop: Kanga for the Present, Wukshop: Magic Portals at Tender Center, Rotterdam, Netherlands; and Plastic Love Island at Roodkapje Rotterdam, Netherlands. Their published writing includes Catching Their Rhythm: On Shimmer Rotterdam in Metropolis M; A-Z of Caribbean Art, Robert & Christopher Publishers, Trinidad & Tobago;...and my intentions are never fixed: On Frank Bowling, in Sugarcane Magazine; and ...only a Fool looks at the finger: On the 10th Berlin Biennale, Sugarcane Magazine. Past residencies include Hamburger Community of Art in Roodkapje Rotterdam, Netherlands in 2019 and Studium Witte de With: Parallel Curriculum at Witte de With in Rotterdam, Netherlands, as well as Alice Yard, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad & Tobago.

NLS 2020 programming is made possible in part through a partnership with the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development Next Generation Programme.

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.

ABOUT THE CURATOR
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, Niteroi; 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.

T'Waunii Sinclair explores revolutionary narratives within black history and identities using the Haitian Revolution as his point of departure. Sinclair’s work is driven by the discourse and scholarship surrounding race, politics, race-politics, and histories of subjugation. In his current work Sinclair experiments with installation and sculpture as a means to focus on the machete as an aesthetic object and relic of cultural significance to black people as a tool of labor and revolution

ABOUT THE ARTIST
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)

T'Waunii Sinclair’s NLS residency was supported by the following committee members: Dr. Eddie Chambers (Professor, The University of Austin Texas ), Nikolai Noel (Visual artist, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago), Tessa Mars (Visual artist, Port-Au-Prince, Haiti), Kearra Amaya Gopee (Visual artist, Los Angeles, CA/ Trinidad and Tobago) 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.

NLS welcomes Emily Motto who will be in residency from January through March 2019.

During her residency Motto proposes to experiment in collective ways of creating drawings in space, to generate a form that is constantly in flux, with a dependency on the physical movements and presence of each viewer. Over the course of the residency Motto will organise a series of collective drawing experiments, reliant on the materials available where we are. This she envisages may take the form of continuous 'maze' within the project space and extending beyond

Emily Motto is a London-based artist whose work looks at ways bodies contain and consume space. She received her BFA from The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University and has received numerous awards including most recently The Derek Hill Foundation Scholarship (2017 - 2018), Mark Tanner Sculpture Award (2016). 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 and Switzerland. Recent exhibitions include a two-person show titled Nexus Space at Platform Southwark and a solo show, POSTURES, RICE + TOY in London.

NLS welcomes Kearra Amaya Gopee for their residency through November, 2018 to January 2019.

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, they address 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, their observations are translated into ephemeral photographs, installations and objects. Their work interweaves the personal with the historical, the mythological with the material.

Gopee is a Trinidadian photographer & visual artist based in Brooklyn, New York. They have presented work in New York and across the Caribbean, namely at Alice Yard in Trinidad and Tobago, the Caribbean Studies Association's conference in Haiti and at the Ludwig Foundation in Cuba. Before moving to the States, Gopee worked as a staff photographer at the Trinidad Guardian newspaper. Most recently, they were a part of the Caribbean Cultural Center's augmented reality exhibition, Home, and Baxter Street Camera Club's 7th Annual Zine Fair. Gopee graduated from New York University in 2017, with a BFA in Photography and Imaging with a minor in Africana Studies.

Blue Curry will be in residency at NLS this month. During his residency Blue will be considering reggae music as regional cliché. One of the Caribbean’s most beloved cultural exports, born out of struggle and inequality, layered with politics and religion, reggae is now employed as a representative music of leisure globally. The jaunty reggae beat activates fantasies of sipping poolside cocktails on a carefree island getaway; it entices visitors to the region while reinforcing stereotypes and cultural singularity. Blue will be collaborating with the audio engineers at Creative Sounds recording studio during his three week residency to produce a new work reflecting his investigation into the ways that economic geography influence cultural production and consumption. Taking an experimental approach Blue will bring together his current sculptural concerns with this new audio component for the NLS space.

Blue Curry is a Bahamian artist currently based 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.

NLS welcomes writer-in-residence Rosanna McLaughlin as our inaugural TAARE Resident. McLaughlin is in residence at NLS in March and April of this year. Her areas of focus lie in reportage, feminist practices, and the cultural and economic narratives that dictate the type of art that gains prominence. McLaughlin is currently researching into the death of Cuban-born artist Ana Mendieta and the protest movement that followed her death.

Follow Rosanna McLaughlin's residency via the NLS Art Writing and Research blog.

Rosanna McLauhlin 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.

The Transatlantic Artists' Residency Exchange (TAARE) programme is supported by the British Council in partnership with Alice Yard, Autograph ABP, Delfina Foundation, Gasworks, Hospitalfield Arts, and NLS.

New Local Space partners with The British Council for the Trans Atlantic Artists' Residency Exchange (TAARE) program, which focuses on exchanges between the United Kingdom (UK), Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago.

The residency is open to visual artists, art critics and curators in the UK and the Caribbean. The program is targeted at providing research and practice-based residencies while developing trans-Atlantic connections. The submission deadline for applications is December 2, 2016.

For full details and information on how to apply click here.

Key partners for the project are Alice Yard, Delfina Foundation, Gasworks, Autograph ABP, and Hospitalfield Arts.

NLS welcomes the 2016 Summer Residents: David Gumbs, Kelley-Ann Lindo and Susanne Winterling, three brilliant artists from Martinique, Jamaica and Germany with diverse art practices.

Over the nine-week residency, Gumbs, Lindo and Winterling will bring their unique backgrounds in 3-D mapping, video, painting and marine bioluminescence together to create a responsive mental and social landscape that investigates the vulnerability of water-associated ecologies and their link to our individual and cultural experiences and memories.

Aesthetically the artists approach the project with diverse materials, combining amorphous sculptural cues, a lab aesthetic, and a focus on heightening sensibilities and consciousness within audience participation. The artists draw inspiration from Jamaica's marine ecology-- particularly bioluminescent algae and the conch shell, as well as the context of that ecology within human experience of water-- natural disasters, history, practices and politics.

Donate to the Summer Residency Kickstarter fundraising campaign here.

Susanne Winterling

Working across film and photography, Winterling is known for installations that critically intervene in their surroundings, directing attention to the sensual and perceptual qualities of spaces, objects and the representation of realities. Winterling's most recent exhibitions include 'Nature after nature' at the historical Fridericianum, Kassel, 'Drift' at the Gallerie Parrotta Contemporary Art, in Stuttgart, and 'The Lulennial: A Slight Gesturay', in Mexico City. In her exhibitions, her interests include biodiversity, nature/culture, and subjectivity to technology. Opting for a poetical rather than a power oriented practice, Winterling focuses on the entanglement of ecology and politics. She is also one of the founders of the art collective Akademie Isotrop, and is a professor of contemporary art.

David Gumbs

Gumbs is a multimedia artist who approaches his practice through drawing, painting, photography, new media, and interactive video. He has taken part in several new media festivals including the Trinidad and Tobego Film Festival, the Transforming Spaces in Bahamas, the Biennale Internationale D’Art Contemporain (BIAC) in Martinique, and the Beep Bop Boop New Media Festival in Florida. In his works, he explores the offscreen of perception, memory, the cycle of life, the visible and invisible, and rhizome graphical macroscopic universes. Gumbs’ polymorphic art reveals the interbreeding and hybridization process in the collective and individual unconsciousness in Caribbean imagination. His artistic approach is based on a famous quotation from XVII th century French philosopher and chemist Antoine Lavoisier: Mass is neither gained nor lost, merely transformed.”

Kelley-Ann Lindo

Lindo works in photography, videography and painting. She earned her Bachelors of Fine Arts in Painting at The Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in 2015. Lindo serves as art counselor at the Bellevue Hospital and the Jamaica Council for People with Disabilities. She utilizes elements of fragility and abstraction to fuel a tradition of remembrance art, as she seeks to break the passivity of the spectator. Her work predominantly explores the memories and visual legacies that remain after flooding, and through the manipulation of fragile materials she demonstrates the susceptibility of memory and the necessity of recollection.

The call for 2016 residency applications is now open to both artists and researchers/writers.

SUMMER ART RESIDENCY

ART WRITING & RESEARCH RESIDENCY

NLS is pleased to present 'Extrication for the curious', a 48 Hour Residency project by Susan Reuben.

For her 48 Hour Residency Susan Reuben draws inspiration from local folklore to create a fibre-based site-specific experience that visually pulls the viewer into a web-like system through which they must navigate. The project is a conceit for the artist’s considerations of ways the individual might operate in pre-existing social and political systems. Her installation aims to link the physical experience of the viewer within the work to a mindfulness of choices, barriers and the potential traps of a not-always-clearly-visible system.

Susan Reuben is a fibre artist who works with tapestry and weaving to find ways that simplify larger ideas and social concepts. She studied Textiles at the Edna Manley College School of the Visual Arts where she graduated in 1991.

This project is presented in partnership with the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission as part of the JCDC Artist Development Programme. The project was generously funded by the Tourism Enhancement Fund.

This event is free and open to the public and will provide complimentary refreshments.

To be held on Saturday, December 19 & Sunday, December 20 from 5:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.

The NLS 48H Residency program is geared towards interdisciplinary, performative, and interactive projects. The residency is an opportunity for an individual artist or group of artists to collaborate in activating the grounds at New Local Space over a 48-hour period, during which the public is invited to view and participate.

For more information contact info@NLSkingston.org