The New Year is fast approaching as I type these words. As you read them, we are in it, as they say. 2025 is with us! We ran the quick-paced marathon of 2024 with, hopefully, good results and success.
Reflecting on my musings closing off 2023, 2024 has indeed been a better year for art in Guyana. Then I wrote, “I am hopeful that 2024 will be a year of growth and maturity for our community evidenced by well-functioning networks and formal associations, strong and harmonious collaborations, better art, and better exhibition-making.” While all I hoped for did not materialise – and there was no expectation of this in 365 days – I feel most did. 2024 was a year of growth evidenced by better art-making and improved exhibition-making, which made going to exhibitions more enjoyable. While one formidable formal association remained dormant (Guyana Women Artists’ Association) or may have silently gone the way of other less formal but regularly exhibiting groups of the past (Guyana United Artists), intensified networking bore successful collaborations.
Immersion: Into the Jungle is one such collaborative effort. The three-person team was led by Maharanie Jhillu, a self-taught artist who has been very active exhibiting and organising events in recent years. The exhibition which began 26 November 2024, was extended beyond the announced closing date of 17 December to early January 2025. The exhibition features the work of 35 artists on two floors of the National Gallery of Art, Castellani House (NGA). Unifying the diverse work, is the familiar theme – nature/the Guyana landscape and this is perhaps intentional to allow relatively new approaches in the Guyana art-making space to take center stage. As noted in the exhibition booklet, “Immersion: Into the Jungle is an art exhibition that brings traditional art practices to life through the integration of technology. By incorporating augmented reality, projection mapping, and interactive installations, the exhibition creates an immersive and dynamic space where visitors can engage with art in fresh and unexpected ways” (catalogue extract). Not all works in Immersion: Into the Jungle were subject to augmentation, thus allowing their full presentation and potential enjoyment without (pesky) devices or wifi challenges. More can be said here about this aspect but I refrain. But please don’t misconstrue this to mean I have an aversion to pairing technology and art.
Unfortunately, I was unable to see Roberta Nicholls and Ackeem Thomas’ inauguration of augmented reality (AR) to Guyana’s restricted art space in their 2023 edition of Blank Canvases (Black Magenta, Georgetown Club), or their continued exploration of the technology in July 2024 (same venue). Consequently, I cannot compare their use of the technology with this recent application. Nonetheless, I hope Immersion picks up where Blank Canvases may have left off or approached the technology in ways not yet explored by Nicholls and Thomas. Certainly, the use of AR and projection mapping brought a new audience to the NGA. The task now for that under-resourced national space is to keep this new audience returning; the scope for regular engagement with art to enlarge one’s life is too great to be ignored.
Beyond the Brush returned stronger in its second year but this time at the Palazzo, Camp and Lamaha streets, Georgetown. The one-day pop-up art sale and exhibition on 30 November featured work from 44 artists including a featured young (pre-teen) artist. The unevenness of work evident in the 2023 exhibition (and perhaps not alluded to when I wrote about it because I opted to focus on the energy the exhibition generated) was better addressed in 2024. This year’s exhibition was juried by the exhibition organiser Sade-Barrow-Browne and two other non-exhibiting artists, one of whom is an experienced educator and accomplished artist.
As a consequence, the exhibition featured very strong and content-driven photography; canvases that announced their makers’ skill at illusionistic rendering of serene landscapes, deceptively endearing forest creatures (i.e. an otter, a jaguar/ocelot/margay – I can’t tell the difference); and moody water. Sculptures were few but presented in leather and wood. Ceramics were also few and reflected distinct aesthetics.
While all (or most) works in this exhibition were photographed and included in the exhibition booklet, it was hard to correlate the images to the artists. And since I now go to exhibitions with my ‘device’ on a needed timeout, stowed away and out of sight, I did not use it to record artists’ names in relation to artwork. More than that, I am not comfortable with being called an art critic and because the title is being foisted on me, I am obliged to recognise the implications of even the simple gesture of photographing certain work and not others. But alas, such hesitations (perhaps a sign of overthinking) had to be ignored when in wandering the exhibition space I happened upon Michael Kellman’s wonderful images. Kellman’s images were delightful portals of meditation and alternative realms.
The strength of Kellman’s work defies the limits of these shores. Alas too, a proud aunty cannot be faulted for revealing biases when suspending the timeout on the device to “photograph to bits” the work of young artist Kinaya McPherson! McPherson’s handling of her medium (oil, no less) is excellent. Despite the medium’s inclination to become muddy, her colours are clean and vibrant while the surface is painterly. In addition to Kellman and McPherson, Yaphet Jackman, Rickeisha Perreira, and Christina Izbașa were among the many who presented strong work.
Other noteworthy local exhibitions in 2024 included: Deaf Artistry Unveiled; Scenes of Long Ago, a solo exhibition of paintings by septuagenarian Jerry Barry; Converging Ties, an exhibition to coincide with the Bishops’ High School Reunion; Echoes of Resilience, the University of Guyana’s annual art exhibition; the Heritage Month Exhibition; and Breaking Boundaries, the Ministry of Education art students’ exhibition all at the National Gallery of Art, Castellani House. Bat and Ball at Moray House and the E.R Burrowes Tutors’ Exhibition hosted at the school were also well worth time off and visits.
May 2025 yield exhibitions of works that challenge the normative and further enliven arty discourse. May it also be a year of increased support for visual art and the wider arts from government and private sector alike.