Marlon Griffith's Shadow exhibition curated by Claire Tancons from 2004, CCA7, Trinidad
Marlon Griffith is a dynamic and exciting young artist. A graduate of John Donaldson Technical Institute in Trinidad, West Indies, Marlon studied Graphic Design with a strong lean towards Illustration. He has been instrumental in the making of carnival costumes for children and has worked on and produced many bands since leaving school. He has also workshops his concepts at CCA7 and in South Africa. Marlon brings a great deal of frenetic energy and joy to his work. He is an excellent printmaker, and he pulls from the folklore of Trinidad and Tobago for many of his pieces, however he is also very adept at drawing the figure, and the underlying purpose of much of his drawings rest in seeing the human figure in motion. Not to be outdone, he is also not afraid to experiment with what he knows, using his sketchbook and the jottings within it in a short film about the intimacy of the process. He has also used Carnival Arts as an creative tool to draw on in his art practice.
Griffith's video work produced in South Africa Mr. Griffith has also done Performance,In 2004 he created a work in South Africa where he dressed as a police officer with a bullet proof vest .On the vest were the letters P-O-L-I-T-E. The cleverness of this piece is very thought provoking. In a world where crime and authority are at loggerheads, the use of text on a vest saying one thing and meaning another conjures up a history of unrest and forced change and begs the question, can we change how we see authority and can authority change to suit our needs? Marlon is never one to stop exploring and pushing the boundaries of his work and his process and shall be going to Mino, Japan for a three month Residency on paper making.. I look forward to seeing what marvels he creates there, and know in advance that he will leave the place as enriched as he found it.
What is your fascination with Art? I believe my fascination is with its beauty.
Is Art an easy way out? I've been often told that I am lazy, and that studying it didn't take much effort. On the contrary, I found that art practice was both simple and extremely complex. There are no equations to explain it. Yet, you need to find a balance to understand its role. Being any artist takes perseverance , self confidence , grounded focus and self criticism under public scrutiny. Either you are an artist or a pretender as one.
So are you an Artist? If I am honest, I will have to answer no. I believe my being an artist died when I returned to Trinidad in 1995. My paintings were too large, and my content was too religious (Christian motifs) This has deeply affected me since, I truly love painting.
When were you most happy as a painter? My happiest moments were the painting studios at the Stewart building, Ontario College of Art in Toronto.
Will you ever paint again? My crystal ball is whitewashed, I can only see specks of it returning far in the future
You have dabbled in photography, is this your art now? I studied elements of photography at college, and had an exhibition in Toronto, but otherwise since, I have never made a cent from it so far. It is ironic because the bookmann blog is based in part from my work. It is also an integral part in my self-studies "feinin" collages which have been rewarding.
Where and why did you come up with the idea of the blog I just wanted to continue photographing dilapidated building and cemeteries that I had began in Toronto, 1991 and in Europe, 1994. The bookmann began by documenting street graffiti and gave a generally analyst of it. The first wall painting online I believe was a pencil drawing of a man with his dog in Newtown by an street artist who has left it mark ever since.
You are often been mistaken for not being a Trinidadian, why do you think so? I believe it is in my disposition, I don't feel Trinidadian, yet the content on the bookmann speaks otherwise. I am always being asked if I am foreign by Trinidadians, hence the answer, its in my psychic perhaps I am not. I am rather mysterious, people just can't figure me out.
You've work on this project since 2004, how would you describe the process so far? At very beginning I approached many artists if they would like to be hosted online relating to the work. The majority if not all declined. So I just went to their art openings and documented the work. My writing was viewed as awkward, yet without funding or a staff of writers, editors and photographers it has manged to be ranked in the top ten listing in Google search alongside media conglomerates such as the New York Times and BBC in its editorial content. This is really astonishing.
Why do you think this is so? Its intention and authenticity and vast body of subjects mostly on the kitschness of street art.
Has your blog affected anyone ? The lists goes on. I have been told that no one is doing this type of work and that I should work towards a doctorate if not already is worth in its body of research. With my difficulty in spelling (dyslexia, seeing words are images) obtaining a degree will show that levels in intelligence are not necessarily based on formal academia in learning.
Would you like to have your P.H.D.? Yes, timely and without charge
Who are your readers? There are a broad spectrum of readers internationally and locally. And by people who deny never reading the blog, but they obviously do.
I have noticed that you have contributor, who is this writer? She is my light and shadow and an artist who I have known since my graphic design education in Trinidad from 1982. She has recently been crowned an "Elder" in the field of contemporary in Trinidad and Tobago.
Are you then a writer as well? I been called a writer, so under those circumstances I probably am.
Earlier, you mentioned your self-portraits, please explain? To understand who you are, you have to think universally to who you would have like to be. These are studies I call "feinin" , where I masked myself as icons from the past. To my knowledge it has never be attempted before.
I don't fully understand Whether this seems far fetched, It resonates in my mind as real and that is all what matters.
So what are you really? I am a man in search of himself using technology as his footing.
What is your of perception from others? Generally, people are afraid of me and my response to this is that I mean no harm other than an opinion in light of good, bad or indifferent. My views are beholden to no one other than myself. I feel a bit of flattered, but this is not its aim.
I notice that the bookmann has a series of personal quotes, I find this presumptuous in your stage of your career, My I asked why? These quotes are about the power of thought, I trust in the words totally.
Do you have any enemies? Yes, and I thank them for pinpointing my faults
Where do you see you project going? Truly, I desire a genuine appreciation for what I have achieved as a book or film.
And finally, what will be your legacy? In one sentence,
You can't be a preacher without knowing the bible The Anti-Fucking-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture Postmodernism: does it exist at all, and if so, what does it mean? Is it a concept or a practice, a matter of local style or a whole new period or economic phase? What are it's forms, effects, place? How are we to mark its advent? Are we truly beyond the modern, truly in (say) a postindustrial age? The essays in this book take up these questions and many others besides. Some critics, like Rosilind Krauss and Doulglas Crimp, define postmodernism as a break with the aesthetic field of modernism. Others, like Gregory Ulmer and Edward Said, engage the "object of post-criticism" and the politics of interpretation today. Some, like Craig Owens and Kenneth Frampton, frame its rise in the fall of modern myths of progress and mastery. But all the critics, save Jurgen Habermas, hold this belief in common: that the project of modernity is now deeply problematic. Assailed though it is by pre-, anti-, and postmodernists alike, modernism as a practice has not failed. On the contrary: modernism, at least as a tradition, has "won"--but its victory is a Pyrrhic one no different than defeat, for modernism is now largely absorbed. Originally oppositional, modernism defied the cultural order of the bourgeoisie and the false "normativity" (Habermas) of its history; today, however, it is the official culture. As Jameson notes, we entertain it: its once scandalous productions are in the university, in the museum, in the street. In short, modernism, as even Habermas writes, seems "dominant but dead." This state of affairs suggests that if the modern project is to be saved at all, it must be exceeded. This is the imperative of much vital art of the present; it is also one incentive of this book. But how can we exceed the modern? How can we break with a program that makes a value of crisis (modernism), or progress beyond the era of Progress (modernity), or transgress the ideology of the transgressive (avant-guardism)? One can say, with Paul de Man, that every period suffers a "modern" moment, a moment of crisis or reckoning in which it becomes self-conscious as a period, but this is to view the modern a historically, almost as a category. True, the word may have "lost a fixed historical reference" (Habermas), but the ideology has not: modernism is a cultural construct based on specific conditions; it has a historical limit. And one motive of these essays is to trace this limit, to mark our change.
A scene from the art film Slacker, 1991. Pay close attention to the book that he puts in his bag.
A first step, then, is to specify what modernity may be. Its project, Habermas writes, is one with that of the Enlightenment: to develop the spheres of science, morality, and art according to their inner logic." This program is still at work, say, in postway or late modernism, with its stress on the purity of each art and the autonomy of culture as a whole. Rich though this disciplinary project once was--and urgent given the incursions of kitch on one side and academe on the other--it nevertheless came to rarefy culture, to reify its forms--so much so that it provoked, at least in art, a counter-project in the form of an anarchicavant-garde (one thinks of dadaism and surrealsm especially). This is the "modernism" that Habersham opposes to the "project of modernity" and dismisses as a negation of but one sphere: nothing remains from a desublimated meaning or a destructured for; emancipatory effect does not follow."
Kenneth Frampton explains on the urban landscape and modern architecture Although repressed in late modrnism, this "surrealist revolt" is returned in postmodernist art (or rather, its critique of represenation is reaffirmed), for the mandate of postmodernism is also: "change the object itself." Thus, as Krauss writes, postmodernist practice "is not defined in relation o a given medium...but rather in relation to the logical operations on a set of cultural terms." In this way, the very nature of art has changed; so too has the object of criticism: as Ulmer notes, a new "para literary" practice has come to the fore which dissolves the line between creative and critical forms. In the same way the old opposition of theory and practice is refused, especially, as Owens notes, by feminist artists for whom critical intervention is a tactical, political necessity. The discourse of knowledge is affected no less: in the midst of academic disciplines, Jameson writes, extraordinary new projects have emerged. "Is the work of Michel Foucault, for example, to be called philosophy, history, social theory or political science?" (One may ask the same of the "literary criticism" of Jameson or Said.) As the importance of a Foucault, a Jaques Derrida or a Roland Barthes attests, postmodernism is hard to conceive without continental theory, structuralism and poststructuralism in particular. Both have led us to reflect upon culture as a corpus of codes or myths (Barthes), as sat of imaginary resolutions to rel contradictions (Claude Levi-Strauss). In this light, a poem or picture is not necessarily privileged, and the artifact is likely to treated less as a work in modernist terms--unique, symbolic, visionary--than as a text in a postodernist sense "already written," allegorical, contingent. With this textual model, one postmodernist strategy becomes clear: to deconstruct modernism not in order to seal it in its own image but in order to open it, to rewrite it; to open its closed systems (like the museum) to the heterogeneity of texts" (Crimp), to rewrite its universal techniques in terms of "synthetic contradictions" (Frampton)--inshort, to challenge its master narratives with the "discourse of others" (Owens). But this very plurality may be problematic: for of modernism consists of so many unique models (D.H. LAwrence, Marcel Proust...), then "there will be as many different forms of postmodernism as there were high modernisms in place, since the former are at least initailly specific and local reactions against these models" (Jameson). As a result, these different forms might be reduced to indifference, or ostodernism dismissed as relativism (just as postculturalism is dismissed as the sbsurd notion that nothing exists "outside the text").
This conflation, i think, should be guarded against, for postmodernism is not pluralism--the quixotic notion that all positions in culture and politics are now open and equal. This apocalyptic belief that anything goes, that the "end of ideology" is here, is simply the inverse of the fatalistic belief that nothing works, that we live under a "total system" without hope of redress--the very acquiescence that Ernest Mandel calls the "ideology of late capitalism." Clearly, each position on or within postmodernism is marked by political "afiliatios" (Said) and historical agendas. How we conceive postmodernism, then, is critical to how we represent both present and past--which aspects are stressed, which repressed. For what does it mean to periodize in terms of postmodernisn: to argue that ours is an era of the death of the subject (Baudrillard) or of the loss of master narratives (Owens), o assert that we live in a consumer society that renders opposition difficult (Jameson) r amidst a meritocracy in which the humanities are marginal indeed (Said)? Such notions are not apocalyptic: they mark uneven developments, not clean breaks and new days. Perhaps, then, postmodernism is best conceived as a conflict o new and old modes--cultural and economic, the one not entirely autonomous, the other not all determinative--and of the interests vested therein. This at least makes the agenda of this book clear: to disengage the emergent cultural forms and social relations (Jameson) and to argue the import of doing so. Even now, of course, there are standard positions to take on postmodernism: one may support postmodernism as populist and attack modernism as elitist or, conversely, support modernism as elitist-as culture proper--and attack postmodernism as mere kitsch. Such views reflect one thing: that postmodernism is publicly regarded (no doubt vis-a-vis postmodern architecture) as a necessary turn toward "tradition." Briefly, then, I want to sketch an oppositional postmodernism, the one that informs this book.
Jurgen Habermas reflects on his studies
In cultural politics today, a basic opposition exists between a postmodernism which seeks to deconstruct modernism and resist the status quo and a postmodernism which repudiates the former to celebrate the latter: a postmodern of resistance and and a postmodern of reaction. These essays deal mostly with the former--its desire to change the object and its social cotext. The postmodernism of reaction is raf better known: though not monolithic, it is singular in its repudiation of modernism. This repudiation, voiced most shrilly perhaps by neoconservatives but echoed everywhere, is stategic: as Habermas cogently argues, the neoconservatives sever the cultural from the social, then blame the practices on the one (modernism) for the ills of the other (modernization). With cause and effect thus confounded, "adversary culture is denounced even as the economic and political status quo is affirmed-indeed, a new "affirmative" culture is proposed. Accordingly, culture remains a force but largely of social control, a gratuitous image drawn over the face of instrumentality (Frampton). Thus is this postmodernism conceived in therapeutic, not to say cosmetic, terms: as a return to the verities of tradition (in art, family, religion...) Modernsm is reduced to a style (e.g., "formalism" or the International Style) and condemned, or excised entirely as a cultural mistake; pre- and postmodern elements are then elided, and the humanist tradition is preserved. But what is this return if not a resurresction of lost traditions set against modernism, a master plan imposed on a heterogeneous present? A postmodernism of resistance, than, arises as a counter-practice not only to the official culture of modernism but lso to the "false normativity" of a reactionary postmodernism. In opposition (but not only in opposition), a resistant postmodernism is concerned with a critical deconstruction of tradition,not an instrumental pastiche of pop- or pseudo- historical forms, with a critique or origins, not a eturn to them. In short, it seeks to question rather than exploit cultural codes, to explore rather than conceal social and political affiliations. ......................................................................................................................................................................
During my studies at Art school, I remember one of the students in my core group got so frustrated with the language that she literally pulled out strands of her own hair. The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture.
The text is the preamble by the author, Hal Foster, first published in 1983. The Anti-Aesthetic includes works by, Jurgen Habermas, Frederic Jameson, Edward Said, Kenneth Frampton, and Douglas Crimp.
A buyer inspecting the work of Peter Sheppard at Y Gallery, Port of Spain, Trinidad. W. I. under the guidance of the curator, Hadeed Yasmin, centre. Landscapes with an all round pleasantness
This is privy to Peter Sheppard's exhibition entitled landscapes at Y gallery which opens today.The painter had his hand with a technique that very well followed the genre of Cazabon. The miniatures in particular gave a sense of a tranquil setting, and of the island that reflected its geographical landscape as rural, and captured the peasantry that is distinctly Caribbean. Yet, they remind you of the work by Jean Michel Cazabon, in its substance, texture and simplistic compositions. Sheppard's approach is meticulous, yet he is mechanical, as if these renditions were painted without any attached emotion.
Sheppard explains in this video, his concepts, thought process and his parents for seeing Trinidad and Tobago in a different light.His compositions he says are from memory.
Peter Sheppard also experimented by separating colour. In his monotone composition, Independence, he painted the pennants as red, white and black to give it meaning, but also as a focal point from the rest of the piece. The Independence work is part of twelve larger paintings which represented the types culture celebrated in Trinidad and Tobago. They are divided by month, hence, Independence marked the month of August, Carnival fell on February and so forth.Whether a calender will be on sale later tonight, this is unclear. The exhibitions runs till the 27th, November, 2008.
Peter Sheppard posing at Y gallery in aid of a fund raiser for Jeffrey Chock medical cost. Watch Meh Peter Sheppard, Landscapes Y Gallery, Port of Spain, 17-27 November, 2008
Isava, moments before her act at the launch of the Public Art project, Galvanize. Her performance was executed under a house, Belmont, Trinidad, W. I.
At the launch of the second Galvanize art project, a small gathering of young art students joined in to what appeared to be a casual barbecue event. Participant Michelle Isava closed the gathering with a performance that addressed the language of the female, herself, namely the Wanantra. Isava enacted a ritual that reflected an earthy woman, and evoked a sort of inner exorcism as she inscribed with words, The hole is whole, with charcoal within the concentric circle rings she marked out at the beginning. She was warmly applauded after the 10 minute performance.
Michelle Isava may be emulating or paying homage to the Cuban artist, Ana Mendieta. Mendieta’s work has been the core of feminist based martyrdom before her death in 1985. Her earthy motifs are quoted by many female artists in their attempt to find meaning to their womanhood and gender disembodiment but are treading on the memory of Mendieta’s foreboding truth, whether they fully understanding its impact and consequences as a result.
Ana Mendieta, 1948-1985 has been known for an artist who had strong grounding with the ideas that involved her work. She also produced works that mirrored her death. The performance artist used herself as a catalyst to evoke and evolve the female as casts, pyres visible and invisible to the eye. One of the most powerful elements was that she used her own hair to mask her gender and transform herself as herself while still keeping the beauty of the feminine. She also had striking and disturbing pieces that marked her death in a series of photographs of her face contorted onto a glass panel, a body mold saturated with a red dye and herself submerge into sand in a position that looked as if a body had fallen from the sky. These are daunting pieces because she lost her life from falling from a high rise. Therefore, the self reenactments in one’s work foretells their future in misfortune, luck or their omening end.
In this feinin, I felt traumatized, as if I was on my back in space waving my arms about, then I knew the end was near. Yet there was a beauty, chaotic, mirrored, self imposing and cocooned. In this self-portrait I was lost again, troubled by its facial resemblance, by its closeness to what I feared most. How could this be? Treason, marriage, mother, menstruation, lost...tired and blind in my eye
The ministry of works All Fours playing house, Crystal Stream, Diego Martin
The plywood shed you see is here is a notorious spot for liming. The men who work? or are assigned to this district are either drinking, drunk or swinging on a hammock tied between a large tree and the dwelling. But on this Sunday morning as parishioners were pelting out with their spanking new sport utility vehicles from a RC Church compound just opposite the newly fenced grounds. An artist showed his faith as a wall painter while his adviser reclined to his right smoking a cigarette and chatting on his mobile phone.
An all Fours card player painting a religious mural, Diego Martin Trinidad, West Indies
A tribute to Shivaji and Ganesha painted on the side of this dwelling. One can speculate that this is for good luck, particularly at night when the place is occupied by card players. Cussing, cackling, women and laughter will resume regardless of the sacredness of the Hindu deities just freshly painted on the outer part of the partition.
Lovers at Shalini's exhibition at Y gallery, Port of Spain, Trinidad The artist Shalini Seereeram has been creating vibrant, undulating portraits of women and sometimes men for a number of years. Her technical style is informed by continuous line, intricate pattern and dramatic contrast of colour within the picture plane. One cannot help but contrast her style against that of the Illustrator, Stuart Hahn, her contemporary, who uses coloured pencils in his works. They both are able to capture a sense of movement and particular posture from their characters. Yet hers veer towards the use of collage and at times, computer graphic techniques.
It is important to compare these two artists because of the short history of drawing in Trinidad and Tobago. Both have come from a healthy tradition of seeking the highest standard of formal drawing, and have worked in the advertising industry. Both have fought hard to create Art from techniques that are largely considered illustrative, and both continue to quietly produce and show to the beat of their own drums, to laudable effect, and some fanfare as they attempt to keep illustration alive as an art form.
These are professionals who are literally holding up the columns of drawing, and are trying in their work to represent us as a people in Trinidad and Tobago. I would strongly suggest that a group show be put together in the near future, and much more be written about what they are endeavouring to do. I have seen Ms. Seereeram’s process over her career grow and blossom, and her motivation run from the desire to create strong images that are not considered so decorative that the intention behind the work is lost.
In Trinidad and Tobago, the successful, professional artist is always challenged to stay the same while trying to explore possibilities in their work. How can an artist mature, when their audience is expecting much of the same, and moreso, liking more of the same?With this body of work that Ms. Seereeram titles, Curve, she looks at a dimension of her drawing style that is constantly commented on, as her starting point in her pieces. Her images have become a bit more aggressive and fractured, more stained in terms of palette, with her signature colours playing off each other with less pattern. She is abstracting the shapes of hands, breasts and arms and her faces are becoming less and less about racial make-up as she endeavors to explore the beauty of unending line quality, and the music that it can achieve as it moves into and out of specifically defined shapes.
She still enjoys pattern in fabric, as sari’s undulate and sarongs swish against the breeze. Twisting the body is something that she may continue to explore, as it seems to be a point of interest in her work that repeats. In Curves, Ms. Seereeram is also creating a more in depth visual language, as her shapes create hearts, lips and other subtle patterns onto which her women nestle. She tries to look at more complex relationships of feminine love and mutual respect in these pieces. - Adele 2008. ................................................................................................................ In Khatak Dancer, Shalini Seereeram explored the use of lighter washes rather than heavier opaque tones to outline her forms. This transformation is an effective step to break from her familiar style. The artist paid less attention to fill in the compositions as in her previous works. The results of trying too hard and allowing herself to draw and paint freely or less restraining shows a cleaner a poetic composition. In terms of a breakthrough, this is the most successful painting at her show. Seereeeram also included two sculptural self-portraits which bordered on the lines of Indonesian stick puppets.
