"Curator's Eye"
11 December - 11 January 2025
Olympia Main Gallery
Exhibition statement
The Olympia Gallery’s Curators’ Eye carries forward A.D. Scott’s founding vision of Olympia as a cultural pillar in Jamaican art. This exhibition arises in response to the current scarcity of spaces and opportunities for artists to present their work, engage with audiences, and connect with collectors. Drawing inspiration from the National Gallery of Jamaica’s landmark series Young Talent, which spotlighted the “works of new, emerging artists [entering] the Jamaican art scene”, and Curator’s Eye, which emphasized the authority of a single curatorial perspective, a single ‘educated eye’—Olympia’s Curator’s Eye builds on these legacies with renewed focus.
Conceived as a platform for dialogue, the exhibition brings emerging and established artists into conversation: with each other, with contemporary curatorial approaches, and with audiences and collectors. By presenting diverse voices working across contemporary media, techniques, and conceptual strategies, it seeks to both elevate artistic practice and foster critical exchange, expanding visibility for Jamaica’s evolving art community.
From a conceptual standpoint, the exhibition explores exhibition design as a critical narrative device, drawing on the “poetics of exhibition”, described by Professor Waibinte Wariboko (2011) as “the practice of creating meaning through the juxtaposition of distinct yet related artworks”. In this spirit, curatorial decisions were made to construct layered dialogues—between one artist’s work and another, and between the artworks and the gallery’s architectural space. This approach resonates with Dr. David Boxer’s (2005) insight that curation extends beyond the physical mounting of an exhibition. The resulting spatial dialogues echo the complexity of Jamaica’s postcolonial cultural landscape, revealing both shared concerns and distinctive artistic voices that animate its contemporary scene.
Curated by: Kevarney K.R.
Featured artists:
Akeem Johnson Kokab Zohoori-Dossa
Atira Robinson Kyle Gooden
Chinelle Miller Madison Addington
Christopher Harris Maxine Gibson
Dwayne Grant Patrick Waldemar
Garfield Morgan Rashleigh Morris
Gerald Gordon Richard Nattoo
Isabel-Marie Thwaites Shediene Fletcher
Janice Reid Sonn Ngai
Justeen Bailey Suzanna Missenberger
Kimberley Jones Taj Francis
Kobi B. Bailey Zorhia Allen
Exhibited works
Opening night
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Continuing The Olympia Gallery Legacy:
As one of the few remaining private galleries in Jamaica, The Olympia Gallery endures as a bastion of cultural resilience—on the final line of defence in the preservation and advancement of the nation’s visual arts. Situated at the crossroads of Jamaica’s art historical past and its contemporary and future trajectories, Olympia continues to play an indispensable role in shaping the country’s artistic legacy.
The Olympia Gallery, first opened on 19 August 1974 by Jamaican civil engineer, artist, and patron Ainsworth David (A.D.) Scott, OD (1912–2004), was originally known as the Olympia International Art Centre and Hotel and remains the largest commercial art gallery in Jamaica. Its founding coincided with a pivotal moment in the nation’s cultural development. Under Michael Manley’s democratic socialist government, cultural self-expression and national identity were championed as central to Jamaica’s political project. Alongside the establishment of the National Gallery of Jamaica (NGJ) later that same year, Olympia played a defining role in shaping the emerging post-independence visual art landscape.
Scott envisioned Olympia not simply as a commercial gallery but as a dynamic cultural institution supporting the visual arts, music, poetry, dance, and theatre. His concept of a “United Nations of the Arts” sought to unite artists from the Caribbean, Afrika, the Pacific, and other regions of the Global South in a collective project of cultural solidarity. This vision directly challenged Eurocentric and colonial artistic hierarchies while aligning with the broader political ethos of decolonization throughout the Global South.
Across the decades, Olympia has remained a vital platform for Jamaican artists to present works that engage critically with local, regional, and diasporic narratives. Its wide-ranging curatorial initiatives have fostered dialogue among generations of practitioners, collectors, and enthusiasts. The gallery has exhibited and supported the work of seminal figures such as Barrington Watson, Karl Parboosingh, Eugene Hyde, Ralph Campbell, and Aubrey Williams—members of the Contemporary Jamaican Artists’ Association—as well as Cecil Cooper, Judith Salmon, Margaret Chen, Bryan McFarlane, Petrona Morrison and Omari Ra (Afrikan). More recently, it has spotlighted Jamaica’s leading contemporary voices, including Ebony G. Patterson, Phillip Thomas, Camille Chedda, Greg Bailey, Patrick Waldemar, Matthew McCarthy and Taj Francis.
The Olympia Gallery: Curators’ Eye exhibition carries forward this rich legacy. By foregrounding a new generation of emerging and mid-career artists and placing them in dialogue with established practitioners, the exhibition reflects Olympia’s enduring commitment to critically exploring the cultural and creative zeitgeist of contemporary Jamaica.