Continuing The Olympia Gallery Legacy:

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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.
 

Curators’ Eye 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.

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"What Home Sounds Like at Curator's Eye: On Art, Sound and Becoming" by Kwela Njeri

(Reflection on exhibition December 12, 2025. Click HERE to read on Substack)

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"Viewing art is always special for me. Especially since I’m normally viewing it most now, during what I consider the biggest exhibition opening season in Kingston, Jamaica. It coincides with the end of the year, a culmination of work that unfolded across 12 months, sometimes longer. Finality and reflection hang in the air in a physical way. You have to acknowledge what you’ve been through within the year and what you might go through in the next.

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I thought about this as I viewed the works of the 24 exhibiting artists of Curator’s Eye, works that reflected on the complexity of their culture and self, their peers and their communities, all through a contemporary, Afro-Caribbean gaze.

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As I perused Olympia Gallery, the temporary home of the works (because they are all on sale, period) I noticed the soundtrack: When I Get Home, the fourth studio album by soul/R&B artist Solange. It could not have been arbitrary. Even if I hadn’t already suspected that arbitrariness wasn’t the style of the exhibition’s incredibly inspired curator Kevarney K.R., I had noticed that the album’s songs were also used as musical accompaniment in some of the opening’s social media marketing.

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Released in 2019, three years after A Seat at the Table brought awareness to Blackness in a world not always willing to accept it, When I Get Home explored celebrating that identity unapologetically. Songs like Stay Flo and My Skin My Logo elucidate Solange’s deep connection with the melting pot of elements that make up her culture - our culture. Her experimentation with samples, sounds and vocals is playful, representing the found pieces that shape what it means to be Black.

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These ideas were palpable as I walked around the space. I remember chuckling to myself as I stopped in front of Madison Addington’s Beware of Falling Coconuts. In the painting, humour is used to convey an experience many of us can relate to while growing up in an island setting. It depicts an occurrence that might demand explanation elsewhere, but in this setting exists and is immediately understood.

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The works of the artists spanned several mediums. Photographs coexisted among paintings, pottery sat between digital art and textiles gleamed across from mixed media. The group of artists, though connected through the common thread of being young and Jamaican, is diverse. Themes like Caribbean storytelling, cultural retention, folklore, feminine and masculine expression and the idea of Home paralleled one another, even as their presentation differed.

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The sounds of When I Get Home weaving around the art and the mingling opening crowd felt especially poignant here. This was as clear a case as any of a melting pot creating the same result, no matter how much of an ingredient was added, so long as the type remained the same. We are interconnected, responding differently to pressures and conditions that we share. In the same way, our parents did, and our children will too.

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It matters to feel these ideas viscerally and to express them in the way these artists did, the way Solange has. It felt satisfying to feel, see and hear it all at once.

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It is not lost on me that some of these artists, including Kyle Gooden, Chinelle Miller, Dwayne Grant, Justeen Bailey, Rashleigh Morris, among others, currently have work installed at the National Gallery of Jamaica. I feel lucky witnessing artists caught in this in-between moment: no longer creating in private, but not yet cemented by legacy. Luckier still, documenting it.

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Viewing art will always be special to me. At exhibitions like Curator’s Eye, I get to see the artists stand beside their work. I look forward to more from them, from Kevarney, and the Jamaican contemporary art scene at large".​​