'Landscape (Home Town)' acrylic on canvas.
Sana Rose
, Contributor
THE CLASSIC media are present acrylic/oil on canvas and watercolour and charcoal on paper and although some of these depict landscapes and portraits, the images are not pretty in form but allude to beauty content. In the acrylic works, paint is daubed on to unprimed canvas with the tools of 'close at hand' fingers, knife, twigs, sponges. In fact, a sole watercolour painting, 'Aisha (Life and Vision)' dedicated to the artist's fiancee, is the only one that utilises a paintbrush. These are hung alongside assemblages made from clothes, driftwood, metal, dolls, bones, cellophane tape and shells. Together, these drawings, paintings and sculptures form The Third Eye, the first solo exhibition in Jamaica by Christopher Irons who recently returned from his sojourn in Nigeria after having won a Commonwealth Arts and Crafts Award.
It is being hosted by the Sir Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts at the University of the West Indies (UWI) Mona campus.Irons is mostly known for his assemblages which are socio-political commentaries of contemporary Jamaica. This time around he displays a wider interest in both two-dimensional and three-dimensional imagery after laying aside painting for some time. The experience in Nigeria encouraged him to use whatever materials he has at hand and reinforced his propensity to use found objects which are combined together in various configurations. He often makes no pretence of beauty in his work they are not light-hearted musings but rather raw, confrontational 'slaps in the face' that use sardonic humour to criticise the ills of his local territory and beyond its shores.
UNAPOLOGETIC
Irons' works seem to be directly unaffected or impacted by the Nigerian experience. Images of work done in that country are different from the ones he now presents. He appears to have just picked up where he left off here. Even though the materials of his assemblages especially the driftwood is being used more now than previously the spirit and form of his work remain the same, seemingly untouched by the geographical/cultural change. Fortunately, his intensity still remains.
Driftwood branches are transformed into erect phalluses poking at a woman's genitalia, and nude dolls representing children in the assemblages and humans are compared with and are demoted to different species of animals that unashamedly copulate before us in the paintings. Moral depravity is thrown at us child abuse, poverty, promiscuity and the AIDS epidemic images of an ugly Jamaica. Beyond Jamaica, he takes on the current war in Iraq with two pieces 'Poor Iraqi' and 'Ninja Bush'.Irons' 'slaps in the face' have often proved to be too much for many members of the public. Ironically, while popular opinion shuns him to a large extent, he continues to receive critical acclaim from the artistic minority, earning over the years prestigious awards, including first prize in the Wray and Nephew 'Spirit of Jamaica' Competition in his second year at Edna Manley College, the purchase award at the inaugural staging of the National Biennial at the National Gallery two years ago, the coveted title of 'Under 40 Artist of the Year' in 2003, and the more recent Commonwealth Foundation Arts and Crafts Award where he resided and created art in Nigeria for six months.
In the 'Under 40 Artist of the Year' competition in particular, he received the jury prize but not the people's prize.The comment book for the current show is loaded with daily responses to the works. While some comments are favourable, one even hailing him as a genius, most are disparaging. The works are deemed 'crap' and the artist a 'pervert'. Most persons are especially insulted by the fact that Irons is offering the assemblages for sale while others think that the prices are just too high."I want people to know that I am serious about my work. If I didn't price them people wouldn't think I'm serious," he responds. Most persons find a majority of the paintings to be more visually palatable, that is, the landscapes and portraits.So what compels the artist to represent and re-present the ugliness in our society? He shares that, "I have nightmares just looking at the television and seeing how brutal people can be extra-judicial killings by the police, the war in Iraq and so on. If something affects me badly, I want to put it down plain and people either stick their fingers down their throat and throw up or say 'why yuh have to paint these tings'.
"I could do pretty works and people say 'oh I like the figures, I like this, I like that'. These are the things that are taking place, these are the things that affect me as a person. You hear about the different rapes and other things like that little girl that the 10 guys or so raped the other day. We need to talk about these things. If we were talking about respecting people's place, privacy and life; that when you rape a woman or a young child boy or girl you destroy that person for life!"
HYPOCRITES
If we were perhaps hoping to find a solution to the problems, hope, a lighter side of life in his works after having been bombarded with the ugliness in the media especially, they will find that these are thrust upon us as our responsibility. The artist presents the raw issues to provoke responses. Irons declares that to ignore these happenings, "I would have to be a politician or a pastor and I am not prepared to do that. Those are the two biggest hypocrites in the society and Jamaica could do a lot better without them."On the flip side of the coin, one wonders if Irons' message is really clear enough. Viewers have labelled him a 'pervert' because they apparently feel that he is in support of the ugliness he portrays due to the unapologetic rawness of the images. On a formal level the paintings and drawings are surprisingly weak structurally and a few of the paintings are muddled spatially.
The best of paintings include 'Simple Life' (landscape), 'Reflection' and 'Oneness of Life and Environment' which are more resolved. The assemblages continue to champion the found object, which French artist Marcel Duhamp introduced into the galleries near the beginning of the 20th century. Back then, they were referred to as readymades left in their original state, and Irons continues this practice to a large extent as he hardly disguises or changes his object but shifts their initial uses and meanings into new contexts in keeping with contemporary art globally and locally, that has adopted the use of found objects.
Driftwood is no longer a curious beach find but the towering figures of corruption and immorality while a toilet is re-presented as a waste disposal device but is recontextualised into a symbol of devalued moral ethics that feeds into itself and gives birth to the fruitless tree of poverty from its bowels. On the whole, the artist is not averse to beauty and states that if the world were perfect, he would create more of those images.For now, Irons continues his critique of social and political ills in The Third Eye and affirms his spiritual connection to a psychic ability to look inwards at oneself towards a social awareness and responsibility. He assures us that his objective is not to "shock (us) and stop there" but to provoke thought and perhaps positive change. "We need to ask ourselves, what is our contribution to the problems? For me, I find that maybe I didn't say enough about some things that shouldn't be or that I disagreed with. You have to constantly purge yourself," he asserts. The exhibition continues until May 17.
