COSTELLO
Keisha Costello is a Jamaican artist living and working in Kingston. Her work, 'Hybrid Realities, is being shown in Curator's Eye II exhibition at the National Gallery of Jamaica.
Here she discusses her work with Dr. Jonathan Greenland, executive director of the National Gallery of Jamaica.
Q Talk to us through your work in Curator's Eye II.
The work is called Hybrid Realities. Basically, I have made assemblages out of found objects, such as bits of fishbone, crab shells, leaves, lizards etc., and they are contained in wooden boxes.
I find that in life everything is very ethereal. Nothing lasts forever and I'm fascinated by that thought. So, I find myself collecting and hoarding these banal, decomposing bits and pieces. I find these things possess an underlying beauty.
Q: Is it easy collecting these decomposing things?
A: With the insects, I get them when they're dead and let them dry out. The rest are dried leaves and dried bones, so they're not decomposing on a major scale!
It is all around us. I pass it every day as I am walking. In fact, I take inspiration from everything around me. The colours of the assemblages in Hybrid Realities are mainly earth tones. I find this helps me to convey muted or subdued emotions. Normally, it brings out unwanted truths about me. I suppose they represent a subdued inward aggression.
Q: What do you mean by that?
This is a kind of aggression I feel about knowing and not knowing who I am. I like to play about with that. There are a lot of things and personalities that we take on in order to enable us to cope or exist within society or our own communities. It is me creating these creatures that haven't existed before and if I create them they must have a reality.
You know the story of Dr. Frankenstein who made a creature out of the parts of dead people and gave it life? I do. At the same time, as we create these things, each of them is boxed. Even though we create these little realities, we are still defined and analyzed and labeled in the same way.
I find these works fascinating they are like specimens in a natural history museum. They are specimens. Isn't that what we all are?
Q: So does your work play on the line between freedom and containment?
I am saying something and not saying something. I find art the most fulfilling and natural thing in my life. Only this can give me a lasting feeling of freedom and euphoria. But I am only free in certain places. When I step outside, there are a lot of things I am not free to do or be.
Q: I notice you are not telling us too much about these works.
The work is very personal and I don't talk about everything. Also, I've not yet finished with them. I haven't even named them individually.
Q: What do you think of the Jamaican art scene?
It's alive. But we need more spaces where people from all walks of life can react with works of art. There are lots of artists out there young, old doing their thing. It's more a question of spaces. We need more spaces for people to react to the work.
A lot of the spaces belong to the private sector. There is the National Gallery and the Mutual Gallery and a few others but there are not enough. Most of the spaces we want are owned by the government.
It is often artists who take the lead on this. For instance, many of the famous young British artists made their names in an exhibition called FREEZE.
They set up the exhibition themselves in an old warehouse, complete with a catalogue. It was so professionally done that people thought it was an official event.
That is happening here. Stanford Watson and some other artists are trying to acquire some warehouse spaces and empty buildings. We will use them as studios, but eventually we are hoping there will be exhibition spaces. It's always been Stanford's dream.
I agree we don't necessarily want galleries. Currently, I am working on a language-based exhibition with artist Allison Perkins. I am also working on a project with Tricia Gordon-Johnston, who is also in Curator's Eye II. We cannot box art in for just certain types of people it is all around us.
Q: Where is your favourite place in Jamaica?
Blue Mountain Peak. It takes me away from everything, literally, but at the same time it takes me back to basics to make a wooden fire, to go walking. It is the most beautiful place in Jamaica.
'Curator's Eye II, Identity and History: Personal and Social Narratives in Art in Jamaica' is curated by Dr. Eddie Chambers. The exhibition runs through
to March 18.
