National Gallery’s Last Sundays to feature ‘Jamaica, Jamaica’ exhibition

The National Gallery of Jamaica’s (NGJ) virtual ‘Last Sundays’ continues on  September 27 with an exhibition, titled ‘Jamaica, Jamaica: How Jamaican Music conquered the World’.

The online event will begin at 1:30 p.m. and will feature performances by musical artiste and student of the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, Victoria “Tori Love” Taffe.

The public can view the event on the Gallery’s YouTube channel and Instagram page.

The ‘Jamaica, Jamaica’ exhibition was initially launched on February 2 for Reggae Month and is in collaboration with La Philharmonie de Paris.

Chief Curator, NGJ, O’Neil Lawrence, told JIS News that the exhibition will highlight the development of Jamaica’s rich musical heritage from the period of enslavement to the present.

“It will show how music was used as a form of resistance, through to its development from religious aspects to our secular forms and how music plays a role in our independence and development of major studios in Jamaica,” he said.

He noted that the virtual pre-recorded event is one way of reconnecting with visitors to the Gallery in a different format.

“We want to keep in touch with them because [Last Sundays] has been something that has been a mainstay to a lot of people,” he said.

Mr. Lawrence is encouraging persons to log on to view the online event.

“It’s a way to break the tedium, we hope, of being stuck at home, to see something interesting and to see something that you haven’t seen as yet. We’re going to be doing this every month until we can see people again in person,” he noted.

Last Sundays was started as a live concert event at the Gallery’s downtown Kingston headquarters on the last Sunday of each month, featuring different aspects of the performing arts, including dance, theatrical performances and emerging artistes.

The virtual staging of the event began in April in response to the social distancing measures implemented by the Government to contain the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Meanwhile, Mr. Lawrence is inviting members of the public to subscribe to the Gallery’s Instagram and YouTube channels in order to get notifications of future educational and entertaining events.

“Our YouTube channel, of course, is not just for Last Sundays; it is also for educational productions of the National Gallery,” he noted.