Work to be discussed and researched as preparation for the workshop was ”while the dew is still on the roses, Ebony G Patterson. We were encouraged to look at the Perez Art Museum, in Miami (PAMM)

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Background on the artist:

• She is Jamaican born, 1981, holds a MFA degree from the Sam Fox College of Design & Visual Arts, Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, in 2006, 
•  She has taught at the University of Virginia and is currently an Assistant Professor in Painting at the University of KentuckyHer work is mostly painting, mixed media and installation.
• It can be described as having a uniquely Caribbean aesthetic that mixes elements of “high” and “low” art as she draws from carnival costuming, Haitian sequined flags, and above all the “bling” of Jamaican Dancehall fashion.
• Her recent work explores the politics of visibility and invisibility, with regards to the cultural and social implications of violence and death in Jamaican society.
• “I was really interested in the saying: ‘If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound?’” she recalled. She liked “the idea that the forest is able to both conceal and reveal.” It holds secrets and requires witnesses to acknowledge them. For her, this was a natural metaphor for the way that society can so easily ignore violence against black bodies.
• “Beauty, Gender, body and the grotesque are an ongoing discussion in my work. I am enthralled by the repulsive, the bizarre and the objectness of bodies and the contradictions that both have to art historically and culturally. The Jamaican vernacular, gendered cultural symbolisms and stereotypes serve as a platform for these discussions. I am enthused by words, conditions and experiences that objectify and abjectify.” (words of the artist)
• She sources media images of mourning at sites where traumas have occurred (mostly murders incited by racism), then restages the scenarios with actors who wear clothing she’s had specially tailored. During day-long photoshoots, Patterson takes her own photographs. Later, she edits the images and sends them to commercial weavers, who send back knit versions of her pictures. “Then I sit with it,” she said. “I embellish it, I chop it up. It’s a very layered, meaty process.” A sense of depth and landscape remains, scattered with various body parts or pieces of clothing. Yet Patterson obscures and abstracts the original picture beyond easy recognition. Notably, she never uses photographs of the deceased themselves for her source material—recirculating such images doesn’t appeal to her. She’s more interested in considering how the living grieve.

WHILE THE DEW IS STILL ON THE ROSES

Organised by Pamm’s chief curator Tobias Ostrander, the show features six new commissions and seven other works from the past five years, including videos, mixed-media installations, paintings and embellished tapestry pieces. The title is a reference to a popular hymn describing an encounter with God in a garden. The exhibition explores Patterson’s repeated use of such landscapes, including the garden as an extension of the body, according to Ostrander. He also indicates that ” There is a transformation of the works on view into one large “night garden” installation, with twilight-coloured wallpaper, vegetation growing up the walls and silk flora falling from the ceiling.” (https://www.theartnewspaper.com/interview/ebony-patterson-get-caught-in-the-beauty-trap). In this installation she lined the walls with a moody, dark-purple-and-blue wallpaper consisting of repeating squares that multiply one photograph of a cluster of flowers. Tapestries and drawings hangs at the top and are included a floor piece: Crocheted and embroidered One see bundles of ivy and red blossoms dangle from the ceiling, while bouquets spill from the walls and corners.

On gets the feeling when you look at videos of the installation that the garden as place become a witness of things that the artist wants you to discover and stand still for at – look and see what is going on behind all the beauty.

In the conversation with The Art Newspaper she said the following:

“Oh, it’s a trap. It’s a total trap! One, it’s a trap in the sense that I’m interested in using materials [such as pearls or costume jewellery] that we associate with prettiness, as a way of luring or pulling in the viewer. All the time I get asked, because it’s so much [ornamentation], when do I know that it’s too much? But the muchness of it all—the minute you start to dig beyond its beauty—is when you really begin to see that this is actually not as beautiful as it seems; there is a lot of conflation between the layers of beauty and the layers of violence. The other thing that I’m interested in is just thinking about the garden and the earth as a metaphor—the idea that we come from the earth, we exist on the earth and we return to the earth. While we live, there is this enthralment with beauty or cultivating beauty. I’m interested in the way we use dress, and its relationship to pageantry and beauty, particularly with working-class people— how that becomes an act of gardening, but gardening that’s happening on the body.”

She also acknowledged that PAMM allows her to explore her narratives to the fullest with this show – she could go big and wild.

Stapley-Brown, Victoria, 2018 Ebony G. Patterson: new garden-inspired installations reveal an original thinker in full bloom The artist’s exhibition at the Pérez Art Museum Miami is an intense, immersive experience. published online on 8 December 2018 00:04 GMT, The Art Newspaper.

Because of the scale of the work, the viewer is placed within the work – one cannot but escape being a witness to what is going on, if you look deeper and find layers of beauty and violence. It is clear that she uses the layers to explore how we look at embellishment both in our gardens, homes, how we dress/appear. As humans we do have an enthrallment with beauty, and i think it differs as well as change over time/experience? Below is an earlier work, which is now seen as a ‘precursor’ to the work we are discussing in this session.

Researching the website of PAMM and resources available on how the artist did her research, the validity and purpose, material context, curation, scale of the work

I looked at artist T Elliot Mansa, b (to be completed)

Use of Padlet where all participants could discuss work and develop own work. look at demarcation within the work. A great way to interact with others around the topic and be challenged with other ideas and looking afresh.

I am touched by this artist who investigated through materials and place how she could engage viewers into trauma. I think she use her the work also as a critique against indifference and lack of visibility of many groups in our global society.