RECENTLY ON VIEW

if you should forget me for a while

Exhibition at Sienna Patti Contemporary
June 27 through August 25, 2024
Lenox, MA

Featuring work by Jacqueline Bishop, Melanie Bilenker, Venetia Dale, & Lauren Kalman

ABOUT “FAUNA”

More on Jacqueline Bishop HERE

Jacqueline Bishop’s interdisciplinary practice is focused on making visible the ephemeral, in speaking aloud the unspoken, in telling untold stories and voicing voicelessness. Bishop is acutely aware of what it means to be simultaneously an insider and an outsider having lived longer outside of her birthplace of Jamaica than on the island itself. This has allowed her to view a given environment from a distance.

Fauna arises out of Bishop’s long-standing questions about the position of black women in Caribbean society. Her first collection of poems published in 2006, also titled ‘Fauna’, used Caribbean flowers as metaphors to explore the lives of enslaved women. Bishop sees this new commissioned work as a visual manifestation of these poems.

Further research revealed that prior to the ending of the slave trade there was no attention given to either the maternal health of pregnant women or their babies. Where and to whom did enslaved women turn when they were trying to conceive, could not conceive or found themselves with unwanted pregnancies? The answer lay in the plants, flowers, fruits and herbs of Jamaica. Each one contained a unique botanical element that could either end an unwanted pregnancy or encourage fertility. In Fauna Bishop has surrounded the women and their children with healing and protective herbs. Indeed, in one case, the mother is offering her child up to the arms of the natural environment.

Fauna was commissioned by The Harris and will go on display when the museum re- opens in Spring 2025. Unveiling overlooked and brutal histories of slavery and colonialism, Bishop’s work is an important acquisition for The Harris’ ceramic collection. Creating dialogues with other pieces in The Harris’ collection, most importantly an oil painting recently identified as ‘A Jamaica Landscape’ (c. 1774), attributed to George Robertson, Bishop said that her work “intervenes in the idyllic presentation of slavery and enslavement of the painting to present enslaved women using the environment to shield themselves and their children. Both works speak to each other.” Both works will be displayed together as this timely acquisition will play an integral part in a new display exploring the global history of tea, weaving together histories of British Empire, Colonialism and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

Jacqueline Bishop (b. 1971, Kingston, Jamaica) lives and works in New York and Miami, Florida. Bishop worked with Emma Price; a British ceramicist based in Stoke- on-Trent in the former Spode factories in the realisation of this new work.

Recent exhibition solo exhibitions include British Art Studies, Paul Mellon Center, London (2022); SRO Gallery, Brooklyn, New York (2018); Meyerhoff Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland (2016). Recent group exhibitions include The Valentine Museum, Richmond, Virginia (2024); Gardiner Museum, Toronto, Ontario, CA (2024); Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (2023); Ferrin Contemporary, North Adams, MA (2022); British Ceramics Biennial (2021); Stoke-on-Trent (2021) and Jamaica Biennial, National Gallery of Jamaica. Kingston (2017).

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New Acquisition: Fauna by Jacqueline Bishop

The Harris is thrilled to announce a new acquisition to our collection, presented by the Contemporary Art Society

Jacqueline Bishop’s interdisciplinary masterpiece, ‘Fauna’, sheds light on overlooked narratives of enslaved women in Caribbean society. Commissioned by The Harris, this evocative ceramic work intertwines botanical elements with maternal themes, unveiling poignant stories of resilience. Displaying alongside historical pieces, ‘Fauna’ sparks dialogues on the global history of tea and colonialism. Don’t miss its unveiling in Spring 2025!

READ MORE HERE

ABOUT “THE NARRATIVES OF MIGRATION”

More on Jacqueline Bishop HERE

The series of plates derives its title from a poem I wrote which traces various migrations within my family. As a child growing up on the island of Jamaica, I never knew my mother’s father, but I knew that he lived in England where he had another family. My mother and her brother– his children– were left back on the island of Jamaica. 

Jamaica’s relationship with England began in 1655 when, having failed to wrest Cuba from Spain, the English settled on Jamaica as a secondary prize. While I grew up in an independent country (achieved from England in 1962) England still loomed large in my consciousness as a child born in the 1970s. Even today, the British Monarch remains Head of State of Jamaica, which is part of the Commonwealth. 

In this work, it is both my family’s history and a larger English/Jamaican history that I have sought to trace. These plates consist of family photographs of my grandmother, my mother, and my mother’s brother in Jamaica, and my grandfather, his wife, and my aunts in England. They reference the recent Windrush scandal whereby British citizens from the Caribbean living in the UK for decades were being deported back to the Caribbean, and they tell a longer story of enslavement. Replete are images of the flora and fauna of the Caribbean which would be taken from the island to fill English gardens and give rise to the field of Natural history. Also included are the icons of nationalism developed for Jamaica by the British. 

What these plates show is that in both personal and political terms, the relationship between Jamaica and the UK is one that is enduring.  

-Jacqueline Bishop

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