Gillian Moore

Pro­lif­ic artist, mag­a­zine ed­i­tor and de­sign­er, Richard Mark Rawl­ins, brought his dis­ci­plines to­geth­er for his lat­est ex­hi­bi­tion, Gotcha! The re­sult was a show of ac­ces­si­ble, graph­ic and at­trac­tive works, mar­ry­ing so­cial com­men­tary with a spir­it of fun. The show was launched at Al­ice Yard in Wood­brook on June 24, and fea­tured thir­ty paint­ings, main­ly acrylic on var­i­ous sur­faces, as well as a col­or­ful­ly de­signed mono­graph, fea­tur­ing more of Rawl­ins' ex­plo­rations, with an in­tro­duc­tion by artist/de­sign­er Adele Todd, a short piece on the "meg­gie" con­cept by writer Tra­cy Hutchin­ngs, an es­say on art and pol­i­tics by An­dre Ba­goo.

The Gotcha! con­cept was built around the "meg­gie", which Rawl­ins de­scribes as a "ubiq­ui­tous and last­ing el­e­ment of our T&T cul­ture, our pi­cong." Hutch­ings de­scribes it as "the five fin­gered fart, the fowl bot­tom" that taunts: "the joke is on you." Through this pi­cong prism, Rawl­ins looks at con­tem­po­rary life in T&T, even com­ment­ing on pol­i­tics in pieces like White Ele­phant, which shows a pale pachy­derm float­ing in the air above the NA­PA build­ing. Al­though uni­fied by its tongue-in-cheek tone, the show was di­vid­ed in­to three dis­tinct spaces at the Al­ice Yard venue, show­cas­ing dif­fer­ent me­dia, style and sub­ject mat­ter.

One showed lim­it­ed edi­tion "meg­gie" prints and wear­able but­tons; an­oth­er fea­tured the more po­lit­i­cal works, while the main area showed im­ages of "the peo­ple," with pieces like Bad­dest by the Stand­pipe-ren­dered on an old-fash­ioned wash­board-and Beetham, show­ing a mass of folks and a burn­ing tyre. A re­peat­ed mo­tif was faces with ex­ag­ger­at­ed eyes and lips. Rawl­ins says these sig­ni­fied two as­pects of Tri­ni cul­ture at which our peo­ple ex­cel: "ma­co­ing" and talk. The show al­so fea­tured a screen­print col­lab­o­ra­tion with artist Suzanne Nunez. Gotcha! al­so fea­tured live en­ter­tain­ment.