Richard Ackoon at the Art Society

Please note that I choose the word “works” to describe this art exhibition because only six of the pieces on exhibit are paintings, the other 14 (to quote the catalogue) “begin as magazine clippings, or edited internet-found imagery that are either manually or electronically collaged.”

From that last noun-into-verb transition, it goes without saying that Ackoon lives in New York, New York, where he works in the publishing house of Simon and Shuster. To my mind the shift from nouns into verbs is an irritating habit of those who can’t take the time to write “create an electronic collage” — but that’s me, I hate and detest what the polyglot US is doing to the language of Shakespeare.

Now, where were we? Oh yes, having “manually or electronically collaged” these images, the artist “computer-manipulates the collage compositions, they are digitally transferred to canvas.” Well I suppose one has to move with the times, but one is bound to wonder where it may lead.

Nevertheless, we have six large oil and acrylic paintings on canvas and vellum to consider. Bright, bold Caribbean colours dominate all six, even though the seas around Trinidad are never that blue or the sands so yellow, however, that is how they must seem to those who spend most of their lives under grey skies, hemmed in by glass and concrete. There is joy in the impression of Carnival, the massed bodies seen, as it were, through the lens of a TV camera as bands storm (or used to storm) up the track towards the Grandstand; the Reveller, too, is all hot Caribbean colours with wings and glitter and masks topping the costume.

The assorted “Caribbean Influence” clippings and downloadings from the Internet are interspersed, chessboard-fashion with squares of dazzling colour.

I’m not sure I’d like to hang one on my wall (only supposing I could afford one) but there are those who like to keep up with the latest fashion — and hope that it’ll stick around when the piece has ceased to be a novel talking point.

Caribbean Influences, a solo exhibition of paintings by Richard Ackoon, continues at the Art Society Headquarters in Federation Park until Tuesday.