Jack Bell Gallery – Lavar Munroe: Two Birds and a Stone

Jack Bell Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of paintings by contemporary artist Lavar Munroe. The artist works with acrylic and mixed media on unstretched canvas, often incorporating objects and materials such as mousetraps, beads, ceramic tiles, textiles and feathers. This new series is autobiographical and makes diverse references to religion, death, fatherhood, protection, pandemics, belonging vs. exclusion and notions of good and evil. This will be Munroe’s seventh solo show with the gallery.

Munroe was born in the impoverished, stigmatised and often marginalised Grants Town community in Nassau, Bahamas. In 2004, he moved to the United States at the age of 21. The artist’s work functions as a reflection of the environment where he grew up, drawing from memory the crude graffiti on the walls that surrounded his street. Munroe maps a personal journey of survival and trauma in a world of gang violence, drugs, murder, self-discovery, development and overcoming obstacles through self-determination. Though inspired by the past, his loud, energetic and unapologetic visual language confronts contemporary society and the strained and difficult relationships between authority and people of the ghetto.