Representing crime, violence and Jamaica in visual art: An interview with Michael Elliott

Abstract

Michael Elliott is a visual artist based in Jamaica. A number of Elliott’s paintings make explicit reference to Jamaica’s high levels of violent crime; to the entanglement of Jamaican party politics and criminal organizations in what is known as “garrison politics”; and to the so-called “Tivoli Incursion”, the 2010 security operation to capture the criminal don, Christopher “Dudus” Coke, which involved the deaths of sixty-nine residents of Tivoli Gardens and led to a Commission of Enquiry. In this interview, the author invites Elliott to reflect on how his work connects to, and intervenes in, other representations of crime, violence and Jamaica.