AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

Re­porter

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

He may be known for his mu­sic, but An­dre Al­long, pro­fes­sion­al­ly known as Andy Ven­ture (VEN­CHA), has tak­en on an art form that he be­lieves has el­e­vat­ed him in­to a whole oth­er di­men­sion and stratos­phere that is ‘over your head’.

For many years, Andy has been in­volved in the lo­cal mu­sic in­dus­try as a rap artist and mu­sic pro­duc­er. How­ev­er, he says that be­ing a vi­su­al artist is not new to him, as it is a skill and pas­sion that he has al­ways pos­sessed.

“I’ve al­ways been a vi­su­al artist. From us­ing dif­fer­ent me­dia. From graf­fi­ti to paint­ing, hand-paint­ed t-shirts to, you know, draw­ing com­ic book char­ac­ters, which is what start­ed all of this. And then get­ting in­to ac­tu­al fine art, vi­su­al art, paint­ing and stuff, when I start­ed UWI some years ago,” Andy told Guardian Me­dia.

The com­bi­na­tion of all these skills has now cul­mi­nat­ed in his in­au­gur­al so­lo art ex­hi­bi­tion at the Art So­ci­ety of T&T, en­ti­tled Over Ya Head.

To some, this piv­ot may come as a sur­prise, but this new chap­ter has been writ­ten silent­ly over the past few decades. Make no mis­take, though, mu­sic was his first true love.

“I didn’t start do­ing mu­sic un­til I was an adult. I liked it, I want­ed to get in­to it. I wasn’t sure I could, but I had that call­ing. I had that call­ing to write. I had that call­ing to make beats, ” he said.

Grow­ing up, mu­sic and art con­stant­ly over­lapped. While he loved lay­ing down tracks, sim­ple things like the cre­ativ­i­ty on al­bum cov­ers fas­ci­nat­ed him, ul­ti­mate­ly in­spir­ing him to cre­ate in a dif­fer­ent way. He even took it up­on him­self to de­sign his own cov­er art and pro­mo­tion­al fly­ers.

In 2018, Andy left his full-time job as a su­per­vi­sor at a lo­cal telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny, be­liev­ing that by not hav­ing a for­mal job, he could freely pick up a can­vas and a paint­brush and ‘plug in’.

Un­like many first-time so­lo shows that are as­sem­bled with­in a few months, Over Ya Head con­tains works cre­at­ed across more than a decade.

“I’ve worked on pieces in this ex­hi­bi­tion as far back as 2011 or 2012. Some, I’ve worked on some as re­cent as last week.”

Some of Andy’s paint­ings emerged from mo­ments of pure in­spi­ra­tion, while oth­ers re­flect­ed var­i­ous eras of dis­ap­point­ment, cu­rios­i­ty or the sim­ple de­sire to see how far he could push his imag­i­na­tion.

But there was al­so a more prac­ti­cal mo­ti­va­tion at play.

“I’ve been do­ing mu­sic and al­so, get­ting old­er to be hon­est. I want­ed to do some­thing that I could be 80 and still be do­ing it.”

Andy says his choice of acrylic pieces for this ex­hi­bi­tion was in­ten­tion­al. The ex­hi­bi­tion’s name orig­i­nat­ed from one of his songs, al­so ti­tled “Over Ya Head”, which re­flect­ed on T&T’s so­ci­ety and iden­ti­ty.

To­day, how­ev­er, Andy says the ti­tle rep­re­sents his artis­tic phi­los­o­phy, which is root­ed in evo­lu­tion and con­cep­tu­al­is­ing re­al­i­ties be­yond or­di­nary hu­man per­cep­tion.

“It is a cos­mic theme. It’s a team of as­cen­sion as be­ings, right? Lit­er­al and spir­i­tu­al and any oth­er kind of way.”

Based on the feed­back he has re­ceived, Andy is con­fi­dent that peo­ple ap­pre­ci­ate not on­ly his cre­ativ­i­ty but al­so his will­ing­ness to pur­sue some­thing dif­fer­ent.

“I think peo­ple could ap­pre­ci­ate some­body like me that’s try­ing to do some­thing dif­fer­ent, that’s try­ing to not do run-of-the-mill art.”

“I don’t want my art to be re­gard­ed as dec­o­ra­tions. I want my art to not al­ways be preachy or any­thing like that, but to say some­thing min­i­mal­ly. Still say some­thing of some kind of val­ue. And to rep­re­sent T&T and the Caribbean too.”

And with Andy’s Over Ya Head ex­hi­bi­tion, he says this is on­ly the be­gin­ning. Be­cause af­ter decades of qui­et­ly and in­tent­ly build­ing his cre­ative world, he is fi­nal­ly ready to in­vite every­one else in­to it.