The Jamaica Project
2026Camden Art Centre, LondonAin Bailey and Camden Art Centre were shortlisted for the Freelands Award 2023
Work durations:
5C Jacques Road: Part One, 2026. 30 min
Untitled (Our Wedding), 2022. 30 min
Version, 2021: Dub 40 min; Linstead Market 5 min 2 sec; Ackee 21 min 56 sec
The Jamaica Project brings together Ain Bailey’s ongoing trilogy of films and compositions exploring her biography and relationship to Jamaica. At its centre is the newly commissioned 5C Jacques Road: Part One (2026), filmed during Bailey’s first visit to Jamaica in 2025. Combining iPhone footage with a deconstructed reggae composition incorporating field recordings gathered along the way, the work follows Bailey’s journey across the island towards the place where her mother’s family once lived.
The new commission is presented in dialogue with Untitled: Our Wedding (2022), a tender meditation on Bailey’s parents’ wedding album. Its score reimagines the familiar chord progression of Richard Wagner’s 1850 Bridal Chorus played by a music box embedded in the album, and interweaves it with poetry by Remi Graves.
Version (2021), the trilogy’s foundational installation, draws on the reggae practice of the “version”, the reworking of existing musical material, to develop Bailey’s practice of sonic biography. Rather than treating biography as a fixed narrative, Bailey composes with fragments of inherited and remembered experience: Elaine Mitchener’s rendition of the Jamaican folk song “Linstead Market”, recordings of ackee and saltfish being prepared, and an homage to dub created through Wysing’s Amphis sculpture. Sound, sculpture and food become interconnected carriers of heritage, grief and memory. Textual responses by Taylor Le Melle function as further versions of the compositions, extending Bailey’s exploration of translation and accessibility for D/deaf audiences.
Land, Light and Love is a site-specific intervention in Gallery 3, overlaying its windows with yellow, green and black vinyl circles and bathing the space in the colours of the Jamaican flag. Suspended above are 64 sculptural ackee fruits, marking the years since Jamaica gained independence in 1962.
Together, the works explore family, migration and memory, tracing the ways sound can connect intimate experience with broader cultural and historical narratives.
Photography credits Rob Harris
The new commission is presented in dialogue with Untitled: Our Wedding (2022), a tender meditation on Bailey’s parents’ wedding album. Its score reimagines the familiar chord progression of Richard Wagner’s 1850 Bridal Chorus played by a music box embedded in the album, and interweaves it with poetry by Remi Graves.
Version (2021), the trilogy’s foundational installation, draws on the reggae practice of the “version”, the reworking of existing musical material, to develop Bailey’s practice of sonic biography. Rather than treating biography as a fixed narrative, Bailey composes with fragments of inherited and remembered experience: Elaine Mitchener’s rendition of the Jamaican folk song “Linstead Market”, recordings of ackee and saltfish being prepared, and an homage to dub created through Wysing’s Amphis sculpture. Sound, sculpture and food become interconnected carriers of heritage, grief and memory. Textual responses by Taylor Le Melle function as further versions of the compositions, extending Bailey’s exploration of translation and accessibility for D/deaf audiences.
Land, Light and Love is a site-specific intervention in Gallery 3, overlaying its windows with yellow, green and black vinyl circles and bathing the space in the colours of the Jamaican flag. Suspended above are 64 sculptural ackee fruits, marking the years since Jamaica gained independence in 1962.
Together, the works explore family, migration and memory, tracing the ways sound can connect intimate experience with broader cultural and historical narratives.
Photography credits Rob Harris
File Note 159
Published to accompany The Jamaica Project at Camden Art Centre, File Note 159 features a specially commissioned essay by Gail Lewis, together with supporting images and reading, viewing and listening selections compiled by Ain Bailey. The publication offers further insight into the exhibition and Bailey’s wider artistic practice. Visit Camden ArtsCenter for more information.
JACQUES ROAD
JACQUES ROAD. (2026) is a limited-edition gloss photograph capturing the moment Ain Bailey arrives at the Kingston road where her mother’s family once lived. The image emerges from the journey documented in 5C Jacques Road: Part One and was produced to accompany The Jamaica Project at Camden Art Centre. Edition of 20, with a signed and numbered certificate. Visit Camden Arts Centre to purchase.
Press
Dazed (round up), 31 March 2026
Sounds of the City, BBC (radio interview), 2 April 2026
mov.r (review), 10 April 2026
The Wire (review; print only), June 2026
Art shows to leave the house for in April 2026