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Partnerships Present Opportunities for NAGB: NAGB is reaching beyond New Providence to Support Family Island Schools

May 23, 2018 admin

By Katrina Cartwright. For the second year, the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas has partnered with the Department of Culture to adjudicate Arts and Crafts entries for the E. Clement Bethel National Arts Festival. Between February and May 2018 Katrina Cartwright, NAGB Education Officer, and Abby Smith, NAGB Community Outreach Officer traveled with the organizing committee of the National Arts Festival to schools in the north, south and central Bahamas, where the best of Bahamian talent was showcased by talented hopefuls, seeking to win in their respective categories.

From the Collection: “Crawfish Lady” (c2000) by Wellington Bridgewater

May 22, 2018 admin

By Natalie Willis

What does Bahamian fantasy and myth look like? What magic or horror happens when the divides between animal and human seem to dissolve? What then must Wellington Bridgewater have been thinking when he made the “Crawfish Woman” (c2000) who lies on the Southern steps of the NAGB’s Villa Doyle. Was he thinking that this lobster-lady was like the nefarious lusca, sucking water in and out of blue holes to capture unlucky divers and boats with the power of the oceans. Or was she more like the chickcharney, a generally benign beast who, once wronged, would cause you harm.

Sorry for What: I am not the sugar in your cup of tea

May 21, 2018 admin

Dr Ian Bethell Bennett

Sorry, Not Sorry a short experimental film by Alberta Whittle juxtaposes tourism and post-enslavement-dispossession in the British Caribbean. An intriguing mise-en-scène combined with sharp overlaying and interweaving text, image, audio and nuance that brings all sorts of feelings to the fore, from contradictions to harmonies. The harmony in the background, though clashes with the discordant foreground that allows the moving image the salience it has to document, to articulate, to illustrate the unbecoming side of colonialism and independence. Again, the irony of postcolonial independence is that there is no real sovereignty as governments are only held in power by foreign direct investors who own the economy, by owning resorts where the Bacardi-sipping-frolicking-lithe bodies stay during their fantasy time in paradise.

“West Street” by Hildegarde Hamilton

May 16, 2018 admin

By Natalie Willis

Some visitors aren’t visiting, some are coming home.

Considering the development we know of Nassau today, West Hill Street doesn’t look quite so different today as it does in Hildegarde Hamilton’s works. Though the date is not signed to the painting, we can tell it shows a different Nassau than the one we know now. Just in the last few years West Hill Street has taken on a series of colourful changes, particularly around Graycliff, as part of the Historic Charles Towne group. That being said, it may still be unusual to see a woman walking around with a parasol, the bougainvillea growing wildly over, and the road in better condition–and perhaps even unpaved–than it had been just a few years ago. It’s a comfort to think that maybe potholes haven’t always been quite so treacherous.

NAGB’s Mural Programme : Eleuthera: “Freedom” of Creative Expression

May 15, 2018 admin

By Abby Smith

Rich in history and eye-catching in its beauty, the island of Eleuthera became the backdrop for a creative explosion of young aspiring artists from all around the island. Continuing to make an impact on the islands visited courtesy of our travelling exhibition, the NAGB’s Mural Programme descended upon this tranquil isle with a challenge in tow: Telling the story of Eleuthera. Rising to the challenge was, Harbour Island All Age School under the directorship of Kevin Rolle, Art Teacher, North Eleuthera High School with Alfred Williams, Art Teacher, Central Eleuthera High School with Genele Williams, Art Teacher, Rock Sound Primary School and Tarpum Bay Primary School with Itinerant Art Teacher, Janice Hall and Preston Albury High School with Will Simmons, Art Teacher.

Eye on The Bahamas

May 14, 2018 admin

By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett. Beauty surrounds us. Waters flow over us. Sands, pink, grey, white, beige provide support for life. Mangroves with their gaseous smells and nursery roots, sustain coastal health as they prevent full-on impact from storm surges and hurricanes. Art provides a salient view into these natural beauties and the past, as it also imports past ideas into the present. It inspires and it heals. In the early days of tourism in the colony, people came to be healed in the balmy tropics The Bahamas offered. Some in turn captured and marketed this. Others were here and transported the feeling of the space to other shores through their visual and literary experiences. The Bahamas is known for its natural beauty: the way the sun strikes the waves and refracts into the eye of the beholder. This natural beauty is fragile, though it seem everlasting.

We Suffer to Remain: LUX Scotland at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas

May 11, 2018 admin

As part of the exhibition “We Suffer to Remain” at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (22 March – 29 July 2018), LUX Scotland presents a film series that brings together a selection of artists’ moving image work from Scotland, the UK and the greater African diaspora, with titles drawn from the LUX collection. We Suffer to Remain engages with the complex intersectional histories across Scotland and the Caribbean to make sense of the vestiges and trauma of slavery, featuring work by Bahamian artists Sonia Farmer, Anina Major and John Beadle alongside Graham Fagen’s installation The Slave’s Lament (2015), commissioned by Hospitalfield for Scotland + Venice at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015.

Care in the Craft: “Young Children” (nd) by Frank Otis Small

May 9, 2018 admin

By Natalie Willis. We have a long history of looking in The Bahamas, in the idea of being seen. We were the chain of limestone that 40,000 Lucayans and Arawaks saw as home as they weaved their way north through the islands. We were Christopher Columbus’ misplaced Indies, setting his eyes on a lucky second-best that he claimed for Spain – thus beginning the “New World” and our written history. There were the hungry eyes set on plantation profit – and the hungry eyes of those forced to do that work. Then there were the thousands of eyes afterwards, in and out of the space in blinks and in boats that came to see just what “paradise” looked like. Those eyes were turned on us.

It’s not just black and white: It is also colour, light, shift and feeling

May 8, 2018 admin

By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett. The University of The Bahamas. In “Traversing the Picturesque: For Sentimental Value” chief curator, Holly Bynoe brings together a rich tapestry of works from the nineteenth and early twentieth century Bahamas that shift our feelings. These works from diverse artists and styles reflect light and nature in different and nuanced ways. Many of these artists would ‘escape’ the harsh New England, Canadian, European winters, or be inspired by films such as “James Bond 007: Thunderball” to travel to and create with the light of the tropics which had and still has incredible sentimental value.

Friday Night Live! Review: Art and entertainment collide to create a special night

May 7, 2018 admin

By Malika Pryor Martin. The very first Friday Night Live! took place at the NAGB on April 27th and proved to be a hit with our New Providence community in spite of the rain. Activities and events included a drop-in workshop, special tours, drawing in the galleries, a special on memberships, delicious food provided by POW and Cassava Grille, and although unfulfilled (thank you, bad weather), a live performance by Willis and the Illest.