On October 18th and 19th, Best Ever Films Ltd. premiered Kareem Mortimer’s “Cargo,” positioned as the largest Bahamian film production ever on home soil, to two quite different audiences. The first a small, boutique event at The Island House (West End), populated largely by Lyford Cay and Old Fort residents and with a good percentage of ex-pats, and the second at a huge, glamorous event at Atlantis on Paradise Island.
As we have seen in “Re: Encounter” artists can often speak to the idea of the monumental both in size and in content. Dede Brown presents ambiguous humanoid busts, absent and cut out of wood and masonite, which are suspended from the ceiling – perhaps un-monumental in their own way. Playing into this in a different respect, Joiri Minaya presents us with a monumental wall of stretchy fabric that spans the width of the ballroom, but also gives us a series of postcards depicting a proposal for artistic intervention on the Christopher Columbus monument that sits at the front of Government House, making good use of both sides of this double-meaning of the word.
So much of our lives is defined by our relationship with space and indeed with water, or a space that is not a space, but is actively always churning and redefining itself and its boundaries. We engage at a new level now as boundaries mean little, except for the new and ever-increasing global boundaries that allow capital flow but insist on barring the flow of people. We live in a time of shifting and yet unchanging spaces.
On Thursday, September 28th, the traveling exhibition “Max/Amos: A Tale of Two Paradises” landed on Exuma soil and journeyed to Wenshua Art Gallery in Georgetown to be installed, in preparation for the opening reception and a week of programming including a mural project, which is a part of The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas’ (NAGB) Mural Programme.
By Natalie Willis
It is time to revisit an old favourite with the detail and context it truly deserves. A cross-hatch of brushstrokes, full of the looseness, movement and vibrancy associated with R. Brent Malone’s work, gives way to the key figures from which this piece in the National Collection gets its title. “Woman With Flamingoes” (1996-97), a gift to the Collection donated in memory of Jean Cookson, depicts a flamboyance of flamingoes with a woman staring beyond the frame. Though the flamingoes are bustling and full of movement, she is purposefully still. Malone renders her the focus of the work amidst a pink and crimson cacophony of tropical birds.
By : Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett
The post office stands at the top of Parliament Street on East Hill street, a monument to 1970s development. It stands now condemned. The Churchill building stands condemned, much like the Rodney Bain Building on the verge of Parliament Street Hill on the way to the post office. Condemned buildings populate the city of Nassau. The shift has been rapid; from a thriving colonial backwater settled by administrators and Loyalists to a post-colonial shadow of colonial rule, to a derelict city of decay. This shift has been enormous.
Art is considered by many to be one of the most critical subjects in the development of a young mind. It informs the way one processes math and science. It alters and expands the manner in which individuals seek solutions to complex problems. Understanding the way the world works, in both literal and figurative terms, is enhanced by consistent exposure to the arts.
Many gathered for an evening of poetry on Thursday, August 10th as Sonia Farmer and Letitia Pratt launched their new books, both published by Poinciana Paper Press.
“On the Way to Market” (ca. 1877-78) by Jacob Frank Coonley looks to be a work in progress, an experiment, with boxes in the foreground and a window decidedly within the frame of the shot.
Curry’s gamut of work usually involves some form of tongue-in-cheek critique of the tourism culture of The Bahamas, but this earlier work which stands in the National Collection from 2002 deals more with public response and representation than tourism as it is. The link is still there of course, as the Straw Market on Bay Street has been well known as a spot for tourist consumerism since the 1800’s, with the particular branding of the space that we know today coming out of a revamp in the 1920’s. Previously, however, the site was used as a market of a different kind, to process enslaved Africans to be sold later at the Vendue House.