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Preparations for the Jamaica Biennial 2017 are moving into high gear next week with the selection of the juried section of the exhibition, which will take place on Monday, January 9 and Tuesday, January 10, 2017. The juried section of the Biennial is open to artists resident in Jamaica and artists living elsewhere but who were born in Jamaica or are of Jamaican parentage. For the juried section of the Jamaica Biennial 2017, the National Gallery has received 176 qualifying entries by 110 artists.

‘Clay Oven’ (1912) is earthy, it is full of sepias and greens and stony grays, and, it is homely and sincere. This watercolour by ex-patriot Elmer Joseph Read, more commonly known as E. J. Read, is of our oldest works in the National Collection, outside of the traditional black and white film photography by Jacob Coonley, on display in the first wing of the current Permanent Exhibition ‘From Columbus to Junkanoo’ curated by Averia Wright and Jodi Minnis. 

The recently opened 8th National Exhibition (NE8) contains much of the Bahamian art we’ve come to know and love over the years. We are a nation and a region with a very strong tradition of painting and wall-based work, which has expanded into the 3D realm, which we have also grown increasingly comfortable with accepting into our arsenal of Bahamian creative practice. But we also have grown into more expanded fields of engagement and display.

Our culture, as long as we wish it to be, is alive in those feet that pound the streets because they do not have cars, in the rubber that heads north every morning and south every night to earn money to survive. The fear of suffering is as strong as the possibility of death by silence, though silence kills like cancer that eats away at our fibre and when we are asked, who do we think we are? What dare we answer?

Representation in art tends to be the ability of art to reflect on to capture the trueness of life. It is not a sketch of naturalistic or impressionistic images, but a ‘true’ to life picture of what we see. However, what we see can always be influenced, changed or distorted by our position, our vantage point, and bias or where we stand. We can look out at sea and see a glare of whiteness as the sun reflects off the water’s surface.