Joining host, Amanda Coulson, on The Blank Canvas tonight are Tessa Whitehead, curator of the upcoming show at The D’Aguilar Art Foundation, entitled “Diversions” and participating artists Melissa Alcena and Sofia Whitehead.
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.
On this week’s “Blank Canvas,” Amanda is visited in the studio by Bahamian artist Lavar Munroe.
Born and raised in Grant’s Town, Munroe has been moving from strength-to-strength on the global stage and is well-known in international art circles, having participated in the prestigious Venice Biennale, as well as having had museum and gallery shows. He studied at SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design) and completed a Masters at Washington University in St. Louis in 2013. Since then he has had a studio practice based largely in the United States.
“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.
On today’s Blank Canvas, guest host Malika Pryor-Martin, Communications & Development Officer at the NAGB, is joined by fellow colleague and Education Officer Katrina Cartwright and artist Jodi Minnis. They discuss the NAGB’s Mixed Media Summer Art Camp (MMSAC), the value of art in education and what the NAGB is doing to broaden access to art and encourage art appreciation in The Bahamas.
By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett. Frames capture or remove things, images, objects, people for or from the public eye. The frame of the photo can bring something into sharp focus, or it can reduce that same thing into an abstraction in the fore or background and highlight something else. One image usually metaphorically represents an entire discourse and political, economic and socio-cultural paradigm, a way of thinking about enslaved bodies and their relation to consumer politics, that is to say, discourses of otherness and sexualisation.
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.
By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett. Sam Shepard has died. Sam Shepard has died and we are left to remember his works. It is a different dying than Derek Walcott because he is further away, perhaps, but he throws into sharp relief our refusal to see ourselves as we pass through our everyday lives. A country teetering on the verge of yet another downgrade, a society shrouded in debt but unwilling to spend less because tings coss more and VAT bite me in my…? Perhaps to see their lives, their futures.