After many years of discussion and a solid year of hard work and collective effort, the NAGB Sculpture Garden moved closer to becoming downtown’s native plant park and preserve, on Saturday, March 24, 2017.
Dr. Ian Bethell-Bennett writes: As University of The Bahamas students work to design smart, green, locally-responsive, environmentally-attuned drawings for the Expo 2020 World Fair to be held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates in three years’ time, the nation also prepares to be under the microscope on the world’s stage.
On this week’s Blank Canvas, we welcome our stand-in host Dr. Craig Smith, Chair of School of English at the University of The Bahamas (UB), who is spearheading the first annual UB Spring Book Fair and Literary Festival set to take place over three days starting Thursday, March 30 through Saturday, April 1st.
During the first two months of 2017, The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas welcomed its newest staff members, Malika Pryor-Martin and Katrina Cartwright. Since their arrival, they have dived into their roles of Development and Communications Officer and Education Officer respectively, and have seamlessly integrated with the existing NAGB team.
Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett shares: I have visions of colour rubbing up on each other, sliding over liquid slopes of sun-drenched limestone and bleached out roads, deepened by heat and dust. Colour capturing what we do not see, but refuse to ignore. Islands are aloof, detached, yet our islands lay under the vibrant eyes of people who do not know this. They have always travelled, always ventured, always known that life is bigger than us, bigger than this island in the middle of the water, surrounded by beaches of no value until the new people came and barred these things from our lives.
‘Nassau Boy’ (1973) by Maxwell Taylor is a patterned, shifting mass of humanoid parts set against a lightly textured background, with a hint of houses and civilisation in the distance. This work is most certainly not what one expects of Taylor’s practice, but it is one of the more rebellious and unexpected pieces in the National Collection, a bit of a misfit, and our March Artwork of the Month.
Our intern, graduate student Natascha Vazquez writes: John Beadle was born in 1964 on the island of New Providence in The Bahamas. He received his BFA and MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and the Tyler School of Art of Temple University respectively. Beadle delves into various art genres, including painting, printmaking, sculpture and installation. Often, his highly conceptual work consists of everyday materials such as wood, found objects or metal. According to Beadle, “Material – the found, already weathered stuff carries with it a fragmented narrative that makes for very interesting placement possibilities.”
On Friday, February 24th, the NAGB in collaboration with Hillside House staged a closing event to mark the end of the National Exhibition 8 OFFsite exhibition. The event featured an artists’ talk with participating artists Del Foxton, Keisha Oliver, Alicia Wallace, and Natalie Willis. The discussion focused on the projects developed for the NE8, which speak to practices that give attention to subjectivities. These include the rise of the woman’s voice in the local creative community and the plight for gender equality in The Bahamas.
The Blank Canvas welcomes US Embassy Nassau’s Public Affairs Officer, Penny Rechkemmer and the winners of the MLJ Jr photo contest and Transforming Spaces founder, Jay Koment, DAF curator, Rashad Adderley, and NAGB assistant curators Natalie Willis and Richardo Willis speaking about this year’s event.
t is quite apparent in taking a stroll around the 8th National Exhibition (NE8) that there are a number of works by women, for a start, but also that many of these works by women deal with just that, with womanhood. These works are explicitly centered on the feminist canon of tackling the issue of women’s rights, or more subtly trying to turn our eyes to other aspects of femininity. Take, for example, the work of Averia Wright and her nuanced reinterpretations of our straw-work culture and the feminine, or the collaborative effort of Joann Behagg and Jackie Pinder with their clay tower of faces and chains confronting basic human rights for women and girls.