Natalie Willis, Author at National Art Gallery of The Bahamas

Historic Nassau: UB highlights community and culture

28 March 2018 Natalie Willis

By Keisha Oliver, The University of The Bahamas . As part of the last weekend’s Transforming Spaces (TS) 2018 tour, University of The Bahamas (UB) transformed the Hillside House gallery and courtyard into a cultural hub rooted in celebrating and reimagining Bahamian traditions through creativity. UB faculty, staff, students and alumni came together to showcase the music, visual, culinary and literary arts under the theme ‘Historic Nassau’ from March 16 to 18th. Over the years Transforming Spaces has been committed to supporting and engaging UB art students through volunteerism and exhibition opportunities. This year UB’s participation stems from its interest to cultivate an interdisciplinary shared culture. Curated by UB Assistant Professor and Visual Arts Programme Coordinator Keisha Oliver the event was designed to identify the institution as a community dedicated to honouring the accomplishments and talents of its students, staff, faculty and alumni.

Locked in our Bodies: A resurrection of voices

27 March 2018 Natalie Willis

By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett, The University of The Bahamas. We are locked in bodies that demonstrate a temporal fixity that is only such. This became more apparent to me on my first experience in Salvador de Bahia, where the material remnants of slavery and colonialism remained intact and on view, unlike in New Providence where most of the remains of slavery are either dematerialised, vanished and decontextualised. As “We Suffer to Remain” evidences, the coloniality of the postcolonial condition becomes even more poignant when expressed through a clash/confluence of arts. Art allows space for a dialogue that exposes the pasts and versions usually edited out by the passage of time, and the power of the state to redirect what was once empowerment discourses.

Beadle, the Mechanic: An Interview with John Beadle on his work for “We Suffer To Remain”, part II.

26 March 2018 Natalie Willis

By Natalie Willis. Last week we heard John Beadle speak to his participation in “We Suffer To Remain”, an exhibition in collaboration with the British Council. The works produced in “We Suffer To Remain”–the Bahamian leg of a 4-part journey of the British Council’s “Difficult Conversations” series of exhibitions– serve as Caribbean response to Scottish artist Graham Fagen’s work, “The Slave’s Lament”. Shown at the Venice Biennale in 2015 as a representation for Scotland in the global art biennial, and choosing to uncover the country’s complicit nature in the Slave trade and the general amnesia surrounding Britain with their role and repercussions in chattel slavery – there is more to this work than meets the eye. Here is a not-so-difficult conversation with Beadle.

“Who do we speak for?” An interview with John Beadle for the upcoming exhibition “We Suffer To Remain”

20 March 2018 Natalie Willis

By Natalie Willis. Continuing with our series of artist interviews in the lead up to the opening of “We Suffer To Remain” on March 22nd, the product of a collaboration between the NAGB and the British Council, we stop to chat with John Beadle. Beadle is considered one of our master artists and works in a range of media. From painting to installations, his practice looks to some of the difficult aspects of the Bahamian condition and aesthetically shows his background in Junkanoo outside of his artist training.

“Traversing the Picturesque: For Sentimental Value” – The Colonial Gaze

19 March 2018 Natalie Willis

By Holly Bynoe. On March 22nd through July 29th, The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas presents the first of two historical surveys exhibitions that include works produced from 1856-1960 by visiting artists and expatriates, who were inspired by the then-colony’s landscapes, people, luminescence, coastlines and seas and bustling lifestyles. Traversing the Picturesque: For Sentimental Value draws from several familiar and a few new collections to detail the breadth and scope of how The Bahamas has been framed within the popular global imagination and the impact of the colonial and outsider gaze on the development of a historical understanding of the nation.

Celebrating Bahamian Art: The Elliott Museum Exhibition Wrap Up

14 March 2018 Natalie Willis

By Malika Pryor-Martin. The Elliott Museum in Stuart, Florida recently showcased an exhibition that included works drawn from the National Collection, D’Aguilar Foundation Collection and the Dawn Davies Collection as well as three local south Florida artists. Some Bahamian artists featured included: Edison G. Rolle, Maxwell Taylor and Eddie Minnis and the pieces selected by curators at the Elliott Museum wooed and wowed Floridian audiences.

Vision, Materiality and Creativity: A pathway to innovation and development?

13 March 2018 Natalie Willis

By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett, The University of The Bahamas. Can we conceptualise change? In our lessons, our lives, our schooling, have we been encouraged to examine a problem and to solve it? Have we been encouraged to dream big and produce along those lines? Usually, to ideate creatively, to innovate, to shift the cultural thinking or vision, we must think critically. This thinking makes some people uncomfortable, yet, this essential skill is wiped out in the Bahamian education system. We are also told that dabbling in art won’t pay the bills, however, to meet the demands of change, we must think creatively. Google, FaceBook, sustainable renewable cities, Worlds fairs, Disney World, are all creative building structures that use winds, the light and the landmass to cool, power, and illuminate are usually created in studios of creative minds that do not conform to linear thinking or conservative paradigmatic control.

Time Travel and Building Bridges in “A True & Exact History”: An interview with Sonia Farmer, Pt II

12 March 2018 Natalie Willis

By Natalie Willis

This week we continue our interview with Sonia Farmer on her work for the upcoming collaborative exhibition with the British Council, “We Suffer To Remain”. It is difficult to think about just who gets to discuss our history, when some voices are silenced, and others get a proverbial loudspeaker. Farmer’s artist book “A True & Exact History”, a poem produced from her erasure of Richard Ligon’s “A True & Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes” (1657), deals with just that.

Speaking of culture: Thinking about change

7 March 2018 Natalie Willis

By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett, The University of The Bahamas. Over the last few weeks we have been journeying through “Medium: Practices and Routes of Spirituality and Mysticism” and discussing linkages with the upcoming show “We Suffer To Remain”, an international collaboration between the British Council and The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas. Writing this piece from Dubai at the Chamber of Commerce conference for Latin America and preparing for Expo2020 the polemics of culture become more clearly abstracted. So much of our culture and life resides beneath the surface. From time to time it surfaces to be revealed in stunning works of art, vibrant crafts, suggestive and politically critical music, or just fried into a fried-dry piece of chicken. We overlook that we exist in culture and that our culture dictates how we think about who we are and how we respond to a crisis.

What Makes “A True & Exact History”?: An Interview with Sonia Farmer on her work for the upcoming exhibition “We Suffer To Remain”.

6 March 2018 Natalie Willis

By Natalie Willis. In this week’s interview we hear from Sonia Farmer on her contribution to “We Suffer To Remain”, an exhibition opening later this month that moves around ideas of slavery, time and memory, and how we begin to unpack and deal with these legacies. Farmer is a writer, visual artist, and small press publisher who uses letterpress printing, bookbinding, hand-papermaking, and digital projects to build narratives about the Caribbean space. She is the founder of Poinciana Paper Press, a small and independent press in Nassau which produces handmade and limited edition chapbooks of Caribbean literature and promotes the crafts of book arts through workshops and creative collaborations. The title for the exhibition comes from Farmer’s book produced for this show, “A True & Exact History”, which will be displayed alongside fellow Bahamian artists John Beadle and Anina Major works, as well as the work of Scottish artist Graham Fagen with his project from the 2015 Venice Biennale, “The Slave’s Lament”. Farmer moves us through not just the language written within the book itself, but around the art of bookmaking itself and how she crafts language to unpack the question of who we–as a country and as part of the Caribbean region–allowing to voice our histories.