All posts by Natalie Willis

By Natalie Willis. By now, many of us who are denizens of the Bahamian art community can easily recognise the curlicue gate-covered figurations of John Beadle. He’s been a fixture in the art community for some time, but this certainly does not indicate any sense of being stagnant. Beadle shifts between media – painting, sculpture, installation – and the message is often rooted in Bahamian history and culture. The series of cardboard and mixed media assemblages he makes using the patterning of metal gates that are ubiquitous, can be seen all over Nassau and the rest of the country. We are a space that is very much determined by borders – national, personal and private. But who do we block from access? And why

By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett. A few weeks ago, this question was asked in a column that focused on the death of legendary artist Sam Shepard.  Today, I ask this question again in the wake of Hurricane Irma’s devastation to the map of Bahamianness and Caribbeanness.  As a people who survived the reality and the legacy of slavery and resettlement, we do not take time to process our grief.  We do not sit and ponder! We do not have time.  Our lives are so often predetermined by external forces that are both visible and invisible to the eye that we are always moving.  What has occurred over the last two weeks is mostly invisible, aside from the obvious and daunting structural and spatial devastation we see on the surface. 

By Malika N Pryor. When I moved to The Bahamas in 2013, I knew that it was possible to encounter one of them. Like the unspeakable name of a villain in a famous children’s book turned film series, I talked about the storms that originated on the shores of West Africa in a low voice, as if I’d awaken them if spoken at a regular volume. Most Nassau residents I encountered were largely unbothered, and I was amazed at how casual most were when it came to the conversation of hurricanes. Then, in 2015 Joaquin hit the southern islands and I realised how incredibly close they could be. I ached for those who had lost nearly everything and for their family members who watched from their screens in New Providence.

By Katrina Cartwright. After a two-year journey that took this iconic exhibition to three islands – Grand Bahama, Eleuthera and Abaco- it is only fitting that the Max/Amos traveling exhibition bids us farewell in Exuma, the hometown of Bahamian folk and master artist, Amos Ferguson.

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.  

By Keisha Oliver. Last summer, I had the pleasure of turning my first bowl from Madeira wood with established woodturner and furniture-maker, Robin B. Hardy.  With no formal training, he has developed a niche for one-of-a-kind pieces hand-crafted from a variety of wood grown in The Bahamas. Operating out of his basement workshop for the past seventeen years, Hardy’s design style is simple, functional and elegant, allowing the wood to express its own qualities and natural imperfections. His practice as a woodworker is inspired by curiosity and the challenge each piece of wood presents. He has coined his creative repertoire as “discovered art in salvaged wood.”