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Boundaries, Borders and Brotherhood: “Proxemics: Personal Space/Commanding Stance” (2015) by John Beadle

4 October 2017 Articles

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

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In the wake of storms:  Moving forward as a nation displaced

2 October 2017 Articles

By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett.Dominica, The British Virgin Islands, Barbuda, Puerto Rico, The Bahamas, in particular, Ragged Island and some other southern places, are beautiful and far-flung, exotic and form parts of people’s dreams of paradise.  They are paradises on earth and they have been devastated.  They have, like many parts of the Commonwealth world, experienced unprecedented natural disasters and suffering in the short space of a few weeks. They are stunning spaces of natural beauty and amazing depth of feeling and life. 

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From the Collection: “Metamorphosis” (1979) by R Brent Malone

27 September 2017 Articles

By Natalie Willis. There are few artists who were able to evoke the energy of Junkanoo as Brent Malone did. He didn’t just show vibrant costumes swaying lightly: he showed colours and costumes that vibrated, bodies tense with energy and muscles coiled as cowbells get poised to strike, eyes as red as the feathers from that 3 am lap, sweat dripping down faces holding tired red eyes. Malone set out the path for others to display Junkanoo as the manic, feverish, exhausting, and mesmerizing spectacle it is – he made it his mission to show the feeling at the root of the celebration, the cathartic outpour of energy and freedom. It is fitting that he lends this deference of accurate portrayal to a work that means so much to so many: “Metamorphosis” (1979) is a testament to the idea of a nascent Bahamas, the burgeoning forth of a still transforming nation after independence

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If an Entire Population Moves, Is It Still a Nation?: Post-Irma and Post-Colonial Devastation

25 September 2017 Articles

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. 

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The Clapboard House: A Disappearing Relic within The Bahamian Landscape

22 September 2017 Articles

By Keisha Oliver. In the aftermath of Hurricane Irma’s devastation, as the Caribbean recovers and rebuilds, it would be remiss not to pause and reflect. In moving forward, there is much to be considered from our survival and journey as an island people. Our social and physical landscapes have and will continue to weave the rich cultural fabric of our existence once we continue to value and preserve them.

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We Lost Two Cultures That Day: Hurricane Irma and the Loss of Cultural Material

19 September 2017 Articles

By Natalie Willis. It’s easy to think of culture as being purely in the hands of the people: it’s in our mother tongues, our food, our dance and architecture. And, in many ways, it is. But it also leaves a residue, it sticks to our spaces and buildings and trees and forests and oceans, so that when our elders pass on, they leave just a tiny bit of themselves around for us to remember what we come from and we build upon that. With this in mind, and with heavy heart, we must look to the implications of Irma and her aftermath. Both Inagua and Ragged Island were deemed uninhabitable this week and it is important to look at the full extent of what that means… We lost two cultures.

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From the Collection: “Woman With Flamingoes” (1996-97) by R. Brent Malone

29 August 2017 Articles

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.

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What’s in the frame: Tourism, art, installation and rebuilding the old whore of a body

15 August 2017 Articles

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.  

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