Articles – Page 19 – National Art Gallery of The Bahamas

Cultural Heritage & Erasure: “Protecting our inheritance and patrimony”

16 May 2017 Articles

How do we forget that when we lose our tangible culture, we actually also lose our intangible culture? They usually go together. Culture is not just a product that we package and sell. It is actually a process, a way of life, a rhythm that is embodied in a place. Exuma and Long Island, Acklins and Bimini have very different rhythms. They do not all practice Rake ‘n’ Scrape the same way, nor do they cook the same dishes in the same fashion. Boat building on Abaco is different from boat building in Long Island; each community has its own identity and rhythm that does not conform to national structures.

Ferguson’s Fantastic Dragon: Blending the imagination with the biblical

15 May 2017 Articles

A fire-breathing hell-beast, a scaly winged thing of fantasy – sometimes good, sometimes dangerous and greedy: Dragons. Not a staple in the established subject matter for Amos Ferguson, but nonetheless a treasure in the National Collection, an entity worthy of having an epic flying reptilian guarding it for sure. Ferguson’s “The Dragon” (1991) is an outlier for a lot of reasons. While his usual practice includes references to biblical scenes, Bahamian folklore, and more often than not, Bahamian scenery – with the iconic titles painted in Bahamian vernacular that act as a mirror for our particular language traditions, this piece doesn’t quite typify his practice.

Beauty in Bain Town: How does Over-the-Hill Fit Into the Bahamian Picturesque?

8 May 2017 Articles

Bain Town is a space of much notorietythese days, as a number of historically freed slave villages on the island have grown to be, but it wasn’t always so, and there is certainly a need to celebrate the history of these areas and the sense of community and pride amongst those who remember how different the place was merely a few decades ago. So many of our major artists in The Bahamas came from Over-the-Hill, perhaps most notably our beloved Maxwell Taylor, and embracing the greatness that comes out of these communities is important.

Antonius Roberts “Procession of Females in White Uniforms”

6 May 2017 Articles

Antonius Roberts, one of The Bahamas’ leading artists, exploring themes of nature, humanity and spirituality through a diverse range of genres. This May, we focus on his piece, “Procession of Females in White Uniforms” as our Artwork of the Month. The painting is a part of the Gallery’s National Collection and currently on view in the Permanent Exhibition “Revisiting An Eye For The Tropics”.

The Liberal: Thierry Lamare’s Sincerity in Rendering Bahamian Life

1 May 2017 Articles

The April 29th Nassau Guardian Arts+Culture section features a write up on Thierry Lamare‘s “The Liberal” which is part of our National Collection and currently on view in “Love, Loss and Life” at the NAGB through September.

Kendra Frorup’s ‘Domestic Chickens’

24 April 2017 Articles

Kendra Frorup’s ‘Domestic Chickens’ (2007) installation is one of the lesser-known pieces in the National Collection. The 2017-2018 Permanent Exhibition, ‘Revisiting An Eye For The Tropics’, is a departure point for us to look to the way the past has informed the present aesthetic in Bahamian artwork, and also importantly to showcase the works in the National Collection and remind us of what we have ownership and pride over as Bahamians.

Creating Thinking Spaces: Opportunity to Think, Build, and Grow

24 April 2017 Articles

The University of The Bahamas and the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas have created an open space for group discussion that allows students to benefit from the offering of both spaces. This relationship allows culture to truly be highlighted. As much as we talk about culture, we often disconnect our experiences from talk. These lectures are designed to promote thought and unshackle minds blinkered by a dysfunctional system designed to create workers without a sense of self, or an identity that can transcend the 9 to 5 and the 21 by seven of the mundane.

Margot Bethel’s Portal: Unpacking Memories of Womanhood

9 April 2017 Articles

Bahamian artist, Margot Bethel, explores ideas of femininity and the roles of women from both past and present day. In “Portal: There’s a WHole in the Bucket”, Bethel transforms a collection of mundane, everyday objects into a sculptural installation proposing the idea of the hole and the whole, simultaneously describing aspects of gender inequality, female stereotypes, and objectivity.

Pasting Colours: Envisioning Alternatives

21 March 2017 Articles

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.

March’s Artwork of the Month – Maxwell Taylor’s ‘Nassau Boy’ (1973)

20 March 2017 Articles

‘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.