Articles – Page 20 – National Art Gallery of The Bahamas

“John Beadle’s Row Yah Boat: Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily life is but a dream.’ Wake up!”

14 March 2017 Articles

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.”

‘An We is Woman Too?’: Women and Labour in the NE8

13 March 2017 Articles

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.

’21st-Century Needs’: The cultural task to survive and thrive

7 March 2017 Articles

During the United Nations Small Islands Developing States symposium held at the Meliá Cable Beach, we saw firsthand the importance of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), once referred to as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), but since the end of the first decade of the 21st-Century now called the SDGs. We also understand the need for our participation in disparate events and groups such as the World Fair, Expo 2020, Creative Nassau, Sustainable Nassau and Sustainable Exuma along with Bimini Blue, Save The Bays and other organizations that seek to move us out of the unsustainable downward spiral we are currently on. As has been noted by international and local experts, our culture is fragile, and we cannot survive and thrive, nor can we adapt without understanding where we are and where we would like to go from here. Cultural sustainability, then, relies on environmental sustainability and good policy to promote national longevity.

‘Slam-Bam’ Sands: ‘The hastily hand-coloured colonial postcards of James “Doc” Sands.’

6 March 2017 Articles

We are very much accustomed to seeing our islands in various forms of media, anything that can spread the image of our too-blue-to-be-true water. And it is true, we do have some of the most beautiful water on the planet (along with a number of other countries though, we mustn’t forget), and we are – according to certain NASA astronauts “the most beautiful place from space”. However, despite the natural beauty of our landscape, for almost 200 years we have been packaged up and sold as this pristine image that seems to be as clear-cut as our crystal waters.

‘Picture Nassau’: Capturing and Redefining the Cultural Landscape

5 March 2017 Articles

Visual art and its experiences are no longer confined to classrooms, studios, or the walls of galleries. Thanks to the digital age and an increasing demand for “interactivity” the arts have considered new ways to pique the public’s interest. In The Bahamas, we have seen alternative approaches by gallerists, curators, and artists to engage audiences by creating a bridge between the traditional and contemporary through installations and public art experiences. With last year’s opening of The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas’ (NAGB) sculpture garden and the rapid growth of live art events, we exist in an exciting period of creative expression for our country.

Colonial Desires in the 21st-Century: Using Our Image Purposefully

22 February 2017 Articles

Images can create wealth, or they can be used to create ideas of paradise that serve only to silence those who occupy the place of paradise. Can we begin to use new art or contextualized images to tell a story that sells a place to the world that builds local and resident brands instead of disempowering them?

Kendal Hanna’s “Rainbow Explosion”: Finding Self Through Abstraction

13 February 2017 Articles

Kendal Hanna, a Bahamian artist and forerunner of abstract painting, brilliantly captures energetic expression and emotion through the intense repetition of line exemplified in Untitled (Rainbow Explosion). Hanna has masterfully engaged in his medium, stretching its ability to exist both boldly and lightly, from heavy black in the foreground to a luminous yellow in the background. Splatters surrounding the composition and within provide insight into the craftsmanship of the work, leaving signs of active brushwork –one may imagine Hanna physically engaging with the paper, paintbrush and paint with high energy, working confidently as his subconscious mind expresses itself on the paper.

Curtain Call for the Colonial in Sanford Sawyer’s Studio Photographs

31 January 2017 Articles

Itchy white lace, decorative candles, pristine stockings, crisp gloves and fine gold chains. These three little brides – being married to the good Christian church they inherited as newfangledBahamian post-colonial subjects, are a vision of all that is respectable and good and expected of a Bahamian of this time.

Considering the African Culture: Not forgetting the Asue

30 January 2017 Articles

Haitian-born, Bahamian artist Jeffrey Meris opened his project ‘Asue: 20/20’ in the Project Space Room of the NAGB on Saturday, January 21, and it drew a sizeable crowd who came out to see how the word “Grace” would be interpreted. Dr. Ian Bethell-Bennett writes about Meris’ work and the importance of holding on to traditions and moments that make Afro-Caribbean culture possible.

Owning our Image: Radical reclamation of self

24 January 2017 Articles

Images have always been controlled by those in power. Dr. Ian Bethell-Bennett writes about how certain kinds of images have been used to represent us in particular ways that we usually have no control over. During slavery, blacks were depicted in a specific manner, and black women were always rendered either as workhorses, conniving thieves, jezebels, or wanton women. Here, Dr. Bethell-Bennett studies the work in the National Exhibition 8 to develop ideas around reconfiguring blackness.