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By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett, The University of The Bahamas. Salt: pressed into flesh, brines and cures, drying left on lines, as flies land and enjoy a feast of decaying flesh; a colonial resource extracted from the spaces of the once far-flung regions of empire. Salt is a way of life; a natural resource abundantly available in the islands; the pain of enslaved Africans who laboured tirelessly in its corrosive briny suspension as they raked salt under hot sun. Their skin ulcered, backs bent and minds steeled against the dehumanisation of exploitation and enslavement.

By Natalie Willis. Forward, onward, digging upward in the sand, together. The 2018 “Double Dutch,” the 7th in the series of paired exhibitions, brings us questions on the future, on climate change, on what it means to govern a chain of 700 islands, and on what it means to lose an island’s culture from lack of infrastructure and intervention. “Digging Upward in the Sand” (2018) by the Plastico Fantastico Collective, stirs up these queries, worries, and troubling presents for us.

By Malika Pryor-Martin. Art is a wondrous thing. It calls forth memories while speaking to our future self. A technician will produce something beautiful. A visionary – something transformative. R. Brent Malone was and accomplished both. He took Junkanoo, what he saw and correctly knew to be a rich, nuanced and electric expression and elevated an (already exquisite) art form, which for too many had been woefully under-appreciated and even mocked. Thanks to a recent act of incredible largesse by UBS, the NAGB was fortunate enough to add to the people’s collection, the National Collection.  As Mary Rozell, Global Head UBS Art Collection, shared in a statement, “We are pleased to donate the Brent Malone mural, “Celebration: Spirit of Junkanoo”, originally commissioned for the lobby of the UBS office in Nassau, to the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas to make it available to the broader public in this region.” This massive canvas captures the movement, spirit and fiery intensity of the festival and the NAGB could not be more elated to announce this excellent news.

By Natalie Willis. They may appear to be things of fantasy, with their glittering feathered wings, beads, embellishments, and horns adorning those who look to be less than the usual hooved suspects, but Lavar Munroe’s “Specimens” series find their footing in the real world through their presentation, and indeed through their representation. By investigating through fantasy and myth the repercussions and implications of the waves of colonialism on this landscape, first with Columbus, but also alluding to British colonialism with the museum-style classifications and taxonomies of these fair and strange imagined beasts, Munroe’s “specimens” give us a moment to really think beyond the horrific impact on humans and into the broader ecology of The Bahamas.

By Natalie Willis

Some visitors aren’t visiting, some are coming home. 

Considering the development we know of Nassau today, West Hill Street doesn’t look quite so different today as it does in Hildegarde Hamilton’s works. Though the date is not signed to the painting, we can tell it shows a different Nassau than the one we know now. Just in the last few years West Hill Street has taken on a series of colourful changes, particularly around Graycliff, as part of the Historic Charles Towne group. That being said, it may still be unusual to see a woman walking around with a parasol, the bougainvillea growing wildly over, and the road in better condition–and perhaps even unpaved–than it had been just a few years ago. It’s a comfort to think that maybe potholes haven’t always been quite so treacherous.