Currently browsing: Exhibition

The Life and Death of Street Trees: Jenna Chaplin’s call to attention for the importance of street trees for the upcoming NE9

November 28, 2018

By Natalie Willis. “Space is not a scientific object removed from ideology or politics. It has always been political and strategic.” – Henri Lefebvre. But how do you strategize something that grows organically? Cities pose that very question for us. Henri Lefebvre, a French philosopher and sociologist with a heavy Marxist influence, was interested in the fabric of our everyday lives and particularly in the ownership of spaces, particularly cities. I’d wager he’d have a field day in Nassau – with our planned and unplanned spaces, historic and new, and that the upcoming printmaking project by Jenna Chaplin for the National Exhibition 9 (NE9) might whet his appetite too.

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Whimsical Bahamian Teapots: Book Launch & Exhibit for Jessica Colebrooke

November 14, 2018

By Kevanté A. C. Cash, NAGB Correspondent. “It didn’t have to take 10 years for this book to be published, but it did. Wherever there’s a vision, God will make provision; but the provision has to be made. So, if people aren’t willing to provide, we’re just doing the same things over and over again. And this causes a lot of Bahamians to lose interest in returning home to make contributions. But for me, this is just the tip of the iceberg to what I can give to my country and community.”

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The Architecture of Loss: Memorials, Memento Mori, and the Man from Milton Street

November 12, 2018

By Natalie Willis. “i learn urgently | the architecture of loss | then find you again.” ― Warsan Shire. Lavar Munroe’s “Memorials” series is an exercise in the architecture of loss, of remembering, and the residue of life we leave long after we are physically gone from this world. A parachute, a hand-made urn, and flowers are an unlikely pairing but help to braid together the strands of the story of a man’s life, but they also offer us a thread between worlds, between countries, between lives, and between times.  Munroe–proud of his upbringing and regular reunions with the Grants Town community where he still holds a studio–spends much of his time these days travelling. Not unlike the parachute shown in “Return: The Magic Flight” (2018), he is uprooted, but he often finds his way back to the solid soil of this historic settlement in Nassau. The “nation’s navel” that is Bain and Grants Town have produced a number of historically significant figures in Bahamian history, and Lavar is well on his way to being a key fixture in Bahamian art history for years to come, if his current 10 year survey at the NAGB (with the proud and proclamatory title “Son of the Soil”) is any indication.  

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The NAGB wins awards for exhibition catalogues: Pushing design forward

August 1, 2018

By Holly Bynoe. The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (NAGB) was recently awarded three awards for the production and design of two catalogues for its 2017-2018 exhibitions, namely the retrospective catalogue for “Thierry Lamare: Love, Loss and Life” and the collective showcase “Medium: Practices and Routes of Spirituality and Mysticism” which closed earlier in the year.  At the NAGB we have the unique opportunity to create a container of research and curiosity to support the life and dissemination of works that live for a much longer time than exhibitions. With this we have an opportunity to use our resources in powerful ways to inspire and share the wealth of Bahamian visual art.

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