On October 18th and 19th, Best Ever Films Ltd. premiered Kareem Mortimer’s “Cargo,” positioned as the largest Bahamian film production ever on home soil, to two quite different audiences. The first a small, boutique event at The Island House (West End), populated largely by Lyford Cay and Old Fort residents and with a good percentage of ex-pats, and the second at a huge, glamorous event at Atlantis on Paradise Island.
As we have seen in “Re: Encounter” artists can often speak to the idea of the monumental both in size and in content. Dede Brown presents ambiguous humanoid busts, absent and cut out of wood and masonite, which are suspended from the ceiling – perhaps un-monumental in their own way. Playing into this in a different respect, Joiri Minaya presents us with a monumental wall of stretchy fabric that spans the width of the ballroom, but also gives us a series of postcards depicting a proposal for artistic intervention on the Christopher Columbus monument that sits at the front of Government House, making good use of both sides of this double-meaning of the word.
On Thursday, September 28th, the traveling exhibition “Max/Amos: A Tale of Two Paradises” landed on Exuma soil and journeyed to Wenshua Art Gallery in Georgetown to be installed, in preparation for the opening reception and a week of programming including a mural project, which is a part of The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas’ (NAGB) Mural Programme.
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
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.
By Malika N Pryor. When I moved to The Bahamas in 2013, I knew that it was possible to encounter one of them. Like the unspeakable name of a villain in a famous children’s book turned film series, I talked about the storms that originated on the shores of West Africa in a low voice, as if I’d awaken them if spoken at a regular volume. Most Nassau residents I encountered were largely unbothered, and I was amazed at how casual most were when it came to the conversation of hurricanes. Then, in 2015 Joaquin hit the southern islands and I realised how incredibly close they could be. I ached for those who had lost nearly everything and for their family members who watched from their screens in New Providence.
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.
By Katrina Cartwright. After a two-year journey that took this iconic exhibition to three islands – Grand Bahama, Eleuthera and Abaco- it is only fitting that the Max/Amos traveling exhibition bids us farewell in Exuma, the hometown of Bahamian folk and master artist, Amos Ferguson.
By : Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett
The post office stands at the top of Parliament Street on East Hill street, a monument to 1970s development. It stands now condemned. The Churchill building stands condemned, much like the Rodney Bain Building on the verge of Parliament Street Hill on the way to the post office. Condemned buildings populate the city of Nassau. The shift has been rapid; from a thriving colonial backwater settled by administrators and Loyalists to a post-colonial shadow of colonial rule, to a derelict city of decay. This shift has been enormous.
Art is considered by many to be one of the most critical subjects in the development of a young mind. It informs the way one processes math and science. It alters and expands the manner in which individuals seek solutions to complex problems. Understanding the way the world works, in both literal and figurative terms, is enhanced by consistent exposure to the arts.