BRIDGET JONES TRAVEL AWARD 2019. CALL FOR APPLICATIONS. Arts researchers or practitioners living and working in the Caribbean are eligible to apply for the Bridget Jones Travel Award, the deadline for which is the 18th January 2019. The winner of the award will present their work at the 43rd Annual Conference of the Society for Caribbean Studies, The Institute for Black Atlantic Research (IBAR) at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, July 3-5, 2019.
By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett, The University of The Bahamas. In the Caribbean, like most of the world with globalisation’s flattening of the world, as Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat (2005), demonstrates, inequality increases as the local place is transformed by the international space. Art and the art scene belie the international and interstitial connectivity of local and global. Dave Smith’s Caribbean Sunrise (2018), is emblematic of this using juxtaposition and colour in striking yet contradictory and discordant ways. We never think of the Caribbean as a violent space, yet with this history of occupation and exploitation is is quintessentially violent, it’s geography hides violence: the violence of the encounter or the discovery, that in itself marks a violent erasure of what was once there, though overlaying it with a imagery and imaginary of paradise, almost like Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667). The allure is dangerous.
By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett, University of The Bahamas.
My eyes may be dim, but I can see
Though sight be mitigated by supervision,
My view is my experience
I shall not be moved
Art provides an interior image of exteriorised feelings that are usually not openly discussed. The interior/exterior reality of images and experiences is often surreal as it collapses spaces into times that are not always compatible. Art allows whimsical flights of fantasy and fancy, which break down barriers and create potential changes that defy limitations. Photography, at the same time, opens eyes to what is often overlooked, while also capturing an image of something in a unique way that renders it more or less than it is.
On Saturday night, December 1st, 2018, the Honourable Lanisha Rolle, Minister of Youth, Sports and Culture, stood in the stunning Fiona’s Theatre at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (NAGB) and declared Culture Month officially open by reading a proclamation issued by the Prime Minister of The Bahamas, the Right Honourable Dr Hubert Minnis.
By Letitia M. Pratt
The D’Aguilar Art Foundation
Fantasy writer J.K. Rowling, author of the famous, lore intensive Harry Potter series, once shared that she meticulously created the imaginative world of Harry Potter in a sequence of hand-drawn tables holding character and plot information. To accomplish a creative feat with the calibre of those novels – or other epic works like Tolkien is the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and Cassandra Clare’s The Mortal Instruments – an author like Rowling must plan out her world intensely. The process of building, planning, and organising this world for the reader to get lost in is the true artistry of novel writing and is a skill that is useful across genres – literary and otherwise – that encourage the viewer to get lost in the process of consumption. Therefore, the artist and fantasy writer, I argue, have a lot in common, especially if the artist aims to create a new world for the viewer to experience. This is true for Jordanna Kelly, whose love for the process is unique among the things she enjoys about creating her work. In fact, Kelly and J.K. Rowling share more things in common that one would expect…Hear me out.
By Katrina Cartwright. Celebrating the life of the grandfather of ceramics in The Bahamas. In a small pottery studio, a little off the beaten path in Petty’s, Long Island, a teacher patiently instructs his student on the appropriate techniques to use to complete the ceramic piece she is working on. They are discussing the student’s pending college application and what she is choosing to study. He suggests “Why don’t you study ceramics? It’s something you seem to enjoy and you have a knack for it.” The student scoffs at the idea–what kind of job could one possibly get with a degree in ceramics? The instructor doesn’t push, only encourages the student to think about it, and they go on to discuss other ideas in the peaceful quiet, broken only by the occasional bird call or rustle of leaves.
By Katrina Cartwright. The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas is bringing a busy 2018 to a close with an amazing line up of activities and events that will appeal to holiday recreation seekers of all ages. Beginning on December 7th with a free live Willis and The Illest concert and ending with musical sweetness of Jazz Etc. on December 21st, the NAGB is giving residents and visitors alike a selection of options to engage and access the museum in ways that are comfortable and interesting to them.
By Patricia Glinton-Meicholas. Its foundation announced in 1996, The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (NAGB) was officially opened on Monday, 7 July 2003, which means that it is still a youth as art museums go, still engaged in defining its identity. I envision for it a plum role, ready for the plucking from a fertile tree of a people richly endowed with creativity. The Gallery can be an important builder in the development of people and nation, employing a diversity of creative impulses of artists, exotic and indigenous to “story” The Bahamas, providing a mirror to prompt Bahamians to take a deeper look inward and bear even greater fruit.
By Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett, The University of The Bahamas. The 2018 Creative Time Summit under the theme “On Archipelagos and Other imaginaries: Collective Strategies to Inhabit the World” was livestreamed at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (NAGB) and coupled with key local academics, including Dr Niambi Hall Campbell-Dean, Dr Allana Thomas and Joey Gaskins and other creatives discussing our present-day national realities. The day provided much fodder for digestion and provoked upset, and it was a necessary light bulb that came on or an explosion that went boom in the night. Also, we all know how those booms go. We wake up startled and unable to get back to sleep. The many conversations were alive and inspiring; it also caused great unease because of the themes explored: spatial injustice, erasure of black and brown bodies and the real threat of climate change and sea level rise along with the erosion of democracy. It is always interesting for me that Miami, often such a conservative space, can produce such edgy and cutting cultural expression and creative experimentation.