EXHIBITION
NATIONAL EXHIBITION 8 (NE8)
2016
ONsite participating artists at NAGB include (in alphabetical order): Caroline Anderson, The Commission of the Queer, Richardo Barrett, John Beadle, Joann Behagg, Margot Bethel, Ian Bethell-Bennett, April Bey, Paula Boyd-Farrington, Dede Brown, Claudette Dean, Dwan Deveaux, Sonia Farmer, Attila Feszt, Tamika Galanis, Steffon Grant, Charlotte Henay, Ken Heslop, Susan Katz-Lightbourn, Jordanna Kelly, Anina Major, Jeffrey Meris, Jodi Minnis, Navarro Newton, Holly Parotti, Lynn Parotti, Dereck Paul, Jackie Pinder, Leanne Russell, Steven Schmid, Dave Smith, Giovanna Swaby, Edrin Symonette, Max Taylor, Angelika Wallace Whitfield, Christina Wong, and Averia Wright.
Poets: Nikera Cartwright, Trameco Gibson, Yasmin Glinton, Keisha Lynne Ellis and Letitia Pratt.
OFFsite participating artists at Hillside House include (in alphabetical order): Virginia Cafferata, Del Foxton, Ivanna Gaitor, Kay Hardy, Ken Heslop, Susan Jensen-Sweeting, Jo Morasco, Angelique V. Nixon, Keisha Oliver, Cynthia Rahming, Andre Sturrup, Lowree Tynes, Alicia Wallace, and Natalie Willis
Curated By: Holly Bynoe
Looking at the institution’s mandate and acknowledging our surrounding environment and creative ecology, it was imperative to move outside the walls and develop collaborative partnerships. This expansion of the National Exhibition will secure another safe and neutral space, Hillside House, allowing for more diverse works and programming to be produced thereby increasing the visibility and viability of ongoing practices.
The biannual National Exhibition stands apart as a laboratory – a site where artists, researchers, writers and educators can question, interrogate and develop ideas about their current concerns, while witnessing and paying testament to complex global dynamics. For the National Exhibition 8, we want to explore the institution’s catalytic role in navigating societal configurations that take into consideration cultural and social paradigm shifts, the impact of globalisation, along with the changing status of nationhood in The Bahamas and its wider citizenry.
Treating the NE as an environ, an organic entity with its various forms and traces, it engages with multiple narrative devices in relation to artistic production and practices of thought with a handle on current realities, specifically addressing gender equality, postcolonial concerns, feminism, blackness, the myth of independence and the crisis of nationhood.
We are also thrilled to be introducing the inaugural National Exhibition Researcher in Residence Hilary Booker. The US-based scholar will present ‘The Moonflower Room’ which combines the intellectual and creative lineage from which Booker developed her theoretical framework with research findings about interview participants’ hopes and dreams for the future. This will include an edible cartography composed of plant-based foods that she will prepare from primarily locally-produced ingredients and a radical library of books and bushes. By placing books, bushes and plant-based foods together, Booker hopes to demonstrate that plants, land, oceans and foods are their own sets of knowledge critical to development whose essences are best experienced and expressed viscerally.
The National Exhibition 8 will be on view at the NAGB (West and West Hill Streets) through April 16th, 2017 and at its OFFsite Hillside House (Cumberland Street) will open on Saturday, December 17, 2016 at 6 pm, and will run through the end of February 2017.
Featured Work
