All posts tagged: Collection

Ferguson’s Fantastic Dragon: Blending the Imagination with the Biblical

15 May 2017 Article

A fire-breathing hell-beast, a scaly winged thing of fantasy – sometimes good, sometimes dangerous and greedy: Dragons. Not a staple in the established subject matter for Amos Ferguson, but nonetheless a treasure in the National Collection, an entity worthy of having an epic flying reptilian guarding it for sure. Ferguson’s “The Dragon” (1991) is an outlier for a lot of reasons. While his usual practice includes references to biblical scenes, Bahamian folklore, and more often than not, Bahamian scenery – with the iconic titles painted in Bahamian vernacular that act as a mirror for our particular language traditions, this piece doesn’t quite typify his practice.

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Beauty in Bain Town: How does Over-the-Hill Fit Into the Bahamian Picturesque?

8 May 2017 Article

Bain Town is a space of much notorietythese days, as a number of historically freed slave villages on the island have grown to be, but it wasn’t always so, and there is certainly a need to celebrate the history of these areas and the sense of community and pride amongst those who remember how different the place was merely a few decades ago. So many of our major artists in The Bahamas came from Over-the-Hill, perhaps most notably our beloved Maxwell Taylor, and embracing the greatness that comes out of these communities is important.

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Antonius Roberts “Procession of Females in White Uniforms”

6 May 2017 Article

Antonius Roberts, one of The Bahamas’ leading artists, exploring themes of nature, humanity and spirituality through a diverse range of genres. This May, we focus on his piece, “Procession of Females in White Uniforms” as our Artwork of the Month. The painting is a part of the Gallery’s National Collection and currently on view in the Permanent Exhibition “Revisiting An Eye For The Tropics”.

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Kendra Frorup’s “Domestic Chickens”

24 April 2017 Article

Kendra Frorup’s ‘Domestic Chickens’ (2007) installation is one of the lesser-known pieces in the National Collection. The 2017-2018 Permanent Exhibition, ‘Revisiting An Eye For The Tropics’, is a departure point for us to look to the way the past has informed the present aesthetic in Bahamian artwork, and also importantly to showcase the works in the National Collection and remind us of what we have ownership and pride over as Bahamians.

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March’s Artwork of the Month—Maxwell Taylor’s ‘Nassau Boy’ (1973)

20 March 2017 Article

‘Nassau Boy’ (1973) by Maxwell Taylor is a patterned, shifting mass of humanoid parts set against a lightly textured background, with a hint of houses and civilisation in the distance. This work is most certainly not what one expects of Taylor’s practice, but it is one of the more rebellious and unexpected pieces in the National Collection, a bit of a misfit, and our March Artwork of the Month.

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‘Slam-Bam’ Sands: ‘The hastily hand-coloured colonial postcards of James “Doc” Sands.’

6 March 2017 Article

We are very much accustomed to seeing our islands in various forms of media, anything that can spread the image of our too-blue-to-be-true water. And it is true, we do have some of the most beautiful water on the planet (along with a number of other countries though, we mustn’t forget), and we are – according to certain NASA astronauts “the most beautiful place from space”. However, despite the natural beauty of our landscape, for almost 200 years we have been packaged up and sold as this pristine image that seems to be as clear-cut as our crystal waters.

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