All posts tagged: Wellington Bridgewater

From the Collection: “Crawfish Lady” (c2000) by Wellington Bridgewater

22 May 2018

By Natalie Willis

What does Bahamian fantasy and myth look like? What magic or horror happens when the divides between animal and human seem to dissolve? What then must Wellington Bridgewater have been thinking when he made the “Crawfish Woman” (c2000) who lies on the Southern steps of the NAGB’s Villa Doyle. Was he thinking that this lobster-lady was like the nefarious lusca, sucking water in and out of blue holes to capture unlucky divers and boats with the power of the oceans. Or was she more like the chickcharney, a generally benign beast who, once wronged, would cause you harm.

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The Power of Imprisonment through language: The Eye for the Tropics and Majority rule in 2018 Bahamas

10 January 2018

By Dr Ian Bethell Bennett.  “We believe that rape is a private matter and that women are inherently unequal.” As 2017 passed into memory this last week, it seems important to think about how we see ourselves in the future.  Spirituality could play a large part in this vision, or we could simply choose to continue along what seems to be a road paved with consumerist joy. The paradise myth is part and parcel of that consumerism: where beaches and bodies of paradise that we need to survive can be bought, sold, bartered, negotiated away and given to other sovereign states for their own devices. The opening of “Medium: Practices and Route of Spirituality and Mysticism” at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (NAGB) on December 14, 2017 presented a moment for reflection, but also for a new focus.  When we can celebrate Bahamian ‘masters’ Tony McKay aka “Exuma” or “The Obeah Man,” Amos Ferguson, Wellington Bridgewater and Netica “Nettie” Symonette, along with a boat-load–used intentionally–of other artists, we are saying that perhaps we are changing the way we see ourselves. 

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