photo by the NAGB
The NAGB has launched a blog – Mixed Media – which has featured several posts on the Kendal Hanna exhibit.
The Retrospective Exhibition of “Kendal Hanna – Happy Birthday to Me” is currently on exhibit at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas, featuring the drawings and paintings of this Bahamian Master Artist.
Spanning work from his near-60 year career, the exhibition features over 140 pieces ranging from Hanna is psychologically intense portraits, his classic nude studies, and compelling abstract expressionist pieces. Curated by Dr. Erica M. James, the exhibition opened on the 25th of June 2011 and will end in January 2012.
Oct. 25, 2011: New: In Gallery Guides for the Kendal Hanna Exhibition Oct. 18, 2011: Local and Global: Kendal Hanna and William de Kooning Oct. 13, 2011: Feature from the Kendal Hanna Exhibition: Portrait of My Father (Unfinished)
Cris, the caretaker at Popopstudios, celebrated his 71st birthday on October 18. The Popop artists gathered for cake and ice cream.
Two Summer Junior Residents who refined their artistic practice for several months at Popopstudios International Center of Visual Arts are ready for their close-up.
June Collie and Richardo Barrett—both College of The Bahamas students—present the culmination of their artistic studies undertaken during the summer in their show “Fallen Transitions”, which opened this past Thursday at the art gallery in Popopstudios ICVA. Consisting of both video and painting installations, the work nonetheless holds a meaningful exchange about film and individuality.
June Collie’s three short films—“Simon Says?”, “Installation II” and “What Do You Want June?”—as well as her paintings are highly confrontational.
“With my work, I like to get straight to the point,” she says. “That’s why with my video, there is no wasted time on why I paint women with curves.”
Against completely unashamed paintings of voluptuous naked women that conjure up Matisse and Gauguin is Collie’s video “Installation II”, where a young girl cuts out conventionally beautiful faces and features in magazines and puts them over her face to try them on. Collie seems to be criticizing society’s beauty industry and standards, yet her other videos go deeper.
It is evident though in “What Do You Want June?” that Collie’s own personal experience has informed her work which encourages its viewers to go against the grain—or else go on living dead and unfulfilled.
“I’ve always been nice—I gave and I listened and I took orders,” she says, explaining she went from studying nursing to accounting to business, all in order to become the “normal” person everyone aims to be. It wasn’t until taking an art elective with John Cox that she found her passion lay in art, and made a major life change that saw an upheaval in hobbies and friends as she threw conventional out of the window.
“I learned to be selfish which was a good thing for me,” she explains. “I want to show people through my art that being selfish isn’t bad.”
Indeed, her films encourage that kind of introspection through the shock factor of dark, sexual and grotesque elements—what she calls abstract, but which seem to draw on the surreal as well. Collie says she worked through various media trying to find the right one for her kind of abstract art until she settled on film.
“I want it to look exactly like it is in my head, and in film, I got to show people what I wanted to see. I feel like I can express myself,” she says. “When I work with video, it never feels like work.”
On the other hand, Richardo Barrett, who spent time as a resident at Popop Studios this summer under the Antonius Roberts Award, presents visual artwork that alludes to film in its overall installation.
His most breathtaking pieces are painted and collaged figures suspended in the air from strings secured to both the floor and the ceiling like marionettes some distance away from his elaborately painted backgrounds, which lay flat against the walls of the gallery.
Barrett explains that these scenes are inspired by Revelations 12 and Genesis 3 of The Bible and combine unexpected elements together to create a magical realist twist on modernity. They are seemingly cartoonish, yet sophisticatingly fantastical, drawing upon the work of Tim Burton and Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki and their themes of the relationships between lightness and dark, technology and nature, and being caught between two worlds.
“As I began to explore film, I wanted to present my visual work in the way a filmmaker would—like a still of a film, using different dimensions so the eye blurs and focuses on different elements at one time,” he explains.
On another wall lies a row of painted brown shadow figures, while the objects they carry—bags inscribed with recognizable commercial names, elaborate hats—are collaged atop the flat paper surface to become the main focus.
In the same room as Collie’s work, they contribute to the conversation about conforming—his puppetlike characters, after all, allude to an anonymous puppetmaster, and his monochromatic cut-outs seem to be a criticism against the “cookie-cutter” standard as well as obsessions with materialism—however Barrett points out that to him, they encourage messages of acceptance.
“Characters are always the main focus of anything, so I decided to cut them out and when I do that, I think people can see these people are all the same dealing with the same things you are,” explains Barrett. “We are all on this journey of life carrying our possessions with us—that makes us who we are.”
The work displayed by these two up-and-coming artists is promising both in the quality reflected in their work and in the creative media they used to explore their craft, and should not be missed.
“Fallen Transitions” is now on view at Popopstudios ICVA in Chippingham.
By Sonia Farmer Arts & Culture The Nassau Guardian Published: Saturday, October 22, 2011
(Photos by Popopstudios)
After School & Saturday Art Classes At Popopstudios International Center for the Visual Arts
Mondays and Wednesdays 4:00pm – 5:30pm Saturdays 10:00am – 11:30am
Classes begin September 13 and end December 10, 2011
$125 for 4 sessions. All materials included.
For more information contact Katrina Cartwright: 322-7834
Artwork by Richardo Barrett
Junior resident artist Richardo Barrett prepares the walls earlier this week at Popopstudios for the upcoming show “Fallen Transitions”.
Opening reception: Thursday, October 20, 2011 at 7:00pm
Above, John Cox, who is in Iowa for the Master Artists of the Bahamas Exhibition and Symposium, checks out the sculptures created by Antonius Roberts during a week-long residency at the University of Northern Iowa. The sculptures are created out of reclaimed wood from Sans Souci Island and they memorialize the effects of the devastating flooding that occurred in 2008.
“Master Artists of The Bahamas” Exhibit will run from October 14, 2011 through January 2012 at the Waterloo Centre for the Arts (WCA) in Iowa. The exhibit will feature over 40 pieces of artwork by a diverse group of Bahamian artists, including the late Amos Ferguson, Brent Malone and Jackson Burnside as well as contemporary artists Antonius Roberts, Dave Smith, Eddie Minnis, John Beadle, John Cox and Kendal Hanna, Max Taylor and Stan Burnside.
Ceramicist Katrina Cartwright is utilizing her skills to create a tile mosaic on one of the walls in the newly refurbished kitchen at Popopstudios.
Katrina, who works out of her studio at Popop, has created an abstract design comprising approximately 460 clay ceramic tiles and a variety of warm gold and cool blue tones.
The refurbishing of the kitchen is a project the Popop art community took on earlier this year. For the last three years Popop has facilitated both international and local residency programs, which have brought tremendous credibility and visibility to the Bahamian art movement. A functioning kitchen is a basic necessity and an integral part of making live-in residencies work. Popop held a fundraiser in April – Sketch24 – and raised a few thousand dollars with which to redo the well-worn kitchen built sometime in the 60s.
Katrina’s tile mosaic is the final artistic touch.
Bahamian artists are pushing for a new wave of support for an online petition asking the government to remove duty on art supplies.
The petition, launched last year, is seeking to reach a goal of 750 signatures. Currently 486 people have signed on. It requests that the government remove the 45 per cent duty on a wide range of art supplies and equipment.
The 45 per cent tariff is charged on all craft products, including clay, paint brushes, paint, paper, sketch books, canvas and boards.
This hefty duty is financially stifling Bahamian artists, according to advocates, and its removal should be seriously evaluated. Artisans should be considered manufacturers, small businesses, and cottage industries, several artists told Tribune Art.
“I think the government is very short-sighted when they stick duty on items. They don’t ask whether or not it makes sense. I can’t buy what I need over here. I am forced to buy from the United States. I have to buy things in bulk because it does not even make sense to buy things in parts. At one point I did not even know how I was going to get my supplies. I could afford to purchase them but I can’t afford to bring them in because the duty is so high,” said ceramists Katrina Cartwright.
The artist said this duty affects all businesses selling products made by ceramists and to an extent it also affects tourism.
“Ceramists are asked by different businesses to produce mass amounts of products so they can sell in their stores. Because supplies are so expensive we have to charge a lot for our artwork. The businesses then have to charge high for the products. These are the same stores tourists go into to purchase art. But when they see a little piece of ceramic work costing so much they do not want to buy it. Realistically the government is doing small business a disservice and to a small extent that impacts tourism. Visual arts is part of our culture, but the government does not contribute or support us enough,” she said.
Pam Burnside, owner of Doongalik Studios Art Gallery, agrees that 45 per cent is far too much to charge artists for supplies.
“It would be a very good thing if they removed the duty from art supplies. Some of the artist in the field are already struggling, so having to pay so much for the art supplies is difficult. I can see them charging 10 per cent duty on the items but 45 per cent is too much. On top of that there are only a few people who sell supplies in the Bahamas so the artists are just limited,” said Mrs Burnside.
Ceramist Jessica Colebrooke said many of her Florida suppliers closed down when the US economy sank, forcing her to go as far as California to get supplies. At one point, she said, she felt like calling it quits.
“For a long time they have treated artists as though they do not matter. These are the same persons who come to you looking for donations. Like the old people say ‘hand come hand go.’ But this is something the government should take into serious consideration,” she said.
If artists had better access to equipment, visual artist Arjuna Watson said they would be better able to produce quality work.
“It is expensive. I brought in paper the other day and they charged me 50 per cent duty on the paper. It would be really good if they removed the duty. I think if we had access to more materials the quality of our work would improve. At times I am reluctant to throw things away because they are so expensive. After you purchase your material when it is time to clear customs you are paying for the items about two or three times. Everyone is jumping on the art bandwagon, but they need to put their money where their mouth is and support us.”
By Jeffarah Gibson The Tribune Published: Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Mixed Media Artist
Richardo O. Barrett was born on the 9th of January 1990 to Richard and Vivienne Barrett. As a child, he wasn’t necessarily the creative type but spent most of his time indulged in National Geographic documentaries and books. His artistic interest didn’t begin until grade six at T.G. Glover Primary where he began to draw.
During this time, his love for drawing grew and combined with his fondness for nature, Barrett took the initiative to begin illustrating diagrams for his science class. Soon, everyone wanted him to draw their diagrams. But this wasn’t enough for him and popular cartoons became his new point of interest. This sparked his creativity even more and he began to compete with other students in school. That spirit of always wanting to become better encouraged and fed his interests in and his need to create art.
Barrett entered the art programme at C. R. Walker Senior High School and he also participated in the 2006 RBC Finco Summer Art Workshop where at the end of the programme he was awarded 1st place in both Painting and Drawing. Additionally, because of the fine instruction he received from the RBC Finco Workshop, along with guidance from his high school art teachers, Barrett received Best Performance Award in the 2007 BGCSE examinations for both painting and craft in the Art and Design subjects.
During his enrollment at the College of The Bahamas, Barrett has participated in a number of exhibitions including the 25th Annual Central Bank Art Competition and Exhibition (2008, receiving Honorable Mention) and the Annual Colour of Harmony Exhibition at the College of The Bahamas.
This year has been one of the most rewarding for Barrett having been chosen as the first recipient of The Antonius Roberts Award.
The award is a distinguished residency sponsored by accomplished Master Artist Antonius Roberts where the awardee receives three months of an all expenses paid personal studio space at Popopstudios, full access to Antonius Roberts’ studio resources, private sessions with Roberts every Wednesday for one-on-one crits and general discussions about art, a venture to Schooner Bay, Abaco and an exciting ten day art-centered trip to New York.
When asked about the choice of Barrett, Roberts said, “When I decided to support a budding artist, I contacted (artist) John Cox for recommendations. Without hesitation, he introduced me to Richardo Barrett. Richardo is a quiet and unassuming young man with a huge desire to succeed. His discipline is unmatched and his technical skills are outstanding. I am thankful for the opportunity to meet and work with him during his residency at Popopstudios.”
Barrett will be showcasing new paintings and illustrations in a two-man exhibition entitled “Fallen Transitions” at Popopstudios International Center for the Visual Arts in Chippingham on Thursday, October 20, 2011 along with fellow Junior Artist-in-Residence June Collie. The students were given a studio to share and enjoyed the ability to interact with practicing Bahamian and International artists at Popopstudios over three months spanning June to August, 2011.
Of this experience, Barrett states, “One of the things I valued was the fact that there was a community of artists and a dialogue that happened amongst us being there. It wasn’t only me in the studio creating work; I also got to communicate with other artists.”
(Courtesy of the Dawn Davies Collection: Images of Innocence, Smokin, Happy Days, The Big Lie, Japanese Teapot, Let’s Eat and The Traveler) Source: Bahamian Art & Culture : No. 56
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