Bahamian artist in new Washington exhibition

The artwork of internationally acclaimed Bahamian artist Lavar Munroe, who has recently accepted a position at Indiana University School of Art, Architecture + Design as a Visiting Assistant Professor in Painting, will be included in a new exhibition entitled “Becoming American” in Washington state. Paintings and sculptures from Munroe’s recent body of work, The Redbones will be on view in this exhibition.

Becoming American is an international group exhibition taking place on the grounds of the American and English camps on San Juan Island, WA, and satellite venues in the city of Seattle. The exhibition ranges from commissions responsive to the layered dynamics of the primary venue—including the park’s history as a traditional home to Coastal Salish people, the location of the last territorial dispute between the United States and Great Britain, its imminent proximity to Canada, and exceptional natural beauty—to works across media that delve into and question the perhaps permanently contested, never-to-be-resolved nature of the larger understanding of the Americas.

Lavar Munroe is an interdisciplinary artist whose work encompasses painting, drawing, sculpture and installation art. Blending fictional narratives, reminiscent of dark childhood fables, with his own direct experience with research and art historical compositional techniques, Munroe constructs sharp political critiques of contemporary life.

CLICK HERE for more information on the exhibition.
CLICK HERE for more information about Lavar.

Bahamian recording artists collaborate on new Junka-Soca song

When the prince of “Junka-Soca” (a fusion of Junkanoo and Soca beats) collaborates with a Bahamian pop princess and a French saxophonist/ DJ/producer with a reputation for innovative, eclectic sounds, the result is a high energy, infectious dance single guaranteed to make the world move to the left … move to the right — jump and wine.

“Jump & Wine” is a fun, Caribbean electric slide rooted in The Bahamas and France that will have listeners out of their seats and on the dance floor in a heartbeat. The song is a debut release for Island Vybzz, representing the label’s core values — to produce hot, tropical, party-starting dance music.

The soul-stirring vocals of Julien Believe and Angelique Sabrina blend with the blazing sax/electro-pop track created by super producer DJ Natty Rico for the party-starter “Jump & Wine”, written by Julien Believe, Angelique Sabrina, Gregg White and Natty Rico. “Jump & Wine” is also produced by Natty Rico and Executive Producer Gregg White for the Island Vybzz label. [...]

CLICK HERE for full article in The Nassau Guardian.

Tall Order:
An interview with Nicole Yip of LUX Scotland

Yip speaks on meaningful exchange and working to decolonize the archive with the NAGB’s Natalie Willis.

by Natalie Willis

The NAGB, in collaboration with LUX Scotland, has put together some really incredible content for our series of film screenings as part of the programming for our current exhibition in partnership with the British Council, “We Suffer To Remain”. Moving image has impacted us so greatly as a region in terms of shaping our narratives, and in how we decolonise and re-shape those narratives for ourselves.

• • •

This week we are in conversation with Nicole Yip, director of LUX Scotland, to see how she began to think through tackling this project and what it means to partner with Caribbean institutions.

NW: Is this the first time LUX Scotland has partnered in the Caribbean and if so what significance does this have for you?
NY: It feels really exciting! A big strand of our current work has to do with ideas around racial equity and diversity, and ideas of transformative justice, especially in the context of Scotland where we’re based. So this has been a continuing thread in which we have mainly been working towards a local context, but we have the chance to expand these discussions in an international context and it seemed like the logical next step. As I mentioned in the introduction to the screening it was one that was quite daunting. [...]

CLICK HERE for full interview at the NAGB’s website.

The Moving Image: The First Turn of the Revolution

by Dr Ian Bethell-Bennett

The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas and LUX Scotland partnered with the British Council to produce a series of short and experimental films that coincides with the exhibition “We Suffer to Remain”. The series highlights a history of moving image expressions of hard to have conversations about race, indigeneity and belonging. The first screening in this series was on Thursday evening 17th May in the amphitheatre of the NAGB. The theatre is a beautiful and incredibly well-done space allowing for the outdoors to be enjoyed, even with the threat of rain, which, fortunately, did not descend. A good sized and engaged crowd came to support this event, and different and distinct viewpoints and experiences enlivened the discussion. The films screened were Alberta Whittle’s Sorry, Not Sorry (2018), and Handsworth Songs (1986) by Black Audio Film Collective, a 16mm work transferred to video.

The evening began with a brief introduction to the films and the series by Nicole Yip curator of the series and director of LUX Scotland, NAGB Chief Curator Holly Bynoe and myself. The discussion set the scene for the artistic representation provided by these artists as well as opening the door to the discussion of moving image development in the Caribbean. It is significant that the Caribbean, a similar yet divided region through colonisation struggles with the infrastructure to support film production which continues to be uneven. The Bahamas has not been known for moving image production–though this is changing with creators like Kareem Mortimer and Maria Govan and others–when compared to Cuba the giant in the region for producing long and short moving images using multiple strategies and techniques of directing and production. [...]

CLICK HERE for full text at the NAGB’s website.

Indigenous art takes the lead at the NAGB’s Art Summer Camp

by Katrina Cartwright

With just three weeks left to prepare for this year’s Mixed Media Art Summer Camp (MMASC), the NAGB team is kicking into high gear to get everything ready for the 100 campers who will be engaging in six weeks of fun creativity between June 25th and August 3rd. The NAGB Mixed Media Art Summer Camp, revamped in 2015, serves as an access point for all kids, ages 5 to 17, to art and its history. The goal is to provide a hands-on approach to educating campers from all communities about the significance of Bahamian art and how it has impacted our daily lives – culturally and socially. Additionally, it informs prospective students on various career paths within the visual arts, presenting them with options for future educational and professional pursuits.

Due to the persistent knowledge and experience gap concerning the arts, many Bahamian youth are unaware of the incredible visual arts history and current creative movements in The Bahamas and how those movements relate to them. To mitigate this, the NAGB consistently selects camp themes that have relevance and resonance to the Bahamian people. In 2018 the NAGB is taking campers “Back to da Island,” where they will experience Rake n’ Scrape, Junkanoo, Bahamian strawcraft and shellcraft and the unique art of Bahamian storytelling. Using these intrinsically creative elements of indigenous Bahamian culture, campers will experiment with bridging the gap between fine art and craft, while exploring the more formal elements of artistic practice. [...]

CLICK HERE for full article at the NAGB’s website.

Kerry James Marshall:
On painting, politics and P. Diddy’s record-breaking purchase of his work

This is probably the first instance in the history of the art world, where a Black person took part in a capital competition and won.

by Hadani Ditmars

“I wanted to break the notion that blackness was a reductive condition, that it couldn’t be complex and chromatic,” says the 62-year-old artist Kerry James Marshall of his work Invisible Man (1986), now on display at the Rennie Collection in Vancouver. “This colour here,” he says, pointing to the edge of the work, “is actually a very deep green”.

The enigmatic figure in Invisible Man, mostly made out by the whites of his eyes and his toothy grin, seems either to emerge from or disappear into the background, and is at once skeletal and defiant, frightening and mocking. The work was inspired, Marshall says, by a 1961 horror film called Sardonicus, directed by William Castle, in which a man’s face becomes frozen in a contorted grimace when he robs his father’s grave to get a winning lottery ticket. The painting speaks to Marshall’s familiar themes of absence and presence, visibility and invisibility. “It’s our Mona Lisa,” says Bob Rennie, the Canadian real estate magnate and collector who bought the work for $53,775 at an auction in Los Angeles in 2006, from the estate of the African-American actor Paul Winfield. [...]

CLICK HERE for full story at The Art Newspaper.

‘Why was it so hard to get here?’

European collectors are at last buying up work by African American artists at Art Basel. Artists including Sam Gilliam, McArthur Binion, and Barkley Hendricks are in high demand this year in Basel.

by Julia Halperin

Art Basel, the topflight Swiss fair that opens to the public today, is best known for presenting the bluest of blue-chip European art. But this year, the event has a bit of an American flavor thanks to prominent—and highly sought after—work by African American artists. Beyond the convention center, the city’s Kunstmuseum is hosting solo exhibitions by two black American artists, Sam Gilliam and Theaster Gates.

At a time when the market is rapidly recalibrating price points for artists who have been undervalued for decades, and as museums are rushing to fill gaps in their collections, dealers say Art Basel can be an important opportunity to provide these historically overlooked artists with European exposure that can have a lasting impact. [...]

CLICK HERE for full story at Artnet.

Sam Gilliam:
a life beyond the frame

With a show of his unstretched canvases at the Kunstmuseum Basel, the lyrical abstractionist is enjoying a late resurgence in popularity.

by José da Silva

“I’ve always listened to everyone, from Coltrane to Beyoncé, but not always while I work,” says Sam Gilliam during the installation of works for his show at the Kunstmuseum Basel (until 30 September), which focuses on the period from 1967 to 1973. This is the 84-year-old US lyrical abstractionist’s first major European exhibition.
Although “the relation between music and my work isn’t so direct, the structure of jazz is important”, Gilliam says. “My Drape paintings are never hung the same way twice. The composition is always present, but one must let things go, be open to improvisation, spontaneity, what’s happening in a space while one works.”

The Redbones Series

by Lavar Munroe

“I am interested in creating fictitious characters known as The Redbones. The Redbones are a generation of young boys who are placed on the frontline as warriors by the wealthy within society. Ironic to the storyline is that The Redbones are a generation of boys from poverty stricken areas recruited and hand selected to fight for freedom and justice for ALL. The boys march, protest and go to war simply as a rite of passage in hopes of one day being deemed hero by the wealthy within society.

“This series draws very close parallels between the current political space and societal ills being experienced today within the world. This project takes to task, an examination and critique of journey, pilgrimage and the notion of martyr as hero in regard to the act of Protest and war.