Brazilian artist Danilo Oliveira shares his first blog post about his Fresh Milk residency this month. Danilo will be documenting his experiences through a visual diary, sharing images and sketches that capture impressions of his time here. See more below:
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Visual diary f/ Danilo Oliveira in Barbados
If you don’t become the ocean
you’ll be seasick
every day.(Leonard Cohen 1934 – 2016)
Fresh Milk is pleased to welcome Brazilian artist Danilo Oliveira and British-Barbadian poet & artist Dorothea Smartt to the platform for the month of November, 2016.
Danilo’s recent work has focused on ways to engage with the idea, sensation and political concept of the border. Border defines identity, defines quality of life and shapes definitions of the future. Contemporary relationships with borders have two key aspects: abstractly, we have no more boundaries between us due to globalization; on the other hand, questions around borders have never been so relevant as they have in the last decades, in addition to all of the symbolic borders we encounter in our everyday life.
During this residency, he will be continuing his ongoing project ‘About Invented Borders’, by investigating borders in Barbadian and Caribbean society, looking at the history of the region and exploring its ties to Central America. Through research, his concept involves discussing the relationships people have with the boundaries around them and the collective memories of communities towards these borders; whether political, “official” borders or more complex, inner borders and barriers specific to different areas or cultures.
The project will include producing a series of drawings and installation work containing several invented maps drawings, made randomly in response to Danilo’s time in Barbados. The amount of drawings will vary according the spacial and temporal possibilities.
Dorothea’s work typically bridges the islands of Britain and Barbados, effortlessly shuttling between local and global scenes, as it weaves a diasporic web. She has two full collections, Connecting Medium [2001, Peepal Tree Press] and Ship Shape [2008, PTP]. In the latter, ‘a powerful work of reclamation, restitution and reanimation’ [Wasafiri] she offers a name and imagined life to the African buried in Samboo’s Grave, Lancaster.
Her latest chapbook, Reader, I Married Him & Other Queer Goings-On, serves as a precursor to her ongoing research towards new live-art work and her third full poetry collection. She aims to continue reworking standard narratives, this time imagining same-sex relationships and cross-gender experiences in the early 1900’s among ‘West Indian’ workers on the Panama Canal.
Dorothea’s Fresh Milk residency will afford her an opportunity to play and create in a safe, welcoming space. She wishes to work towards creating a multimedia performance reflecting the internationalism of the Panama Canal construction, perhaps collaborating with artists she met during her time in Panama and other artists in Barbados. She will explore the possibility of a collaborative scratch performance, incorporating media such as Skype and PowerPoint presentations with live performance.
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Photo by Natalia Garcia
About Danilo Oliveira:
Danilo Oliveira is an artist, curator and professor based in Sao Paulo, Brazil:
“The last 17 years I’ve been working in various mediums: painting, drawing, muralism, graphic arts, conceptual and community based works. Especially connected to the idea of collective practice, I founded the group Ocavalo in 1999, and Base-V (base-v.org) collective in 2003, working in a few groups since then. Besides the lonely work at the studio when I’m painting, it’s the social insertion that is always the final goal, even for the paintings. Every artwork is a form of relation. The muralism and other works which expanded in the given space, have played a central role in my production. Now, even my canvas paintings only exist when articulated in the space: glued, nailed, stretched, tied. My curatorial practice works the same way: collective, seeking inclusion and with no artistic boundaries. I’m interested both in contemporary and “popular”, folk or ancestral productions and views on culture and art.”
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About Dorothea Smartt:
Dorothea Smartt has an international reputation as a respected poet, live artist, and literary activist. Born and raised in London, with Barbadian heritage, she has two full collections, Connecting Medium and Ship Shape [Peepal Tree Press]. Her recent chapbook, Reader, I Married Him & Other Queer Goings-On, “…is subversive, radical, and surprisingly panoramic…”. She was awarded an Attached Live Artist residency at London’s Institute for Contemporary Arts, an Arts Council of England One-to-One live art development award, and most recently their Grants For All as an independent artist.
Over the past twenty-five years, her credits include engagements with the British Council in Bahrain, South Africa, USA, Egypt, and Hungary. Her seminal work “Medusa? Medusa Black!”, was cited as an O.B.E [Outstanding Black Example) of British live art. Other works include: “Triangle” [A Black Arts Alliance commission, with Kevin Dalton Johnson], exploring generations of UK Blacklesbian & Blackgay lives. “Tradewinds/Landfall”, an international cross-arts residency, exhibited in Houston, Texas and the Museum of London Docklands. In 2013 she was keynote speaker at Barbados’ Frank Collymore Literary Endowment Award.
She is currently researching a new work, to culminate in a third full poetry collection. In it she continues to rework standard narratives. This time imagining cross-gender experiences, same-sex relationships, and the role of traditional religion/spirituality in sustaining the ‘West Indian’ workforce constructing the Panama Canal, in the early 1900’s.
She is a visiting lecturer at the Royal College of Art, Programme Manager of Inscribe (Peepal Tree’s writer development programme), and Associate Poetry Editor at SABLE Litmag. In 2016 she was honoured with a nomination for a Barbados Golden Jubilee Award, and her collection Ship Shape proposed as an ‘A’ Level English Literature text.
Barbadian artist Leann Edghill blogs about the final week of her Fresh Milk residency. Though the week was interrupted by Tropical Storm Matthew, Leann saw this limitation as a chance to carefully plan the rest of her residency and make the most of her remaining time, as she continued to investigate and challenge her relationship to the iconic ‘Barbie’ figure . This residency is generously supported by the Central Bank of Barbados. Read more here:
My last week in residence had some challenges, but was also delightful. Being that I spent a lot of my time in The Colleen Lewis Reading Room, I finally painted Barbie’s and her sisters’ bright baby blue eyes that I have been longing to do for quite some time. Battling with my thoughts about how I want to destroy Barbie has been very disturbing, because I can’t seem to come to grips with destroying her image and what she stands for, even though she’s two-dimensional.
While I was here on the farm, Raquel and I saw a cow give birth to her calf in the stable, marking my last week with a very generous ‘Birthing Experience’ that I wish never to encounter before having lunch! The cow was have minor difficulties giving birth and had be given professional assistance to ensure she had a safe delivery.
Nature certainly had an impact on my last week; besides the lizards and insects paying me visits at Fresh Milk, Tropical Storm Matthew came along and caused Barbados to have an island-wide shut down that day. Even though that was a bit upsetting, it really forced and challenged me to think about how I wanted to use the rest of my time in residence. Fresh Milk has opened doors for me and sparked the inspiration that I have been missing for almost a year since I left Barbados Community College (BCC). It really made me dig deeper and question the relationship I have with Barbie, and how much of a role Mattel has played in brainwashing me and other fans into seeing her as more than a doll. The attachment I feel, almost making me regard her as a human being, makes me wonder if I am being abusive by mutilating her.
Having Ewan Atkinson and Dr. Allison Thompson visiting me on the platform has also been very influential on how I should continue to pursue my artwork. As I continue my journey post Fresh Milk, I will keep destroying Barbie and what she stands for gradually, whether it’s by bandage, melting, or vandalizing her actual body.
I want to give a huge thank you to The Central Bank of Barbados for creating this opportunity and allowing artists like myself to be able to share and interact with one another. Even though this opportunity has come to an end, I know that this won’t be my last time at Fresh Milk.
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This residency is sponsored by the Central Bank of Barbados
London-based Barbadian artist Ada M. Patterson spent some time in the Colleen Lewis Reading Room earlier this year, which provoked ‘Echidna’, a performance work carried out at various locations across Barbados and expanded on in this accompanying photo essay. See documentation from this performance and read Ada’s full essay below:
Ada Patterson, Echidna, Performance. Speightstown, Barbados, 2016.
THE URCHIN
Home may easily always be “elsewhere”, by which I mean a place that is
recognised as not quite yet, at every moment in which one’s feet touch
ground. [1]
In the reclamations of one’s plot (in land and self) of the Caribbean, there is a continued
wading against colonial influence. In the contemporary Caribbean, touristic intervention has worked as an impediment against the formation of identity, while recognising one’s self situated in the oppressed dialogue. The Antillean is left flailing and thrashing in doubled attempts of rejection and hasty grasps of European and imagined African ideals; all in the hope of refinement and reparation of those shreds and scraps of identity into something new. This complicated resistance (which keeps itself open to the entry of desired culture) is a Caribbean wrestle – the crux of open-mouthed resistance. [2]
Humans are not so hardy that we can thrive in our bodies as castles – we are spoiled or
tasked with building shells [homes] as lines of defence and emblems of territory, property and
personal space. Sea Urchins are not so fragile. They are the perfect model for the Antillean openmouthed resistance – the performance of clinging to this land, claiming dominion, absorbing what is truly ours – overcoming dispossession – with a back of thorns to deflect assimilation and imperialism.
Each can return to the Skin without any inhibitions imposed by the exterior
attributes of the Castle. [3]
This invocation, rather than accessory, of the Urchin is a tactic of the Paradise Militant,
through which we must mobilise ourselves toward ingestive interpretation – the posture faced
downwards, mouth to dirt, consuming landscape as analysis – followed by the excretion of culture – the production and establishment of culture as waste-product of our analytical ingestion. We spend so much time, as a people, directing our mouths upward / outward, hoping to be quenched by food that falls from a colonised sky, one never thinks to look at their feet – downward to the land that grounds them as Caribbean.
Ada Patterson, Echidna, Performance. Speightstown, Barbados, 2016.
THE HERMIT
To invoke the Urchin is to invoke the ability of the Hermit – that which involves a capacity
for meditative and defensive states in similitude. The pursuit of identity, as experienced by the
Antillean (in their wake of Postcolonial reflection and neocolonial encounter), is arguably a
hermitage insofar as it requires a submergence into the Atlantic pool of memory, a self-burial beneath the soil of plantations ruined – of long erased Amerindian bone yards – alongside a negotiation against the gale-force battering ram of contemporary foreign visitation / consumption [a tourism as formidable as Sargassum]. A hurricane may only devastate what it can see as penetrable – the Hermit / Urchin is, fortunately, invisible and hardy in their decision to be laid locked in stubborn refusal of the storm’s incessant knocking. A land already ravaged by a history of storms need not be mourned but rather reinterpreted and analysed. As long as we of the Antilles remain, persistent in a culture of resistance, a storm may be discarded as trivial as the seasons and bracing it, the same.
In advocating a collective hermitage, what must take emphasis is the sublimation and fluidity between manoeuvring states – that is, a mastery of the Hermitic approach in their proverbial ascent up the mountain / into the cave [a marronage] whereby through a gaining of insight, in a meditation and a protective negligence against the Outside [the Foreign / the Overseas / the Abroad], an almost alchemical transformation occurs by which the Hermit descends or emerges graced with a nation language, [4] a language and cultural negotiation sophisticatedly illegible to the will of the coloniser. To reword this, an importance lies in the Antillean Hermit’s capacity to be present as a factor of influence in their society and culture, while still invisible and impenetrable to the touristic gaze and will; an Urchin who may face their island without risking their sanctity to the West of whom he backs. [5]
All music born in the West Indies […] were born from silence. Because it was forbidden to speak aloud and to sing. It was born from silence and in silence. One of the common cultural points of music in all the plantation areas of the Americas was the necessity to sing without being heard by somebody else, by the master or another person. The art of silence is fundamental in this kind of music. [6]
Ada Patterson, Echidna, Performance. Walkers Dairy, Barbados, 2016.
[Aside] Let it be made clear that this proposition is not instigating a historical rejection or denial
of colonial rule or Western influence in the Caribbean, like proposals before that seek to restore a lost Africa untouched by history [impossible]. This is, instead, a proposition that bears a
consciousness and hypersensitivity to the European presence and is hereby worn and embittered by its ongoing injection. Frankly, this Urchin has had enough. How may an island stand to look at itself if still knelt to a stature of servitude? How may an island stand to care for itself if still bent in gape to the prick of Empire? This Urchin’s flesh is tired of being picked by transatlantic flies who see an idyllic charm in the poverty and immobility of Caribbean people.
And so we collapsed into the ocean, creating a catastrophe of sunken memory and leaving only the sunken tips of these volcanic memories, the islands of the Caribbean. It is my impression that even now, a million years later, we still hear the echo of that catastrophe, and much of our work relates to that memory. We somehow lost the sense of the mainland, the sense of wholeness and we became holes in the ocean.[7]
The weight of contemporary Western influence sinks us and forbids us any time for the contemplation of culture and identity. The faces of our islands have been shaped – now is the time to learn and assert them – the continued treading of the visitor’s foot will only recede our shores further back towards uncertainty and dispossession; towards something that will only be ours in memory, in passing, in mourning, towards something that is taken from us once again – everything that constitutes we as a people.
Ada Patterson, Echidna, Performance. Walkers Dairy, Barbados, 2016.
THE MONSTER
Following the previous articulation of the Hermit, it must be clarified that this notion is an appropriation and adaption made suitable for Caribbean thought. Any quality or connotation of solitude produced by the Hermit archetype should be discounted in favour of a collective hermitage. What is meant by this is a mass transformation and movement of the Antillean community towards the posture of the Urchin, therefore a communal assumption of the nation language in an effort to deflect and resist touristic and outside persuasion. A cast of strewn islands erupting and foresting a black spiny cloud, every Antillean’s mouth to their own soil, each foot inter-crossed and woven to spin a net fat and soaking with an identity unhindered, uttering a salt language amongst itself, too spicy, too flavourful, too explosive, too excessive to ever be reduced to the limits of foreign interpretation – a harmony of resistance raised by a choir of cobblers. It is miraculous to see a rock pool or a coral plain coated in urchins – such a sight beckons fright and caution in the knowledge that no tread may pass, no foreign body may step nor land nor claim nor possess nor own nor colonise nor nothing. The miracle lies in the utterance of which the symbol of the sea urchin represents, “Doan cum ’round me!”
[…] another monster, irresistible, in no wise like either to mortal men or to the undying gods, even the goddess fierce Echidna who is half a nymph with glancing eyes and fair cheeks, and half again a huge snake, great and awful [8]
In collective assumption of the Urchin posture, may we undergo another sublimation; the invocation of the Monster. The qualities and potential inherent to the Monster involve a negotiation of invisibility alongside the accessory of the Grotesque [excess]. To be monstrous is to manoeuvre rather mythological attributes – to maintain a sense of being hidden, while also exuding a weight or presence in excess. [9] Echidna, the monster of Greek Mythology, who is described in opposing dualities of irresistibility and awfulness, may be linked in character to our understanding of the notion of the Paradise Militant. [10]
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so, because it serenely disdains to destroy us.[11]
The split characterisation of the Monster is one of both temptation and repulsion, highlighting the dangers of that which is desired. Beholding a sea urchin – the black silken glow of crimson that melts across its spines, wet with pearls of light that drip in its gyration – is exciting and seductive, comparable to the thistle, a thorny rose or even the rich candied blue of a man o’ war – legend is spun in tales of seeing, but fortified through an inability to grasp. Lay a naked hand on a thorn, spike, tentacle and your skin will break, bleed and sting. Admire the fruits of the Tropics but forever lay humble and restrained in the promise of their pluck; a Paradise lost.
Ada Patterson, Echidna, Performance. Gibbes Beach, Barbados, 2016.
THE CARNIVAL
The sort of bodily excess to which I am alluding is of the same nature as our Carnival. The mobilisation of this posture as a collective act of resistance, while maintaining invisibility through the nation language, conjures the urchin rock pool, the spiked archipelago, the islands crowned with thorns, the Monster that is seen and admired but may always hinder tangibility and exploitation. Excess, as observed in Caribbean culture, may be enacted through the expansion of the body in collective celebration of the flesh. The agency of celebrative transformation may involve the transcendence of the individual towards the potency of the community as well as the compensation of one another’s limitations so as to promise a rising of the whole. The spirit of the community, as emphasised and exaggerated in Carnival practices, seeks to transgress the idealised ‘individual’, overriding the competitive ethics and economic cannibalism associated with Western Capitalist thought. The concentrated effort of the mass body in celebration, the collective body in excess, the Antilleans’ decision to assume the Urchin posture in resistance, may counter the crisis of cultural exploitation faced in the Caribbean.
Earth at that time was so excessively heated that it broke into an enormous sweat which ran over the sea, making the latter salty, since all sweat is salt. If you do not admit this last statement, then taste of your own sweat.[12]
The transformative potential of the Carnival space is the optimal environment for invoking the Urchin posture. Given Carnival’s cyclical process – a rhythmical progression of inhaling the material and the bursting of one’s seams, a repeated mass death and rebirth in excess, exhaust and revival – the collective body dances in synonymy and similitude, consuming one another (not cannibalistically but in a sense of osmosis) and allowing one’s self to transcend towards [and to be transgressed by] the other. There becomes a radical materialisation of the world in which cultural negotiation is a material engagement whose discourse may only be understood in the participatory Antillean flesh.
When the body is freed (when day comes) it follows the explosive scream. Caribbean speech is always excited, it ignores silence, softness, sentiment. The body follows suit. It does not know pause, rest, smooth continuity. It is jerked along. […] He keeps moving; it can only scream. In this silent world, voice and body pursue desperately an impossible fulfilment.[13]
Ada Patterson, Echidna, Performance. Gibbes Beach, Barbados, 2016.
The membranous sublimation of the revelling bodies is a dance spoken in laughter. The performance of nation language, finding its climax in the laughter of participation, leaves the tongue and coats the Antillean in camouflage, reiterating the duality of invisibility and presence. [14] In the ambiguity of the shift of bodies – passing through one another – the sheer joy of it all, the mass smile and the earthquake laughter become the nation language. For this is a means of cultural relation and communication unique to the flesh of the participants, falling deaf to the oppressor. In the overlap of spikes, does the black of urchins seem to form a single source of beautiful terror – where does it begin or end? In the nesting embrace of the Carnival space, where bodies [shells] and limbs [spikes] crowd and cluster, does a culture emerge in sweat [the same sweat that kept a people from burning in the toil of the sun]. In the dissolution of our individual flesh, to its meshing concretion in unity, do our islands erupt into being.
I will raise up a cry so violent
that I will spatter the sky utterly
and by my shredded branches
and by the insolent jet of my solemn wounded bole
I shall command the islands to exist [15] (55-59)
“No longer shall our shores bend and gape to the prick of Empire. Let the black urchins on
our backs extend arms outstretched as barbs – behold our islands crowned with thorns. May the
empire who maims and reduces us to paradise run aground our coral teeth. By its sting, does a
nation rise from welts. By our sting, does paradise bloom and throb as floating terror.”
References:
[1] Forbes, C. “Between Plot and Plantation, Trespass and Transgression: Caribbean Migratory Disobedience in
Fiction and Internet Traffic.” Small Axe, 2012. 16(2 38), 2012. 23-42.
[2] The coining of ‘open-mouthed resistance’ is indebted to the anatomy of the sea urchin, whose mouth is a
central orifice situated at the base of the creature. The urchin ingests food, which is digested upwards and excreted through the anus located at the central peak of the urchin’s dome. This term is to refer to a practice of repossessing the Caribbean landscape and cultural identity by returning a focus to the land, itself, while backing the distraction, interruption and assimilation of foreign neocolonial forces, in resistance.
[3] Lamming, G. “The Pleasures of Exile.” Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992. 159.
[4] Brathwaite, K. “History of the Voice: The Development of Nation Language in Anglophone Caribbean Poetry.”
New Beacon Books, 1984. 5-6.
[5] The eye of the foreign storm from which the Antillean as Urchin seeks to stay invisible, throws its gaze in vain. Scientific studies have shown that sea urchins have light-sensitive cells embedded throughout their body which allow them to detect light and its direction, so they may hide from it. The Urchin’s tendency towards invisibility is a quality we must adopt. See more: Yong, E. “Sea urchins use their entire body as an eye.” Not Exactly Rocket Science. Waukesha, WI: Kalmbach Publishing Co., 2011.
[6] Brathwaite, K. and Édouard Glissant. “A Dialogue: Nation Language and Poetics of Creolization.” Presencia Criolla en el Caribe y América Latina/Creole Presence in the Caribbean and Latin America. Ed. Ineke Phaf. Frankfurt am Main: Verveurt, 1996. 19-35.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Hesiod. “Theogony.” The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn -White. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914. 300-305.
[9] Excess in the realm of the Grotesque is to be read as an unquantifiable state of being – similar to the Sublime, yet based in the material, bodily world in flesh. The body when inflated to a plane of inconceivable physicality is an exaggeration of bodily potency and capability; a heightening of the body’s ability to expand and exhaust in fat, blood, sweat, excrement, etc. Moreover, in the case of the Monster, this capability may expand to the extent of cosmetic qualities; the excess of beauty or conversely, ugliness.
[10] This characterises the notion that Paradise is not passively beautiful – idyll in servitude – but may be activated to become Monstrous, resistant and autonomous in defence of paradisiacal natives and their culture against foreign exploitation.
[11] Rilke, Rainer M. “Duino Elegies.” Translated from the German by Stephen Cohen. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998. 21-43.
[12] Rabelais, F. “Gargantua and Pantagruel.” Translated from the French by M.A. Screech. London: Penguin Books Ltd, 2006.
[13] Glissant, E. and Dash, J. “Caribbean Discourse.” Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1989. 120-150.
[14] Glissant, E. and Dash, J. “Caribbean Discourse.” Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1989. 21-22.
[15] Césaire, A. “Lost Body.” The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse. England: Oxford University Press, 2009. 39-40.
Work Cited:
– Brathwaite, K. “History of the Voice: The Development of Nation Language in Anglophone
Caribbean Poetry.” New Beacon Books, 1984. 5-6.
– Brathwaite, K. and Édouard Glissant. “A Dialogue: Nation Language and Poetics of Creolization.”
Presencia Criolla en el Caribe y América Latina/Creole Presence in the Caribbean and Latin
America. Ed. Ineke Phaf. Frankfurt am Main: Verveurt, 1996. 19-35.
– Césaire, A. “Lost Body.” The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse. England: Oxford University Press,
2009. 39-40.
– Forbes, C. “Between Plot and Plantation, Trespass and Transgression: Caribbean Migratory
Disobedience in Fiction and Internet Traffic.” Small Axe, 2012. 16(2 38), 2012. 23-42.
– Glissant, E. and Dash, J. “Caribbean Discourse.” Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia,
1989. 21-22; 120-150.
– Hesiod. “Theogony.” The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G.
Evelyn-White. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914.
300-305.
– Lamming, G. “The Pleasures of Exile.” Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992. 159.
– Rabelais, F. “Gargantua and Pantagruel.” Translated from the French by M.A. Screech. London:
Penguin Books Ltd, 2006.
– Rilke, Rainer M. “Duino Elegies.” Translated from the German by Stephen Cohen. Evanston, IL:
Northwestern University Press, 1998. 21-43.
– Yong, E. “Sea urchins use their entire body as an eye.” Not Exactly Rocket Science. Waukesha,
WI: Kalmbach Publishing Co., 2011.
Barbadian visual artist Raquel Marshall writes about the final week of her Fresh Milk residency, which she describes as coming to a “bittersweet end.” Despite losing some time due to what was at the time Tropical Storm Matthew, Raquel has exceeded her expected output for the residency, and takes us through the development and realisation of a number of pieces she has worked on for the last month. This residency is generously supported by the Central Bank of Barbados. Read more below:
The final week at Fresh Milk was filled with excitement and disappointment.
I completed the large 3 dimensional piece that I started last week. This was definitely one of my highlights. I hand stitched about 70 egg-shaped sinkers and three large hooks onto the tentacles. Although I thought the work to be finished, I was unsure and asked Annalee for her insight. Her response was, “I am thinking it could have a little more.” Having recalled Ida Applebroog’s quote ‘with art it either has to be too much or not enough’, Annalee’s response confirmed for me that I was indeed finished. That quote has not left me since I heard it, and it has shifted the way I look at art generally and at my own work, having a huge impact on my decision making during the creative process.
In my opinion, this work poetically fulfills all the expectations I had of it from its inception. It is inviting, cozy and fun, yet dangerous to play with, heavy and somewhat burdensome; large and striking, obvious yet ambiguous.
Another highlight of the week was that Leann and I watched the birth of a calf. It was quite an ordeal because the calf was too big and had to be helped out. It took a team of people to help the cow and calf make it through without harm coming to either of them. I have found being here in the “country” and on a farm quite interesting. One night there was an amazing perfume aroma similar to that of tuberose. Apparently, it was a green flower in bloom on a tree. I believe it is a Ylang-Ylang tree. Here, I am surrounded by scenes and smells that I do not see regularly, so I feel like I am truly “away”.
This week Tropical Storm Matthew swirled by and the country was on lock down, so that meant I lost a day at the studio and an important meeting was postponed to October. I had planned to do a few more clay vessels, but I was unable to due to this, and so continued with the other plans I had for the rest of the week.
Before leaving the residency I wanted to make one more pattern in another seat belt. Ironically, the first seat belt I found was grey, which I painted a significant blood red, but the recent ones I found were already red. I still had to paint them though, as I discovered while creating the first one that the paint helped to stiffen the fabric to stay in folded positions. I cut the belt into a pattern of people holding hands; it’s a common pattern kids use when creating these in paper. I decided to paint each person a colour – white, light brown, dark brown, black and red. The colour was a reference to the many races that make up our culture and that all are affected by the overuse of alcohol; however I did not like the aesthetic, and decided it was unnecessary to have all the colours as the monochrome red referred to all people without making it obvious. So I started again from scratch, and am way more satisfied with the outcome. I honestly love when the fabric shears and comes apart. I don’t wish for that to happen too often, but treasure when it does and I try as best I can to preserve it.
While here, I also worked on a few other concepts which I have not yet mentioned: a work using bottle caps, a video and sound compilation and another with found objects. Only one of those is fully realised and completed, and that is the video and sound compilation. Knowing that I would be doing this residency, I had decided to record a sound to bring with me in case I wanted to use it. At the time, I was totally unaware of what would become of it. The sound is a memory, a classical conditioning. After I left home, and for many years since, when I heard an ice tray crack and the ice hit the glass, my whole body would tense. My body was automatically responding to a sound that brought unease and signalled it was time to tread carefully. It’s been seventeen years, and the residue is still there. I have always been aware and amazed by it, and for some strange reason I wanted to record the sound and do something with it in an art piece one day.
I had never done anything like this before so I asked a dear friend of mine, Simon Pipe, who is an accomplished musician and song writer and who has his own recording studio, if he would do the recording. It was quite a different experience being in his studio, and I realised quite suddenly that sound was becoming my medium the same way I use objects or paint. We cracked ice (this we had to do over and over again, as it had to sound exactly right), dropped ice into the glass (also a specific pitch and a special glass had to be bought), we broke the tin seal, twisted the cap and poured the liquid. Now listening more intently, each sound had a beauty I didn’t notice before. And through its creation I found my reaction to what I heard changing.
Around the same time, I had a totally separate thought picturing a video I wanted to produce, but similarly wanted to bring the video with me to the residency in case I should want to develop the idea. I called on another creative friend, Adam Taylor, who is a photographer, graphic designer, and now music video producer. I needed him to record my feet crushing eggs; if anyone knows my work, walking on eggshells has been a revisited theme. I knew exactly where it had to be shot and how it had to look. So with a dozen eggs and some black velvet, we met at the parquet floor for the shoot. I crushed egg by egg with my feet, the yolk and the thick clear albumen oozing between my toes, slimy and gooey and quite therapeutic. It was gross and exhilarating at the same time. At some points in life, we just need to stop tip toeing and just let the eggs break. It’s messy but it’s authentic and it’s necessary. The video came out perfectly with only a little editing needed.
With no clear way forward individually for the two pieces, I decided to put them together. It was absolutely riveting. The sound of the egg crunching mirrored the sound of the ice cracking and the liquid pouring into the glass juxtaposed with the splashing of the liquescent egg was intense. I had unintentionally – and yet intentionally – made something very sensuous.
And so I come to a bittersweet end to my residency.
What’s next? I am not ready to leave. Here, I have found my “voice” again as I set out to do, accomplished the development of various ideas, and managed to complete more than one piece which is more than I anticipated. My new challenge is how do I maintain this momentum when I return to my “normal” life?
Thank you to the Barbados Central Bank for making this residency possible. I am truly grateful for the opportunity. Thank you for recognising the potential that the Fresh Milk platform can bring to the national development of our island.
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This residency is sponsored by the Central Bank of Barbados
fresh milk barbados 