Quid Pro Quo: Skills Exchange Programme at Fresh Milk

June 1, 2016June 1, 2016Leave a comment

The winner of this year’s Fresh Milk ‘My Time’ Local Residency, Anisah Wood, will be in residence with us between June 6 and July 1, 2016. As part of her community outreach during her residency, Anisah will be offering the programme Quid Pro Quo – a series of skill-exchanges at the Fresh Milk studio.

Modeled after the Trade School concept, founded in part by New York based artist Caroline Woolard whose practice “explores intersections between art and the solidarity economy,” these sessions will become a non-traditional space of learning and sharing, emphasizing the value of people’s passions and skills.

Quid Pro Quo will be held at Fresh Milk over a period of four weeks, with the first session being held on Friday, June 10, 2016 at 3:00pm.

The programme will be structured as follows:

Each participant must be willing to share either one’s passion, skills or knowledge in exchange for the skills or knowledge of the other participants.

Each participant can offer an option of 2 to 3 topics or skills. For example, Anisah will offer: ‘Digital photography 101’, ‘The art of collage’ and ‘How to play warri and potta (traditional board games)’. Note that what is offered does not have to be art oriented. The idea is simply to share knowledge with the expectation of receiving knowledge in exchange.

The result is at most a 4 for 1 exchange.

The setting in which the information is dispensed will be informal and the manner in which each participant relays the information is completely up to the individual. It can be a discussion, hands on experience, a series of exercises, a presentation etc.

Each participant will select from the options offered what they would like to know from the other participants. The option that receives the most votes will be the one discussed.

Finally, each participant will be assigned a day in which they will give their presentation, with the option of Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Fridays with flexible hours between 3:00-6:00 pm.

There will be a limited number of participants approximately 4-5 in order to allow the exchange to be completed within the duration of the residency.

How to register:

To register, email freshmilkbarbados@gmail.com with the subject line ‘Quid Pro Quo’ and provide your name, contact information and the knowledge to be bartered in exchange for one of the skill-sets Anisah will be offering by June 7, 2016.

From the response, the participants will be selected and informed of their acceptance by June 9, 2016, in time for the initial session on June 10 at 3:00 pm.

During this meeting, each of the participants will be assigned a week from which they will determine what day and time they will be hosting their session. The participants will then vote on the focus of each session based on the options provided.

Announcing Caribbean Linked IV

May 30, 2016June 9, 2016Leave a comment

We are pleased to announce that the regional residency Caribbean Linked IV will be taking place at Ateliers ’89 in Oranjestad, Aruba from August 1 through 23, 2016. Thanks to generous support from the Mondriaan Fund, Stichting DOEN and the Prince Claus Fund, eleven creatives from around the French, Spanish, English and Dutch Caribbean will convene to produce work and mount an exhibition during this three week period.

This annual residency will again allow the participants to be exposed to the practices of other emerging Caribbean artists, providing an opportunity to strengthen regional connections and cultural understanding.

Artists this year include Frances Gallardo (Puerto Rico), Travis Geertruida (Curacao), Charlie Godet Thomas (Bermuda), Nowé Harris-Smith (The Bahamas), Dominique Hunter (Guyana), Tessa Mars (Haïti), Oneika Russell (Jamaica), Simon Tatum (The Cayman Islands), Laura de Vogel (Aruba) and visiting master artist Humberto Diaz (Cuba).

The writer in residence will be David Knight Jr. (US Virgin Islands), co-founder of Moko Magazine. Visiting artists who will be lending support to Ateliers ’89 during the residency will be Robin de Vogel (Aruba) and Katherine Kennedy (Barbados). This year’s specially invited curators will be María Elena Ortiz, associate curator at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) and Pablo León de la Barra, curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum for the Latin American phase of the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative.

Stay tuned for more information!

Caribbean Linked is an initiative by ARC Magazine, The Fresh Milk Art Platform and Ateliers ’89.

Fresh Talk: Tania Bruguera

May 10, 2016May 10, 2016Leave a comment

Fresh Milk and Fresh Art International are collaborating to present Fresh Talk: Caribbean, a series of podcasts about creativity in the 21st century with a Caribbean focus.

This week, we highlight a conversation with Cuban artist Tania Bruguera about the launch of a new initiative: the Hannah Arendt Institute for Artivism. Bruguera is moving ahead with her project despite the fact that she’s been under city arrest and subject to government reprisals after her unauthorized public art performance on December 30, 2014, landed her in jail for three days.

Click here to listen to the full podcast.

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About Fresh Art International & Fresh Talk:

Mission: To inform and inspire a world of followers, Fresh Art International’s team shares conversations, commentary, news, and views about contemporary art.

Launched in October 2011, Fresh Art International is an evolving independent media outlet with a global point of view. Our website is the virtual platform for Fresh Talk: Conversations About Creativity in the 21st Century, our signature audio podcast. The site welcomes up to 3,000 monthly visitors. Averaging more than 9,000 feed hits monthly, we welcome new friends and followers every day: Facebook (3,000+ Likes and Friends) and Twitter (5,000+ Followers).

For Fresh Talk, independent curator Cathy Byrd meets with contemporary artists, curators, designers, architects, composers, writers, filmmakers and other cultural producers. Listen to conversations directly on this website, download episodes, or subscribe to the series on iTunesand Stitcher. Fresh Talk is also accessible through Public Radio Exchange at prx.org.

Alex Kelly’s Residency – Week 3 Blog Post

May 5, 2016May 5, 2016Leave a comment

Trinbagonian artist Alex Kelly shares a third blog post about his Fresh Milk residency, which took place earlier this year in March. Looking at his last night in Barbados, spent liming with some of the people he encountered while in the island, Alex reflects on some of the collective aspects of the Caribbean experience he has noticed, and the fine line between comforting familiarity and complacency around regional issues. Read more below:

It’s the last lime before I leave Barbados. I’m having a chat with my Bahamian flatmate and her friend, a fellow Bahamian who’s lived in Barbados since she was a child. There is a bowl of chips and two bowls of dip on the coffee table in front of us. A fly lands on one of the chips and begins to survey the bowl. We continue having our conversation.

Someone gets up and, paying no attention to the fly, takes a chip out of the bowl, scoops up some dip and returns to their seat to enjoy. The fly has of course exited the conversation at this point, but that just happened, and we all let it. In that moment, I once again felt strangely at home in Barbados.

It’s not that we’re particularly fond of flies in TT, in fact I’m sure that the average person, including myself on another day, would have hastily gotten rid of the fly before it could ever desecrate the surface of a single chip; we love we belly. But there was something so unpretentious and confident about the imagined Caribbean that I learned to appreciate, and while on an average day I feel that I am constantly surrounded by actors playing out a role or as Chang might have said, artists more interested in their title than in the work, in that moment I saw an image of that Caribbean. No one pretended to be offended by the presence of that fly.

I am aware that this is an odd and, perhaps for some, off putting example, but I went to Barbados hoping to find a way that my own Caribbean experience could connect to others. I found it yet again in those moments. In that interaction, I was reminded of all the tension that I experience in my work; a practice that examines a way of life that is deeply troublesome and often dangerous, but one that is full of little subversions that make life so much more beautifully subtle and complex.

The frightening question that I am now comforted by, after having been reminded that it is our breaking of the rules that often makes life so nice, is how does a people manage to keep their beautiful conversation going, with that fly still in the bowl, and yet avoid all of the horrors associated with its kind. I believe that we can find a better way, but I’m not sure that I ever want that way to include fussing over a bowl of imported chips. What doh kill does fatten.

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This residency is supported by Tridium Caribbean Limited

Announcing the Fresh Milk ‘My Time’ Local Resident Artist 2016 – Anisah Wood

April 15, 2016February 27, 2017Leave a comment

Fresh Milk is very pleased to announce Barbadian artist Anisah Wood as the winner of the Fresh Milk ‘My Time’ Local Residency prize for 2016. Congratulations Anisah!

Anisah’s one-month residency runs from Monday June 6 – Friday July 1, 2016. Her work deals predominantly with the Caribbean landscape and the process of colonialism, particularly the desire to lay claim to and control space. During her residency, she will continue her investigations into the perceptions of her immediate environment and the influence of territoriality on how it is negotiated. She will use this engagement with a fresh environment to stimulate new conceptual ideas.

About Anisah Wood:

Anisah Wood is a visual artist based in Barbados. She is in the process of completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Barbados Community College with a major in Studio Art. Her practice involves video art, digital photography, and installation. She has had the privilege of exhibiting the results of her practice at the Punch Creative Arena, The National Arts Council Barbados and at various national arts competitions.

Artist Statement:

My current body of work maps the transformative effects of territoriality on a physical landscape and the society that engages with such a space. These explorations stem from my immediate environment, the Caribbean region. This region has consistently been labelled a paradise, a description that can be considered an impetus for expressions of territoriality. Therefore, through a multidisciplinary approach, this body of work examines the resultant complex relationships between space and society, and between various societal groups in connection to that space. In addition, while seeking to understand the desire to control a delineated space, the work also questions the authority to lay claim to an area. The work can therefore be considered an alternative vision of the space I occupy.