“Musings from the Milking Parlour Studio” for Barbados Today

October 19, 2011May 19, 2015Leave a comment

Annalee Davis. February 2011

Tonya Wiles and Ebony Patterson (Jamaica/USA) Wrestling with the Image (Photographer – Nadia Huggins)

This monthly column will look at the practice of contemporary art from the Caribbean and examine issues surrounding the production and projection of the work into a wider arena. When considering the Caribbean, I think not only of the archipelago situated in the belly of the Americas but my mind travels across the Atlantic Ocean to other Caribbean spaces in Miami, Brooklyn, Toronto, Brixton, Amsterdam and further afar – the result of globalisation which began here centuries ago when the world came to shape plantation economies.

The link between the Internet and Artist Led Initiatives

Now, we experience globalization virtually. The internet has opened up worlds of possibilities – significant for visual artists by facilitating the building of artist associations, allowing artists to access opportunities and function independently, and expanding awareness of work from the Caribbean. This virtual gateway has become crucial since the feeble nature of the region’s formal art institutions has given rise to artist led initiatives orchestrated by very active visual artists who are reshaping the face of our art world. Weary of a lack of acknowledgement or the formal institutional support required to take the visual arts into the 21^st century, Caribbean practitioners have been renovating from the ground up by making refreshing work with breadth, depth and vitality while inventing constructive critical spaces to buttress their production. Importantly, researchers are increasingly studying and writing about contemporary practice

Sheena Rose & Pauline Marcelle (Dominica/Austria) – Wrestling with the Image (Photographer – Nadia Huggins)

enriching the analysis of the work being produced.

These artist-led initiatives are exposing contemporary art to a wider domain. At this time, several Barbadians are participating in regional and international pursuits, expanding the latitude of contemporary art production nurtured by a south-south circuitry, vitally sustained by the informal networks. For this first entry of Musings, I have chosen to highlight the current projection of Bajan artists.

The Reach of Barbadian Artists

Global Caribbean began in Miami at Art Basel in December 2009 and in March 2010 was supported with the conference “Global Caribbean: Interrogating the Politics of Location in Literature and Culture”. The exhibition was curated by Miami based Haitian artist, Edouard Duval-Carrie. http://theglobalcaribbean.org/about.php The three-day symposium included artists, writers, curators and academics discussing the Caribbean and its diaspora in relation to political, social and cultural issues. Canadian based, Barbadian, Joscelyn Gardner, (www.joscelyngardner.com) exhibited her work and was a keynote speaker in the symposium. The exhibition then moved to France and is now at the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Puerto Rico. Joscelyn also has a solo exhibition at Adhoc Galleria in Spain, called “Tending to an “unspeakable” past”. She recently collaborated on the Art Connections Residency Programme that brought together emerging Canadian and Barbadian artists who worked in Barbados throughout January. Noteworthy, her print work was included in British author, Richard Noyce’s newly published book, “Critical Mass: Printmaking Beyond the Edge”.

Joscelyn Gardner , Marcel Pinas (Suriname) & Rodell Warner (Trinidad) – Wrestling with the Image (Photographer – Nadia Huggins)

Along with Gardner, three other Barbadian artists are currently showing work in an exhibition which opened in late January at the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington DC and includes works by Ewan Atkinson, www.ewanatkinson.com Tonya Wiles and Sheena Rose. Curated by Trinidad based visual artist and writer, Christopher Cozier, and art historian, Tatiana Flores; “Wrestling with the Image” exposes pieces by artists from twelve Caribbean countries. The exhibition catalogue can be downloaded here at: http://www.artzpub.com/content/special-publications/wrestling-image

Shortly after “Wrestling” opened, Sheena Rose http://sroseart.tumblr.com/ travelled to Suriname to start her three-month residency at the Tembe Art Studio to work alongside two other artists from New York and The Netherlands. Brainchild of Surinamese artist Marcel Pinas, the residency is part of his recently founded Kibii Foundation which includes an art park and art education centre housed in an old hospital building. Tembe Art Studio advances the use of art and culture to positively influence the life and future of the local Maroon people. Resident artists are required to build an installation for the park situated in the rural town, Moengo. Sheena’s is a billboard project inspired by how local stores paint items for sale on the shop walls. An article on Sheena’s work has been included in the current, inaugural issue of ARC – a quarterly Caribbean Art and Culture print and e-magazine, published by artists Holly Bynoe (St. Vincent/New York) and Nadia Huggins (St. Vincent/St. Lucia). ARC was recently launched in New York, St. Lucia and St. Vincent and will soon become available in Barbados. http://www .arcthemag azine.com

The south-south web that has shaped the informal artist network continues to be successful because it has along-term vision based on solid, local foundations of inter-personal relationships among many practitioners. These are dynamic times. Stay tuned.

Annalee Davis is a visual artist who lives and works in Barbados.

Joscelyn Gardner – Global Caribbean, Puerto Rico – Image courtesy of the artist

Ewan Atkinson – Wrestling with the Image, (Photographer – Nadia Huggins)

Artists in Residence and Barbados

October 12, 2011June 5, 2015Leave a comment

With the ongoing surge of contemporary art in the region, hosting artists in residence is imperative to the expansion of a new sense of Caribbean Art. This is due to the creative, economic, and social advantages a residency programme offers to both the artists experiencing them and the institution hosting them. So why isn’t there more of an initiative for them in Barbados?A residency program consists of an art institution or informal network inviting an artist to live, create and share in a different environment. There usually is an Open Day showcasing the artist’s work at the close of the residency, depending on the nature of that programme. The notion of having an artist in residence is one that started roughly 100 years ago with artist colonies in the European and American countryside, based around the theory that as a collective artists could expand their creative ideas. It was an exciting time for art then, as style was shifting and the Modern Art movements were emerging. Equally, now is an inspiring time in Caribbean Art, and residency models can only help strengthen the collaborations in the region and shape the future of our artists.

Barbadian based, Cuban artist Leandro Soto has completed a vast number of residencies in his career so far, and is a strong advocate for recreating that atmosphere for other artists through his classes. He described in a recent interview that interacting with new environments and building alliances with other artists from around the world is invaluable to the development of an artist and the venue: “For an artist, being in an art residence is an open window for themes, for materials, to have new friends (to meet other artists), to have new collectors…in the art residence, you see the artist’s work but you also (get to) know the artist, so you have a better picture of who is doing the art, how they are doing the art, what is the connection that this artist has…it’s extremely important.”

: Leandro Soto’s installation during his residency in New Dehli. Photograph compliments http://www.leandrosoto.com

What better way for Barbados to integrate with the Caribbean art world as a whole than to host artists from the region on a regular basis, injecting fresh ideas into the circulation? It could also work on an international level, as seen in the residency programme at Eden Rock in St. Barts. They host various artists from all over the world who contribute to the thriving arts culture, and it has become an important aspect of their tourist industry. So not only is their population exposed to a vast amount of international art, but tourists see it as part of the reason to visit.

Alice Yard in Trinidad had it’s 5th Anniversary this year, which was a national and regional event, attracting creatives from all over the Caribbean. This is no doubt partly due to their extensive practice of hosting artists in residency there, exposing themselves to networks outside of Trinidad while expanding their own critical space.

The advantages of being exposed directly to other art atmospheres can be seen in the ambition of the artists who experienced it. Sheena Rose, Mark King, Joanna Crichlow, Ewan Atkinson, to name a few, have all done residencies and are all active catalysts and participants in the movement of contemporary art in Barbados and will be on the FRESH MILK platform in November to share their residency experiences. Sheena runs a number of events with her group Projects and Spaces, Joanna has been exploring the language of her artwork in her articles. There are no real previous models on the island of the things they are involved with, so the question has to be raised- would they have the motivation or knowledge to carry these things out if they had not been exposed to similar things through their residency experience? Not to mention the encouragement to create more experimental works, exhibit their works outside of the commercial gallery sphere, from gaining support of their work by outside institutions.

Both Sheena and Annalee Davis have also made movements towards hosting artists in residency, such as Sheena’s 24 Hour Residency at her studio as part of Projects and Space and FRESH MILK’s own upcoming weekend event to be held next month when Dominica based, Venezuela born Performance Artist, Sandra Vivas will be in residence to perform and offer a workshop experience in Performance Art. But why does it have to be just the informal networks and individuals striving towards the expansion of the residency community? When Leandro was listing places outside of the Caribbean he had completed residencies at, most of them were programmes tied to schools or Universities. Imagine the wealth of exposure for the institutions and the students if this were to happen on a continuous basis here at the Barbados Community College or the UWI. Currently Popup Studios in the Bahamas, Tembe Art studio in Suriname, the IBB in Curacao, Ateliers ’89 in Aruba and Alice Yard in Trinidad offer Caribbean residency opportunities. One international opportunity for artists to carry out residencies overseas and one which several Caribbean artists have participated is the Triangle Network (http://www.trianglearts.org/), which integrates artists of all backgrounds, enabling them to compare initiatives. However, when the artists return to Barbados, there are no formal institutions to support the experience they gained overseas. And so the number of informal spaces grows, trying to fill the void, sustaining the art community, keeping it from fragmentation.

A thriving creative culture should not be something that scrambles to find a place in a community, it should be a nurtured and prominent aspect of society. Incorporating artist residencies is one of the ways to ensure this.

Natalie McGuire