‘Let’s Go To The Future Together’ at the Errol Barrow Centre for Creative Imagination

October 28, 2014January 23, 2015Leave a comment

Located at the EBCCI

In September this year Fresh Milk announced a collaborative partnership with the local initiative Adopt A Stop to bring art into the public space, commissioning six young Barbadian artists to produce original artwork for the benches which will pop up around the island from October. ‘Let’s Go to the Future Together’ by Evan Avery, the first of the six artists, has been placed at The Errol Barrow Centre for Creative Imagination (EBCCI). Thank you to Adopt A Stop for partnering with us and to the EBCCI for housing the bench!

The other participating artists will include Matthew Clarke, Versia Harris, Mark King, Simone Padmore and Ronald Williams. This project is an opportunity to create visibility for the work these emerging creatives are doing, allowing the public to encounter and interact with their pieces in everyday life, generating interest and inviting dialogue about their practices.

Let’s Go to the Future Together by Evan Avery, located at the EBCCI

Located at the EBCCI

Evan Avery working on his bench at Fresh Milk

Bench in process

Primed! Bench in process

Evan Avery working on his bench at Fresh Milk

Artist Statement: ‘Let’s go to the Future Together’

I’ve used the bench as a way to talk to the public with colour. Art in the public setting provides a way to strengthen communities, and everyone could use some colour in their lives. Straying away from my character and text driven work, I took a minimalist approach and experimented with polygonal shapes and lines to convey a message of connectivity. The straight lines and juxtaposed angles have a haphazard flow to them, creating interesting movements, wrapping the bench with a mesh of colour.

Biography

Evan Avery

Evan Avery is a young, Barbadian artist; and a graduate of the Barbados Community College, receiving a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine arts. His primary medium is acrylic paint; working with flat, bright colours, he creates compositions with characters ‘the Miniis’ which he uses to represent himself or others, as well as events in his life. He is now in the process of creating a business around his work, transferring his characters and ideas onto clothing and other objects as a means to share the ‘Miniis’ with people all over the world. From September 2013 – March 2014, Evan’s work was exhibited at Casa Tomada, Sao Paulo, in their public art programme ‘A Casa Recebe’.

About Adopt A Stop

The Adopt A Stop project provides socially beneficial advertising in the form of bus shelters, benches and outdoor fitness stations at prime sites around Barbados. They embrace solar lighting, local materials and tropical design in keeping with their goal of environmental sustainability.

Lauren Craig’s Residency- blog post #1

October 23, 2014October 23, 2014Leave a comment

Lauren Craig is a London based multimedia visual artist and Fresh Milk’s current International Residency Artist. During her time on the platform, she will continue her live performance work, ‘Cleanse‘.

Photograph by Lauren Craig

Through ‘Cleanse’, the artist is extending an invitation to the Barbadian public to explore what they no longer need or would like to let go of as well as what they want to keep while exploring the potential for where you want to be. Interactive sessions will examine mental and creative blockages that build up through busy, overworked lifestyles. Because bodies do not discriminate against what information they retain in daily life, Craig says they act as repositories or ‘palettes/palates’ that accumulate everything, becoming overloaded with unnecessary or negative information.

‘Cleanse’ participants will be encouraged to bring objects to their sessions, symbolizing what they want to share. They may also leave objects including drawings, poetry and photography. Participation is not limited to visual artists.‘Cleanse’ will offer a safe environment for participants to engage with Craig.

Sessions will be held at Fresh Milk and are being offered individually or in groups. Appointments for October 28^th are already full but openings are available on October 27^th, 29^th, 30^th and 31^st from 11 am for one-hour sessions.

The group session will take place on Saturday November 1^st between 2 and 4 pm.

Please email the artist at lauren@thinkingflowers.org.uk to make an appointment stating your available dates and preference for group or individual session.

The objects will also be available for viewing by appointment.

For more on Craig’s residency experience, read her first blog post below.

I arrived in to Barbados feeling fluey and pretty much run down with blocked ears and a lack of balance. The sea helped me recuperate and settle in to the warm slow waves of the island’s pace. I started my residency a week later and the first days were filled mostly with words and sounds. The things I heard and how they made me want to speak and write was the strongest impulse. I followed that. It’s come together in the hyperlinked text that I am sharing here, making connections with more of what I am seeing. The poem is inspired by something Annalee said about the stud’s job (on the horse farm where the residency flat is located) being just eating and having sex. The studio is a place of words with a beautiful library where I found Kamau Brathwaite’s Barabajan Poems.

Lauren Craig at Fresh Milk

There are so many other books I would like to tell you about – maybe later. I’m probably working on too many things at once, but what is new there? Here is a piece that came about called Formation.

Lauren Craig at Fresh Milk

I want to come back like that

Slow, Sleep, Stalling
Fresh sounds, smells, sights
Swarking birds, Beetles Bright
Green wings jewelled ceiling

Listen the land orders
Managing organising protecting
Security, mahogany speaks
Ginger pressing belly

Scattered butterflies
Ylang Ylang breeze in
My throat, nostrils flare
Pots on the banks

Green Gecko Greeting
Black Birds Vibrating feathers
Wind chiming souls
Elephants ears bow
Climb

Lauren Craig Barbados 2014

St. Boniface New Murals

October 9, 2014October 11, 2014Leave a comment

Evan Avery, Versia Harris, Tristan Alleyne and Rhea Small

Fresh Milk recently completed its community outreach mural project at the St. Boniface Pre-School in Sion, Hill St. James. Thanks to Evan Avery for sharing his ‘miniis’ and also to Tristan Alleyne, Versia Harris and Rhea Small for working with us on this project.

The Principal, Mrs. Miller is doing a wonderful job stimulating the pre-schoolers in visual ways throughout the classrooms and we were happy to contribute to her vision.

St. Boniface Mural project

Design Neil deGrasse Tyson as a Superhero!

October 7, 2014Leave a comment

One of the most recognizable American scientists of the modern age, Neil deGrasse Tyson, has challenged and inspired people all over the world through his work as an astrophysicist, author, and science communicator. Since he has made so many invaluable contributions to science, many think of him as the SUPERSTAR of science!

In the spirit of this year’s AnimeKon, the U.S. Embassy to Barbados, the Eastern Caribbean, the OECS invites you to create eye-catching, original artwork reimagining Neil deGrasse Tyson as a SUPERHERO for a chance to win roundtrip airfare for two to Chicago, Illinois and tickets for two to attend the 2015 Anime Midwest convention July 3-5 2015 at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare & Convention Center.

The winner will be announced on November 20, 2014 during Neil deGrasse Tyson’s first public event in Barbados, and admission is free!

Review the competition rules here and submit your entry by November 6th.

New Books in the CLRR!

October 3, 2014Leave a comment

We are pleased to announce that the full suite of books donated to the Colleen Lewis Reading Room by Jessica Bensley, Clyde Cave, Winston Edghill and Leslie Taylor have all arrived.

Included in the delicious suite are the following:

Caribbean Political Thought: (i) Theories of the Post-Colonial State and (ii) the Colonial State to Caribbean Internationalisms and, (iii) Caribbean Cultural Thought: From Plantation to Diaspora – edited by Aaron Kamugisha and Yanique Hume – both lecturers in Cultural Studies at the University of the West Indies.

Global Studies: Mapping Contemporary Art and Culture edited by Hans Belting, Jacob Birken, Andrea Buddensieg and Peter Wiebel. This is the third volume in a series that is part of the “GAM – Global Art and the Museum” project, providing an overview of the institutional and ideological landscape of contemporary art and culture in a global context.

The Image of the Black in Western Art – The Twentieth Century: The Impact of Africa. V Part 1, edited by David Bindman and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. looks at the history of the representation of people of African descent.