FRESH MILK XXI

The Fresh Milk Art Platform is pleased to invite you to FRESH MILK XXI, taking place on Wednesday, June 28, 2017 from 6:00pm – 8:30pm at Fresh Milk, Walkers Dairy, St. George. This event will feature our two international resident artists for the month of June, US-based interdisciplinary artist Nyugen Smith and Bahamian writer Letitia Pratt.

During his residency at Fresh Milk, Nyugen has been spending time with people who live and work in Barbados, walking the streets of Bridgetown and performing investigative actions on the grounds of Fresh Milk which include video and photo-based projects. Nyugen will engage visitors with a new performance which considers his research on sites charged with memory, synthesizing his experience and findings with his interests in African cosmology.

After this performance, Letitia will give a reading of some of her previous work and the new pieces which have developed during this residency. Letitia’s research and poems in Barbados have been investigating and questioning the ways in which misogyny manifests in the Bahamas and throughout Caribbean, exploring commonalities and differences through Caribbean history and folklore with emphasis on the tale of the ‘Hag Woman’.

The evening will close with an artist talk and Q&A session with Nyugen about both his work in Barbados and his wider practice.

This event is free and open to the public. For directions to Fresh Milk, visit the ‘About Page‘ of our website.

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About Nyugen Smith:

Nyugen Smith (Photo credit: Janice Marin)

Drawing heavily on his West Indian heritage, Nyugen Smith is committed to raising the consciousness of past and present political struggles through his practice which consists of sculpture, installation, video and performance. He is influenced by the conflation of African cultural practices and the residue of European colonial rule in the region. Responding to the legacy of this particular environment, Nyugen’s work considers imperialist practices of oppression, violence and ideological misnomers. While exposing audiences to concealed narratives that distort reality, he destabilizes constructed frameworks from which this conversation is often held.

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 About Letitia Pratt:

Letitia Pratt

Letitia Pratt recently obtained her Bachelor of Arts in English Language and Literature from the College of the Bahamas. An avid reader of fantastic fiction, most of her writing navigates the existence of black (feminine) bodies within that genre and draws heavily on stories within Bahamian folklore. Her themes often explore the function of art and literature within the Bahamas, and her most recent published work, ‘A Scene (of Two Lovers Contemplating Suicide)‘ discusses the concept of liminality within artwork, and how it’s the ability to occupy multiple spaces creates an active exchange of ideologies.

FRESH MILK XX featured in the Nation Newspaper

Journalist Carol Williams shared a review of our recent public event FRESH MILK XX on page 18 of the Thursday, May 11th 2017 edition of the Nation Newspaper. She focused on the artwork of Barbadian artist Kraig Yearwood, whose work was on display in the studio. FRESH MILK XX also featured a presentation by international curator Pamela Lee and a reading by US-based poet drea brown.

Click here to read the full article!

FRESH MILK XX

The Fresh Milk Art Platform is pleased to invite you to FRESH MILK XX, taking place on Tuesday, May 9th, 2017 from 7-9 pm at Fresh Milk, Walkers Dairy, St. George.

This event will feature a showcase of recent work by Barbadian artist Kraig Yearwood, the 2017 Fresh Milk ‘My Time’ Resident Artist, who was on the platform during the month of March.

Responding to Kraig’s work will be Pamela Lee, an international curator and gallery manager who has worked at the Dominik Mersch Gallery in Sydney, Australia, who will also make a presentation about the connections and potential for collaborations between the areas of art and science.

Finally drea brown, a US-based poet and Fresh Milk’s current resident artist in partnership with the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies at the University of Texas in Austin, will speak about her residency, the context behind her work, and close the evening with a poetry reading.

This event is free and open to the public.

Directions to Fresh Milk can be found on the ‘About Page’ of our website here.

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About Kraig:

Kraig Yearwood is a Barbadian artist and designer. Yearwood studied graphic design at Barbados Community College. He has worked as a freelance graphic designer, and has also worked as lead designer for his self-owned clothing label where he has showcased at some of the region’s biggest fashion weeks. He mainly uses mixed media in his visual art practice and to date he has exhibited in numerous local and international group shows, as well as having 5 solo exhibitions.

Yearwood says his approach to his work is partially intuitive while often informed by minimalist sensibilities, and lists eclectic influences such as introspection, relationships, nature and local and global current affairs for much of his production. Many compositions certainly feature a sense of structure and order that we often associate with graphic design, yet these elements are often broken and interrupted by marks that suggest another layer of idiosyncratic reasoning.

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About Pamela:

Pamela Lee is a skilled arts industry and communications manager with over 5 years of experience working in high profile arts organisations, the not-for-profit sector and corporate companies in Europe and Australia. She has a Master’s of Curating Contemporary Design from Kingston University London in partnership with the Design Museum, London, where she also worked as a curatorial and digital media development assistant. Most recently, Pamela has worked as the gallery manager for the Dominik Mersch Gallery, one of Sydney’s leading international, commercial galleries.

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About drea:

Originally from St.Louis, drea brown recently completed her PhD in African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas in Austin. Her work has appeared in a variety of literary journals most recently Stand Our Ground: Poems for Trayvon Martin and Marissa Alexander and Southern Indiana Review. drea is also the winner of the 2014 Gold Line Press poetry chapbook competition judged by Douglas Kearney. Her chapbook dear girl: a reckoning was released in 2015.

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drea’s residency is supported by the
John L. Warfield Center for
African & African American Studies

Fresh Milk XIX Photos

Fresh Milk invites you to take a look at some photos from our recent public event FRESH MILK XIX, which took place on Monday, June 27, 2016.

The event featured Fijian-Australian artist Torika Bolatagici and Barbadian artist Anisah Wood, who were in residence at Fresh Milk for the month of June. Torika spoke about both her own work and that of a selection of Pacific artists in a talk titled ‘Seeing the Black Pacific‘. Anisah – the winner of the 2016 ‘My Time’ Local Artist Residency – made a presentation about her practice and residency experience, as well engaging in an open discussion with Torika about her work.

Thanks so much to our photographer Dondré Trotman for these images!