Fresh Milk welcomes Nyugen Smith and Letitia Pratt to the platform

June 2, 2017Leave a comment

Fresh Milk is excited to welcome US-based interdisciplinary artist Nyugen Smith and Bahamian writer Letitia Pratt to the platform for the month of June, 2017.

Nyugen Smith (Photo credit: Janice Marin)

Letitia Pratt

While in Barbados, Nyugen will be working on a project which contributes to a multi-part installation titled Lavway. (“Lavway” is Trinidadian patois for “le vrai,”or “the truth” in French, and is the name of a form of calypso that reports the truth as seen by the singer or composer.) Lavway will examine the education system in the Caribbean from late nineteenth century to present day with a focus on systematic omission of histories and contributions of people from the African diaspora. His Fresh Milk residency will be spent in part on research and collecting relevant objects, recordings, and texts in relation to this.

Nyugen Smith, Untitled (Boat #1), Found wood, rope, metal, wire, canvas, earth, live plants, brick, inflated latex gloves, 2013

Nyugen Smith, Teacher Don’t Teach Me Nonsense (Installation), Found wood, fabric, metal, Latex, wire, cork, handmade furniture, bone, rope, plastic, paper, rubber, 2015

Nyugen Smith, Afrofewcharizm Foreva in Dis Piece, Collage, 2016

Nyugen Smith, Black Opulence, Collage and screenprint, 2016

Nyugen Smith, Afrofewcharizm In Full Swing Collage, 2016

Letitia intends to use the residency to work on an individual poetic project, Melody of a Lost Woman. This series of twelve narrative poems will focus specifically on Bahamian womanhood and the effects of the patriarchy on the feminine existence within the Bahamas. The piece draws strongly on Moya Bailey’s concept of misogynoir, which refers to the violence that black women endure by the hands of black men. Her work and research in Barbados will question the ways Bahamian misogynoir differs from other patriarchal incarnations, and explore commonalities through Caribbean history and folklore to consider these experiences across the African diaspora.

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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 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.

Open Call: TVE 2017 – Deadline Extended

May 23, 2017June 30, 20171 Comment

Deadline extended until July 20, 2017

Fresh Milk and Footscray Community Arts Centre are pleased to welcome submissions of recent film and video works – screenings, installations, new media and expanded cinema – by contemporary artists, to be included in the second edition of Transoceanic Visual Exchange (TVE), a series of programmes taking place this year between Barbados and Australia. Submitted works must have been completed in the last five years and must be made by artists practicing in the Caribbean, Oceania and their diasporas.

TVE will be a collection of recent artists’ films and videos from each region. However, the final shape and content of the programme will be informed by a community curatorial process, which aims to involve and promote discussion within the wider arts communities of each participating initiative.

Working between the Caribbean, Oceania (Pacific Islands) and their diasporas, TVE aims to negotiate the in-between space of our cultural communities outside of traditional geo-political zones of encounter and trade. TVE intends to build relations and open up greater pathways of visibility, discourse and knowledge production between the regional art spaces and their communities.

Submission Requirements:

Must be work from artists practicing in the Caribbean, Oceania (Pacific Islands) and their diasporas
Must be work that has been completed/made in the last five years.
Can be films of any length (shorts, experimental, features and video artworks)
Can be in any language (films originally produced in regional languages are welcome)
Multiple submissions are welcome
Must be accompanied by a description of the work (500 words max), a bio (200 words max) and detail of any technical requirements i.e. audio, installation, equipment required, preferred setting etc.
Works must be in the form of mp4 files no larger than 10MB, or private Vimeo / Youtube links
Works must not have been submitted to the previous edition of TVE

Deadline for submissions: July 20, 2017

Please send Caribbean submissions to: tveproject.caribbean@gmail.com

Please send Oceania submissions to: tveproject.oceania@gmail.com

For more information on TVE and its first iteration, visit the website transoceanicvisualexchange.com

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About Fresh Milk:

Fresh Milk is an artist-led, non-profit organisation founded in 2011 and based in Barbados. It is a platform which supports excellence in the visual arts through residencies and programmes that provide Caribbean artists with opportunities for development, fostering a thriving art community.

Fresh Milk offers professional support to artists from the Caribbean and further afield and seeks to stimulate critical thinking in contemporary visual art. Its goal is to nurture artists, raise regional awareness about contemporary arts and provide Caribbean artists with opportunities for growth, excellence and success.

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About Footscray Community Arts Centre:

Footscray Community Arts Centre (FCAC) is a community-engaged, contemporary arts centre working with local, regional and international communities.

We collaborate with artists, communities and organisations to build capacity, create opportunities and drive social change. We are the place where important conversations happen: we then action; we cultivate; we deepen.

FRESH MILK XX featured in the Nation Newspaper

May 15, 2017May 15, 2017Leave a comment

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!

MFA Fundraiser in support of Versia Harris

May 11, 2017May 11, 2017Leave a comment

Barbadian artist Versia Harris has been accepted into an MFA program at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, USA, and is having a fundraising sale of limited edition artwork to contribute to some of her costs.

Versia is an incredible artist, and she has volunteered and been an enormous help to Fresh Milk for a number of years – please take a look at a statement by Versia below, and click here or on the following image to see her available work and how you can support her!

Incipience No. 1 (edition of 5), Digital Print, 30″ x 32″

Hi Guys! Welcome to my latest fundraising effort. I’ve been accepted into an MFA program at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, USA; I will start in September this year. Most of the funds for me to go have been accounted for, however, there are some extra costs that I still have to acquire. I am selling these limited edition prints to help. If you are able, please purchase one.. or two.. or all! No, seriously any support you can offer would be so appreciated. Even if you can’t, I hope you still enjoy these on-screen images – I must say, though, that the physical is much better 😉

You can email me at versia.abeda@gmail.com for further details about payment methods and shipping options. All questions are welcome.

Thank you!

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About Versia Harris:

Barbadian artist Versia Harris received her BFA in Studio Art in 2012 and was awarded with The Lesley’s Legacy Foundation Award, an annual prize given to the top graduate. She has participated in seven local and international residencies in Barbados, Vermont, Curacao, Trinidad and Brazil. In 2014, Versia’s work was featured in the IV Moscow International Biennial for Young Art themed ‘A Time for Dreams’ and was subsequently selected to be apart of the follow up exhibition MOMENTUM_InsideOut screening of ‘A Time For Dreams’ in Berlin. Her animation ‘They Say You Can Dream a Thing More Than Once’ was awarded ‘Best New Media Film’ at the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival, 2014 and in 2015 won Best Animation Short in the Barbados Film and Video Association awards. Her first solo show in Barbados was titled “This Quagmire”. She is currently a tutor at Barbados Community College. Versia tackles perceptions of fantasy in contrast to the reality of her invented characters

drea brown’s Residency – Week 2 Blog Post

May 9, 2017May 9, 2017Leave a comment

US-based poet drea brown shares her second blog post about her Fresh Milk residency, which is part of a new partnership between Fresh Milk and the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies at the University of Texas in Austin. This week, despite coming with a plan for her residency, she has found herself responding in unexpected ways to the space, and has been compelled to continue writing about Phillis Wheatley – responding to the gaps in history and giving way to the ‘ghosts’ that haunt her poems. Read more below:

The walk to the studio

I came here with a plan. But, the poems that have come since my arrival are not the poems I intended. Each morning I make my way to the studio listening to leaves murmuring in the early breeze, I sit at a blue desk facing windows wide open to a winding hillside, and the poems come. Sometimes they are unwelcome visitors knocking for entry, sometimes to write them is comfort, but at all times they feel necessary, like work I am continually called to do. They are long—pages and pages of unfurling stanzas, raw and full of secrets, ragged line breaks; they are not the poems I imagined. But poems, like the ghosts that live in this ink, want what they want, and who am I not to oblige.

Phillis Wheatley

Dear reader, Phillis Wheatley will not let me be. I have made peace with this, and realize in some ways to write these poems is to work toward my own healing. The blues of the studio, its tables and doors and corner rocking chair, the blues of Bathsheba in the east, of Accra in the south, they remind me of this. And so I write and read incessantly, at the studio, in my flat, with my feet in the sand near lapping water, as if it is the only way to breathe. Perhaps in this second week, that is what it has been—a way to let go and take in again and again.