Fresh Milk makes a donation to the Fine Arts Division of Barbados Community College

March 12, 2024Leave a comment

The story of Fresh Milk has always had its origins in the Division of Fine Arts at the Barbados Community College, the only institution offering tertiary level education in visual arts in the island.

Allan Lowe (Coordinator, Graphic Design BFA programme), Katherine Kennedy (Fresh Milk representative & part-time tutor, Fine Arts Division), Zann Taylor-Ward (Head of Fine Arts Division), Ewan Atkinson (Coordinator, Studio Art BFA programme) and Terry Edwards (Studio attendant, Fine Arts Division)

FM’s founding director Annalee Davis taught at the college as a part-time tutor from 2005-2018. Seeing the incredible artwork and creative potential of the emerging artists coming out of the programmes, and the desire to support their continued development were catalysts for the birth of the space, and everything we have worked on in an effort to stimulate the local and regional contemporary arts environment is done in the hopes that artists will have the opportunities, support and motivation to keep their practices going.

Thirteen years in, and with FM’s communications & operations manager Katherine Kennedy also now a part-time tutor in the division, it’s Fresh Milk’s honour to be able to make a donation of some much needed equipment to BCC’s visual arts department as our first major contribution after receiving a grant from the Mellon Foundation this year.

Huge gratitude to the tutors and staff that persevere and go above and beyond for Barbados’ emerging artists 🙏🏽✨🙏🏽🫶🏽 we look forward to continuing to support you as best we can over the next three years.

Philipp Pieroth’s Residency – Week 2 Blog Post

October 31, 2017October 31, 2017Leave a comment

German-born, Johannesburg-based visual artist Philipp Pieroth shares his second blog post about his Fresh Milk residency. This week, Philipp has tried not pressure himself in terms of having fully reconciled work at the end of his residency; rather, he is trying to trust his process and know that clarity will come over time. He also had the opportunity to present his work to students at Barbados Community College, and has started a mural workshop with them on a wall at the school. Read more below:

Philipp Pieroth presenting his work at BCC

In my last blog, I wrote about my process. I still haven’t finished any work – I won’t be finishing the works before I Ieave, which was my original plan. Nobody pushed me to do so, but I that’s the pressure I put on myself. I’ve learned that I don’t work that way; there is a certain organic nature of the process I just can’t deny or can’t force. It needs time, no matter how much work I put in. At times I feel like I am not working enough, even though I am working every day up to 12, 14 hours, even often on weekends. A painting needs to be worked on, sometimes it needs to sit for a while and barely be looked at for weeks, before doing any work on it again. Though I was aware of these facts, the residency has acted as a good reminder.

Philipp presenting to the students at BCC

My paintings look very different from each other. Like they have been made in different periods of my life almost. That was confusing and also unsatisfying, but I have accepted it now. I always try to take a failure as a chance to change my angle on things and turn it into a lesson. So it might turn out not to be a bad thing. I actually prefer – let’s say at a solo show – to see diversity in a body of work. If I see 20 works and the shapes and the colours only change a little bit, I feel bored.

Chelsea and I had the chance to speak to a class at the Barbados Community College. I showed my work and started a workshop with some of the students working on a mural at the school. The work that I saw from them was impressive, and I feel the talk was well received. For the mural, the group came up with an interesting concept, which we need to execute now, after the sketching is done.

Chelsea Odufu’s Residency – Week 2 Vlog

October 24, 2017October 24, 2017Leave a comment

US-based filmmaker of Guyanese and Nigerian descent Chelsea Odufu shares her second vlog post about her international artist residency at Fresh Milk in Barbados. She talks through her experiences navigating the island, learning her way around and in so doing beginning to build familiarity with people and places. She also gave a talk to students at the Barbados Community College (BCC), where she screened her film Ori Inu: In Search of Self. Read more below:

Transoceanic Visual Exchange 2017

October 13, 2017May 11, 2021Leave a comment

Fresh Milk is thrilled to announce that the Caribbean screenings for Transoceanic Visual Exchange (TVE) 2017 will take place in Barbados on select dates between November 3rd – 13th at the Fresh Milk studio and in the Morningside Gallery at Barbados Community College (BCC). Additionally, the online exhibition of works will be available for viewing from November 20th – December 20th. Read more about the project and see the full screening schedule below!

Fresh Milk, in partnership with Footscray Community Arts Centre and the Barbados Community College, is pleased to present the schedule for the 2017 edition of Transoceanic Visual Exchange (TVE), a series of programmes taking place this year between Barbados and Australia.

TVE is a collection of recent films and videos from artists practicing in the Caribbean, Oceania 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, intending to build relations and open up greater pathways of visibility, discourse and knowledge production between the regional art spaces and their communities.

The Caribbean screenings will take place in Barbados on select dates between November 3rd – 13th at the Fresh Milk studio, Walkers Dairy, St. George and in the Morningside Gallery at Barbados Community College (BCC), Howells Road, St. Michael, while the screenings in Australia will take place at the Footscray Community Arts Centre, 45 Moreland Street, Footscray
Victoria on November 18th from 10am – 5pm (see more about this event here).

Additionally, the online exhibition of works will be available for viewing from November 20th – December 20th.

_______________________

Barbados Screening schedules & Participating Artists:

Video Installations

Barbados Community College
Friday Nov. 3rd (10am – 6pm), Saturday Nov. 4th (10am – 3pm) & Monday Nov. 6th (10am – 6pm)

Mohini Chandra (Fiji) – Kikau Street
rc campos (Brazil) – Entangled Landing Points

Friday Nov. 10th (10am – 6pm), Saturday Nov. 11th (10am – 3pm) & Monday Nov. 13th (10am – 6pm)

David Gumbs (St. Martin/Martinique) – Blossoms
Lisa Hilli (Papua New Guinea) – Material Histories 1

__________________

Narrative / Documentary Screenings

The Fresh Milk Art Platform
Sunday Nov. 5th (5pm – 8pm)

Alanna Lockward (Dominican Republic) – ALLEN REPORT: Retracing Transnational African Methodism
Craig Santos Perez (Guam/Hawaii) – Praise Song for Oceania
Alberta Whittle (Barbados) – Recipe for Planters Punch

Sunday Nov. 12th (5pm – 8pm)

Katia Café-Fébrissy (Guadeloupe/Toronto) – ROOT UP/À LA RACINE
Juliette McCawley (Trinidad & Tobago) – One Good Deed
Danielle Rusell (Jamaica) – The Bakers of Oriental Gardens
Lisa Taouma (Samoa) – Adorn

__________________

Experimental Video Art Screenings

The Fresh Milk Art Platform
Wednesday Nov. 8th & Thursday Nov. 9 (6pm – 9pm)

Featuring work by:

Louisa Afoa (Samoa), Black Birds (Fiji/Tokealu/Grenada/Maori), Di-Andre Caprice Davis (Jamaica), Lionel Cruet (Puerto Rico), Tricia Diaz (Trinidad & Tobago), Deborah Jack (St. Maarten/USA), Shivanjani Lal (Fiji), Natalia Mann (Samoan/European), Jodi Minnis (The Bahamas), Sofia Gallisá Muriente (Puerto Rico), Ada M. Patterson (Barbados/UK), Oneika Russell (Jamaica), Shanice Smith (Trinidad & Tobago), Talia Smith (Samoan/Cook Islands/New Zealand), Luis Vasquez La Roche (Venezuela/Trinidad & Tobago) and Joanna Helfer (Scotland), Sandra Vivas (Venezuela/Dominica), Rodell Warner (Trinidad & Tobago), Nick Whittle (Barbados/UK) and Anisah Wood (Barbados)

____________________

Artist Talk with Graham Fagen

April 18, 2017Leave a comment

On Friday, April 21st, 2017 Glasgow-based artist Graham Fagen will be giving an artist talk from 1:00 – 3:00 pm in the Morningside Gallery at the Barbados Community College (BCC). This lunchtime lecture, presented by BCC, Fresh Milk and the British Council, is free and open to the public.

Graham, who is this year’s external examiner for the BFA students at BCC, is spending some time connecting with several cultural institutions in Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago during the month of April. In addition to the artist talk, he will give an experimental drawing workshop to BCC students. He will also meet with artists while in Barbados to learn about their practice.

__________________

About Graham Fagen:

Graham Fagen is one of the most influential artists working in Scotland today. His work mixes media and crosses continents; combining video, performance, photography and sculpture with text, live music and plants. Fagen’s recurring artistic themes, which include flowers, journeys and popular song, are used as attempts to understand the powerful forces that shape our lives.

Graham Fagen studied at The Glasgow School of Art (1984-1988, BA) and the Kent Institute of Art and Design (1989-1990, MA) and is senior lecturer at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design in Dundee.

In 1999 Fagen was invited by the Imperial War Museum, London to work as the Official War Artist for Kosovo, and since then has exhibited widely both in the UK and abroad.

Exhibitions include Golden Age, Institute of Contemporary Art, London (1999), The British Art Show (2000), Zenomap, Scotland + Venice at the 50th Venice Biennale (2003), Bloodshed at the Victoria & Albert Museum and Art of the Garden, Tate Britain (2004), Busan Biennale, South Korea and the Art and Industry Biennial, New Zealand (2004).

In 2011 Fagen was the International Artist in Residence at Artpace, San Antonio, concluding with a solo exhibition, Under Heavy Manners. With theatre director Graham Eatough he created The Making of Us, a performance, installation and film, for Glasgow International 2012.

Recent exhibitions include Cabbages in an Orchard at The Glasgow School of Art (2014); participation in GENERATION: 25 Years of Contemporary Art from Scotland (2015) at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, and In Camera (2015) with Graham Eatough at the Panorama, La Friche, Marseille. The Mighty Scheme with Matt’s Gallery at Dilston Grove and CPG London (2016). Complainte de l’esclave at Galerie de l ‘UQAM, Montreal. (2017).

In 2015 he was selected to represent Scotland at the 56^th Venice Biennale.