Tag: contemporary art

Versia Harris’ Residency – Week 3 Report

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A visit to Workman’s Primary School as a part of my Community Outreach, kick started week three of my residency. I formulated a few questions and went with the intention of having a conversation with the students of class 4 about their thoughts and feelings on Disney films and characters, and also about the prominence of television in their daily lives. It was a first for me, interacting with that number of kids in that setting; I’m not very up to date on what the kids of today are like. However, they were surprisingly pleasant and very cooperative. In between the humor and fun that I had talking to these children, the answers to my questions were a mixture of the expected and unexpected. They gave me some insight into how they saw these films and how much they actually watched TV. Granted, this was only a class of about fifteen students, a number too small to be projected across the generation but they do watch a lot more TV than I did at that age. To them, watching TV was on par, if not more desired, with going outside to play. This relates to the concept of my animation about the push and pull between the physical world and the virtual one.

Later in the week Alicia Alleyne and Shanika Grimes came to the studio, along with my usual company of Katherine Kennedy. Even though each of us was set to our individual tasks and projects, I was glad for the company and the conversations. Sheena Rose and Mark King also came out to see my progress and to give feedback.

Through the laughter, the heated discussions and the dismantling of Annalee Davis’ work – which by the way took four people, two days and a lot of effort – this week also brought me some challenges with my work. Technological malfunctions are inevitable. But the despair of a program breakdown is magnified when it is your primary source of work. Obviously, working with technology for at least a year and half now, I expect it to malfunction or an important program to suddenly stop working, and yet after all this time it doesn’t get any less frustrating, especially when it hinders progress within the short period of time that I have. In any case all is restored and the animation continues.

Still from one of Versia's new animations

Versia Harris’ Residency – Week 2 Report

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Still shot of Versia Harris' work so far

Yay for week two at Fresh Milk! This week was my adventure week. I spent a lot of time outside, either working or exploring with happiness in my every step. And in between the swing set, the creepy but gorgeous gully, electric wires, dead chickens, being followed by cows, the feather finding and hill climbing, I got closer to a concrete idea for the residency. In fact, the back and forth between my investigations on the computer and my explorations outdoors is what solidified it for me. I began to see my computer as not only a passage way to a worldwide network of communication and activity, but also as some sort of cocoon or cage. In other words, it connected me to a virtual world of business and recreational interaction and also the “world” of my creation; my animations. But, at the same time, being connected through the computer meant I was disconnected from my surroundings and the environment I was in. I realized that just as the screen offered so many possibilities of interaction and exploration, so did the physical world. The work that I have been producing during the week is centered on these ideas. The lino block prints that I have been doing within the animation have been yielding results that I am pleased with.

Onward to week three.

FRESH MILK Announces its International Residency Opportunity

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FRESH MILK's International Residency Announcement

On the heels of our recently begun Local Residency Programme for 2013, FRESH MILK is pleased to announce the launch of its International Residency Opportunity, inviting artists worldwide to apply to spend 1-3 months developing their work on the Fresh Milk Platform in Barbados. Expanding the platform to include international creatives allows FRESH MILK to increase its networking capabilities, embracing those working in the English, French, Spanish and Dutch Caribbean as well as those functioning beyond the region, widening our possibilities to build even larger conversations and facilitate more dynamic collaborations. FRESH MILK is delighted to be part of a global community, allied with creative minds on the ground and in the ‘cloud,’ opening up all kinds of amazing possibilities for us to connect through the arts. There are currently openings for residencies in April, May, June, and September, October, November for 2013. Applications can be submitted on an ongoing basis.

The establishment of the international residency included registering with the Res Artis worldwide network of artist residencies, an association of over 400 entities – the largest network of its kind. FRESH MILK is honoured to not only be a part of such a vital association, but also to be one of the only Caribbean organisations listed on their database. View FRESH MILK’s profile on Res Artis here.

For additional information, including costs, accommodation options and the full application procedure, visit our newly added International Artist Residency Opportunity page.

FRESH MILK begins the New Year with Malaika Brooks-Smith-Lowe

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Happy New Year from FRESH MILK!

The Fresh Milk Team would like to wish you all a happy and prosperous 2013, and we look forward to your continued support – we have an exciting year ahead!

Kick-starting our programming this year, we are very pleased to welcome Malaika Brooks-Smith-Lowe to the platform, where she will be our artist in residence between January 10th – February 4th.

Malaika Brooks-Smith-Lowe

Biography

Malaika Brooks-Smith-Lowe is a Grenadian contemporary artist/activist and co-founder of Groundation Grenada Action Collective. Her interdisciplinary approach to social change also includes yoga instruction at Spice Harmony Yoga Studio, which she runs with her family, and agricultural development and education work through The Grenada Goat Dairy Project. Malaika’s artistic inquiry is fueled by her engagement with community along these varying but interlinked pathways. Her photography and film work has been exhibited in the Grenada, Barbados, Trinidad and the United Kingdom. Malaika’s work has also been published in ARC Magazine and Caribbean Beat.

Concept

This short film will paint a portrait of a woman in her late twenties/thirties and her navigation, not so much through her life, but through her thoughts about her life.  It will be an intimate meandering through the disjointed waters of her daily internal dialogue. As Stuart Hall has written, the past “…is always constructed through memory, fantasy, narrative and myth.” The site of this interpretation of our past experiences, and those of the people around us, is always located in the present. So, our moments of “now” are constantly occupied with reinterpretations and reshuffling of our past in relation to what we are encountering anew. This film seeks to explore the complex and ever fluctuating relationships that we have with our experiences and the sense of being/ego that is build around these experiences. What snippets of society/family/relationships run through our daily thoughts? What perceptions of our past, and potential future, blur our experiencing of our present moments? How do we find a balance between a blur and a necessary reflection/planning? Can we clear space and opt for neither, for just a moment of experience without constant interpretation?

Please view the gallery below to see some of Malaika’s work. We look forward to hosting her here at FRESH MILK!

Photographs from the Artist Talk with Anna Christina Lorenzen and Alberta Whittle

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On Saturday December 15th, 2012 our resident artists Anna Christina Lorenzen and Alberta Whittle gave a presentation on both of their individual practices, in addition to their emerging collaborative projects. These new works in progress have seen them playing with the intersections they have found in their own work, as well as responding organically to new environments and surroundings.

Alberta Whittle is a Barbadian artist who returned home to take up a residency at Fresh Milk. Whittle’s work has undertaken some shifts to concentrate with greater intensity her research on hypersexuality in the Barbadian context. Focusing on the fete posters imagery of aspirational life styles and of men and women, she is interested in how these posters become a form of self-portraiture.

Anna Christina Lorenzen is a visual artist from Norway/Germany, who was a founding member of the studio collective, Bergen Atelier Gruppe (BAG). Through the historically and culturally universal medium of drawing, Lorenzen explores the seemingly never-ending cycle of visual representation of the body and the physical representation of the visual image of the body.

Lorenzen and Whittle met in Cape Town earlier in 2012 during a residency program at Greatmore Studios. They uncovered many parallels and meeting points in their individual practices. Whilst in South Africa, they began collaborating in generating performative situations and documenting these actions through photographic stills and video footage.

Thanks to Anna and Alberta for a very engaging talk, and we look forward to seeing how your work continues to evolve!