MUSINGS FROM THE MILKING PARLOUR STUDIO

Monthly Column by Annalee Davis For BARBADOS TODAY

October 2011

The Curacao Connection

I write this month’s column from where I am currently located at the Instituto Buena Bista, more often referred to as the IBB in Curacao, the Netherlands Antilles.  I was invited to participate in a residency at the IBB after having a series of conversations with one of the co-founders at an exhibition we both participated in a year ago in Martinique at the Fondation Clement.

The IBB is a bottom-up network co-founded and managed by Tirzo Martha and his colleague, David Bade to offer what they call an ‘Orientation course’ over two years to specially selected young Curacao students. To complement their teaching, practicing visual artists are invited throughout the year to the IBB to offer new views, or Buena Bistas, on contemporary art to the students.   Being the only post high school space for young people who are interested in the arts to gather and learn, the IBB is important in Curacao as the location to nurture and harness emerging talent.  

On completion of the ‘Orientation course’, the opportunity is there for the students to receive financial aid to attend art universities in the Netherlands with support offered by the IBB for the application process.  The IBB maintains contact with the students throughout their time in the Netherlands.  At this time the IBB has 16 of their former students at art schools in The Netherlands and 27 students currently enrolled at the centre.  In 2012, the first set of IBB students will graduate from Dutch Academies and the IBB is keen to provide studio spaces for those who return to the island.

The IBB is marking its fifth anniversary and I am here to be a part of these anniversary celebrations through one of their platforms – the International Project Platform.  Two other platforms intersect – an Artist in Residence and an Educational Track – providing students with a dynamic and interactive centre which receives funding from several Dutch entities.  In the past five years the IBB has hosted more than 30 international artists in their residence programme.  These visiting artists support the IBB initiative through teaching, making their own work and donating an artwork which contributes to a growing collection of contemporary art for the IBB.

There is no financial support for the IBB from the local government.  Funding is exclusively from the Netherlands.  Curacao has recently developed semi-autonomous status and is a country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands.  The connection with the Kingdom is strong and the space feels quite different to what many of us in post-Independent Caribbean states experience.  A polyglot society - many people in Curacao including most of the students at the IBB, speak four languages including Papiamentu, Dutch, Spanish and English.

The IBB is physically located at the Caprilles Clinic outside of Willemstad.  A Jewish founded psychiatric clinic, it offers care to patients who suffer with psychiatric disorders, drug and alcohol addiction.  The IBB has a reciprocal relationship with the clinic in so far as there is an open door policy allowing patients to wander into the IBB and pick up a paintbrush or just say hello.  One student has been clean for two years after a thirty-year crack addiction.  She entered IBB via her art therapist who recognized her ability and enrolled her in the programme on a full time basis.  The day I entered IBB, a short-term patient joined my group the same day.  An accountant, she is taking time out from the demands and stresses of contemporary life and using the IBB as a place to reconnect with her creativity.  Having said all this, the IBB is not an art therapy clinic.  It sees itself as a catalyst for young aspiring artists who benefit from being exposed to a wide variety of practitioners from around the world today.  Some well known visiting artists include US based artists Kara Walker and Guillermo Gomez Pena.   Many also come from Holland. 

THE BCC/IBB INTERNATIONAL PROJECT PLATFORM

The project that I am working on here at the IBB includes students from both Barbados and Curacao.  It uses aesthetics as a way to connect artistic communities and opposes the notion of the Caribbean as a region separated by water and language.  I see my role here at the IBB as a facilitative one to engender a connection between students at the Barbados Community College (BCC) and students here at the IBB.   This International Project Platform is the conduit for the connection and the working process is as important as the final result which will take the form of a video and a blog called “Let Me Tell You Something About Who We Are”. 

In our conversations about this project, I have stressed the importance of making connections in a Caribbean context, suggesting that we think about broadening our sense of who we are and make a conscious effort to embrace the entire archipelago as a significant space to work in.

The project is conceptually grounded in Edouard Glissant’s paper titled “The Poetics of Relation” and Nicolas Bourriaud’s “Relational Art Theory” offering a theoretical framework that links contemporary art practice with our understanding of the hybridized creole space we inhabit as individuals and as a region. 

WHO ARE GLISSANT AND BOURRIAUD?

Born in Martinique in 1928, Glissant is recognized as on of the great writers, literary critics and influential thinkers of our time.  On returning to Martinique in the mid-1960’s Glissant’s focus on ‘Relational Aesthetics’ prepared the groundwork for the “Creolite” movement, advanced the concept of ‘Caribbeaness’ and opposed the idea that the Caribbean could be described only in terms of African descent.  Glissant rejected French dominance in the French Caribbean while acknowledging a Caribbean identity informed by ex-slaves, indigenous people, European colonisers, East Indian and Chinese indentured servants.  Glissant believed our identities are constructed through telling, listening and connecting, thereby transforming how we think about who we are and how our societies function.  Glissant speaks about the notion of the rhizome - a root-like system that functions like a network on the ground or in the air.  The project takes this model of the rhizomatic network in the air, facilitated by the world-wide-web, as the mechanism connecting us throughout the Caribbean transforming our community and therefore our identity.

For the purposes of this project, I link Glissant’s concept with the idea of Relational Aesthetics as theorized by Nicolas Bourriaud who acknowledges the internet as the vehicle which opens up and changes mental space.  Bourriaud defines Relational art as “a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space.”

As an example of how connected this Caribbean space is, the students were asked to complete national family trees noting the names of the country where they were born, and where their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents were born.  What emerged demonstrated that this region was the first globalised space in the world.  The two sets of students have the blood of the world running through their veins.  They hail from Curacao, Barbados, China, India, the UK, Panama, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Suriname, and many islands in the Caribbean.  Whether or not we acknowledge it, as Michael Jackson said, we are the world and while some maintain an assertion of the region as a suite of insular nation states, this claim is at odds with the lived reality.

THE BCC AND IBB STUDENT PROJECT

The notion of a divided Caribbean separated by water and language has past its time, and this collaborative project insists that what connects us is stronger than what can possibly separate us.  To commence the exchange, nine BCC students made a video to show the IBB students what their art school environment is like at the College in Barbados.  It is lighthearted and whimsical.  The video was uploaded to the student’s blog at www.rcaacademy.tumblr.com  which also offers a page for each of the students to share their works and ideas using image and text.

I arrived at the IBB and shared the BCC video and blog as a way to introduce the project idea and work with the Curacao students to facilitate the second part of the project.  Their job is the same.  To create a video that is offered as a gift to the BCC students that tells them something about who they are.  Likewise, this video will be posted to a dedicated IBB blog complemented by each student showcasing an individual page showcasing examples of their works.

On the third day of my IBB residency, I scheduled a virtual class using skype to have our first interactive session and introduce students in Barbados and Curacao to each other.  The students were very excited to be in the same space and to meet each other.  The energy was electric.  Students had to negotiate the space and determine how to present themselves and interact with each other. 

“Let Me Tell You Something About Who We Are” asks us to rethink the human Caribbean narrative.  It reinforces connection and builds community through a connective aesthetics as a socially engaged practice.  Making art becomes an opening for human exchange.  The gesture of making the video and the blog becomes an encounter which collapses the distance and opens a dialogue that could go on and on.

WHAT’S NEXT?

This project opens up the possibility of knowledge, connection, collaboration and dialogue with the intention of student/tutor exchanges happening between the BCC and the IBB.   On November 3rd here at the IBB in Curacao, the BCC students video and blog will be projected alongside their IBB counterparts’ project for their fifth anniversary event; and again on November 19th, the students’ video projects will be shared on the FRESH MILK platform in Barbados as part of a broader series of conversations happening there.  For more information on that event go to www.freshmilkbarbados.wordpress.com

September 2011

What does Barbados need to create a more dynamic cultural arena? Some thoughts in response to the recent Budget Speech.

                           
There’s been lots of chat about the expansion of the cultural industries in Barbados.  The Honourable Minister Christopher Sinckler in the 2011 Budget Speech said “that the creative economy ought to be one of the pillars on which our future economic growth must be premised”, The Honourable Minister went on to say that we should move from “being a net importer to becoming a net exporter of cultural services to the World”.   To become a net exporter, the government will provide a facility for the borrowing of fifty million dollars to promote, market and distribute the efforts of artists.  He also said that the Chinese are keen to develop a home in Barbados for the performing arts.  (One can only hope that Barbados will not make the same mistakes that were made in Trinidad re the controversial Chinese built National Academy for the Performing Arts (NAPA) - about which a prominent Trinidadian dancer said, re the quality of the dance floor, “you could snap a toe” while Mas Man, Peter Minshall said it looked like copulating caterpillars.)

NAPA, Port of Spain, Trinidad

Trinidadian journalist and blogger, Andre Bagoo wrote of the many technical blunders in the NAPA building and said that the estimated budget of TT$500 million might need to be augmented with an additional TT$80 million dollars to correct the structural flaws. Trinidadians want to know why their government spent so much money without consulting stakeholders on the ground about what they actually need.

I was reminded of this Trini controversy when Bajans recently started to question the wisdom in building a Caribbean Wax Museum at Pelican Village to showcase full sized distinguished Caribbean persons in wax.  The wax museum idea made me think about the students who graduate with Bachelor of Fine Art degrees from the Barbados Community College, and who wonder about post-graduation sustainability – both intellectually and economically.  They wonder what infrastructure exists in the larger society to make room for artists who want to show cutting edge work and engage critically with the wider national and regional society and by extension, the world.  The question really is about sustainability.

Art Gallery, Morningside, Barbados Community College, 2011. Photo by Corrie Scott

While the whole world is discussing sustainability we too in the Caribbean need to speak about how cultural practice can be sustainable and think carefully about the kinds of policies we craft.  For example, do our ministers who formulate policies about culture, engage with culture?  Do they have an art collection, attend theatre, read Caribbean literature?  Do they know what they are talking about in relation to the economics of culture? Do our Ministers understand the cultural industries…do the decision makers know how to shape a dynamic cultural environment?  How many people in the cultural industries are making a comfortable living in Barbados today?  What will a wax museum and a performing hall do to expand the critical space and to increase sustainability for the practitioners? How can we plan for the expansion of an industry that we don’t understand?  And how can we become a net exporter of culture globally when we don’t even have a sustainable industry locally, far less regionally and globally?

The Honourable Minister Christopher Sinckler

We cannot even get CARIFESTA right!

An extensive strategic plan titled “Reinventing CARIFESTA” was prepared for the CARICOM taskforce on CARIFESTA in 2004.  It was suggested that CARIFESTA was ripe for change and needed to become a more competitive festival.  Recommended changes have not been implemented and the report is probably collecting dust on some CARICOM shelf in Georgetown.  Why solicit the research in the first place if there is no intention to use it?

I attended CARIFESTA X in Guyana in 2008 and witnessed Nobel Laureate, Derek Walcott engage in a heated exchange with the President of Guyana about the futility of CARIFESTA and the disgraceful ways in which Caribbean governments treat their artists most of the time and that it was unacceptable for the state to pretend to support art at a regional festival for one month every several years and then completely abandon their artists the rest of the time.  Why, he asked, should our actors and actresses have to wait tables in restaurants for two years and then participate in a regional arts festival so that Caribbean governments can feel they are doing something great for culture every couple of years?

Cover of recently published Art In The Caribbean – An Introduction.

So what do we need?
It’s not like we don’t have a history.  We have a history.  I recently read the publication, “Art in the Caribbean – An Introduction” by Anne Walmsley and Stanley Greaves (2010 New Beacon Books, UK) which offers a useful time line highlighting notable art activity across the entire region from the seventeenth century – showing the art history in the Caribbean.  In relation to Barbados some of the salient moments include the following: in 1948 Golde White set up the Barbados Arts and Crafts Council; in 1933 the Barbados Museum and Historical Society opened; in 1949, the Barbados Museum Art Gallery opened with Neville Connell as curator; in 1965, the Pelican Art Gallery was opened by the Barbados Arts Council, in 1977 the BCC opened a Division of Fine Arts and a few years later, in 1977, DePam was founded.  Barbados hosted CARIFESTA in 1981 and the NCF was born in 1983 which then opened the Queens Park Gallery two years later in 1985.  Representing Artists was formed in 1992, the Art Foundry in 1997, Zemicon Gallery opened in 1999 and the EBCCI in 2006.  So there’s been institutional activity, yet many of them no longer exist and the ones that do, don’t have the capacity to take the visual arts where it needs to go.

Opening of Tonya Wiles’ exhibition at Zemicon Gallery, Barbados

In addition to the above list, many international exhibitions have been organised, often outside of the region, curated by people also from outside of the Caribbean.  The exceptions to this rule were some of the first regional shows including the Biennial of Caribbean and Central America in the Dominican Republic at the Museo de Arte Moderno in 1992, 1994 and 1996 – which then became a Triennial in 2010; Carib Art which happened in Curacao in 1994 and Lips, Sticks and Marks at the Art Foundry in Barbados and in Trinidad at CCA7 in 1998.  These were followed by a suite of externally driven exercises such as Karibische Kunst Heute, Kassel, Germany, 1994; Caribbean Visions, USA and Exclusion, Fragmentation and Paradise – The Insular Caribbean, Madrid, Spain - both in 1998; Identities – Artists of Latin America and the Caribbean, France, Mastering the Millennium: Art of the Americas, Argentina and Washington DC in the USA, ARTE di nos e ta, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, all in 2002; Caribbean Realities II – Roots and Routes, South Carolina, USA, 2003; Infinite Island – Contemporary Caribbean Art, Brooklyn Museum, NYC, 2008; Global Caribbean, Miami, USA, Sete, France and Puerto Rico, 2010/2011; Rockstone and Bootheel – Contemporary West Indian Art, at Real Art Ways in Hartford, Connecticut, USA and Wrestling with the Image, Washington DC, USA, 2011, among others.

Some of the difficulties with this amount of external activity is that (i) the most current work being produced by Caribbean practitioners is rarely seen in the region, creating a drag effect, a chasm if you will, between the cultural producers who continue to produce, often for an international audience, and their local audience who are ignorant of that production (ii) we don’t control how we are seen, read, and understood in the international arena, - and it’s not always done on our terms (iii) the local space is often not expanded as a result of these external activities – long term relationships are not born out of them.

Externally driven approaches in relation to the region are nothing new.  Conversations about the Caribbean have been taking place outside of the Caribbean for centuries.  We came into being because Europe chose to ‘born us’ and as Lloyd Best wrote, we are the first place where the economy preceded the society….so if things seem a little upside down, it’s because they are.

My concern is, how can we as post-independent states, ie. as owners of this region; shape and nurture dynamic centres of cultural activity nationally and throughout the archipelago in sustainable ways.

Rockstone and Bootheel catalogue cover designed by Richard Mark Rawlins

To my mind, artist led initiatives have been blazing the trail and allowing us to know ourselves better, bonding via the internet, erasing the boundaries in its wake.  We saw the birth of several platforms that evolved (i) in direct response to the lack of properly functioning formal national structures (ii) out of a need to mitigate isolation and (iii) to build bonds across linguistic divides in the region and across the ponds to a wider Caribbean that exists in increasingly substantial numbers in the cities of North America, the UK and Europe.  The artist led initiatives that I am aware of include the Image Factory in Belize (1990’s), and in the noughties, Popup Studios and The Hub in the Bahamas, the Ghetto Biennial in Haiti, Headphunk in St. Lucia, Groundation in Grenada, Alice Yard in Trinidad, Tembe Art Studio in Suriname, Representing Artists (RA in 1992) and more recently, Projects and Space and FRESH MILK in Barbados.

Tembe Art Studio, Moengo, Suriname

The reason these spaces matter is because they shape a more dynamic environment, they facilitate a greater awareness of who we are and they build a critical environment.  Even though they are doing important work, there are still a lot of blanks to be filled in and the informal sector cannot address all of our needs on their own steam, such as turning us into net exporters of culture to the world.  Major Caribbean writers have been successful because they left the region and moved to a country where the infrastructure was in place to support their craft including publishers, editors, critics, bookshops and readers – a complete functional environment that allows them to live off of their writing.  We cannot export our cultural products when none of the architectural framework is in place to allow us to be viable on a local level first and when our cultural products don’t have an established value in the global arena.

So the question to be asked at this moment, or the conversation to be had, before we build the wax museum and the big Chinese building on Spring Garden is, what do the arts need in Barbados to flourish?  How can we build an environment that will nurture a culturally dynamic space and how can artists become sustainable?  If I cannot put food on my table and pay my bills, I cannot afford to make my art or craft, write my book, sing my song or act in my play.  This is a wonderful moment in the region, there is a lot of exciting work being made.  But in many ways, we are still at step one when it comes to the required architectural support and cannot, as the Trini dancer said, afford to ‘break a toe” when we still learning how to walk.  So tread carefully, Ministers.

August 2011

The Launch of FRESH MILK – an artist led initiative in Barbados

Photos Credit – Dondre Trotman   “The FRESH MILK platform”

On August 13th at the Milking Parlour Studio located in St. George, FRESH MILK, (http://freshmilkbarbados.wordpress.com/) an artist led initiative offering an informal platform for exchanges among contemporary practitioners, writers and makers; was launched.  The inaugural event offered a rich programme including an artists’ talk, an exhibition and a screening of sixteen video shorts from around the region.  The focus of the FRESH MILK event was the launching of ARC III, a quarterly Caribbean art and culture print magazine published out of St. Vincent and the Grenadines by Holly Bynoe and Nadia Huggins.  (www.arcthemagazine.com)

But first, a bit of background - what is FRESH MILK?

The idea for FRESH MILK has developed over years of conversations with other practicing artists around the need for artistic engagement amongst contemporary practitioners living and working in Barbados who are concerned with a contemporary Caribbean space – which maybe in Bridgetown, Toronto, Port of Spain or East London.  My interest in founding FRESH MILK was renewed after having returned to teaching in the art department at BCC after a five year hiatus and realizing (again) that students with BFA degrees had no where to go once they graduated to share their ideas, be mentored or become part of a creative community that acknowledges their practice.

FRESH MILK’s aim is to support interactions across disciplines and contribute to an increasingly rich discourse surrounding creative production within the informal networks of the Caribbean.  Its seasonal programming will offer events in the Wet Season and the Dry Season in its commitment to bring people and ideas together.  This venture is connected in spirit to the increasingly rich informal artist-led networks spawning from the Bahamas in the North to Suriname in the South.  

FRESH MILK is located in the Southern Caribbean, a region often referred to as a hybridized space, well known for its capacity to fuse various elements and remake itself over and over again.  In this tradition, FRESH MILK appears to be a singular space – a simple wooden deck used as a private eating area for a family but which on occasion transforms into a platform for ideas – bridging the divide between private and public, disciplines or territories; transformable into a gathering space for contemporary creatives who are thirsty to debate ideas and share works.

The humble FRESH MILK space straddles my residence with my working studio and gallery.  It is literally a wooden deck – a platform if you will, that connects my home with the place where I think, write, and make things; becoming a point of connection between living and working environments as well as between myself and others.

THE EVENT THAT LAUNCHED FRESH MILK

The evening’s proceedings began with my conversing with Holly and Nadia about the birth of ARC – a delicious magazine which “offers insight into current creative industries, while bridging the gap between established and emerging artists.”   The founders spoke to their interest in creating something beautiful and worthwhile to showcase the work coming out of the region and also about their need to develop a collaborative project to mitigate isolation – especially for Holly who was returning to quiet Bequia from energetic NYC.  Their interest was to honour creative practitioners and provide a space for people to come together.  The founders acknowledged that embarking on the ARC project was a huge leap of faith.  Now into preparing the fourth issue, they feel as though they are being understood in the Caribbean and that their jump of faith has resulted in being ‘caught’ as manifested by the encouraging support they have received throughout the region.  Holly closed by speaking about our need to form a united front, to think about the power of coming together and the need to harness this energy right now and acknowledge the groundswell taking place.

Photo Credit – Dondre Trotman.  From left to right – Holly Bynoe and Nadia Huggins, ARC Founders in conversation with Annalee Davis, FRESH MILK Founder - on the platform.”

The second component of the launch included Project and Space, founded by Barbadian artist, Sheena Rose.  This initiative was also born out of a need to mitigate isolation and to develop collaborative projects with others by using both her private studio space and public venues for monthly meetings with younger practitioners.  Having just returned from a three-month residency at the Tembe Art Studio in Suriname where she felt isolated at the programme’s deeply rural location, she felt surprised on returning to Barbados that the isolation was ever present here as well and decided to do something about it.  Sheena thought that the separate circles of artists, writers and filmmakers should come together “and make one big circle.”  Project and Space participated in the Fresh Milk launch by co-curating a small exhibition with ARC, to showcase the works of five Barbadian artists working in photography, mixed media, sculpture and painting.  This collaborative action was in keeping with ARC’s intention to inspire and give voice to a new generation of emerging artists, and provided the opportunity for the audience to see some of the new work evolving while alleviating the isolation many practitioners experience.

Photo Credit – Dondre Trotman.  Sheena Rose, Project and Space Founder with Natalie McGuire, Art Historian

May 2011

Come Out Tings – Barbados Community College’s BFA Studio Arts 2011 Portfolio Exhibition

On May 5th, nine Studio Arts BFA students celebrated the opening of their exhibition at the Morningside Gallery at the BCC. Senior Tutor, Allison Thompson noted in her message in the catalogue, “As a centre of learning that focuses on both Visual and Performing arts, the Division nurtures, develops and showcases the future of cultural production in the region.” 

I am interested in how we get to the “future of cultural production in the region.”  The future for art graduates anywhere in the world is challenging and in the Caribbean it is even more so. Many BCC graduates spend more time decorating windows in retail outlets, making jewelry or teaching at primary or secondary school rather than making art.  Very few get signed onto a gallery, produce work full time, exhibit locally, regionally and internationally, and make a living off the sale of their works? This begs the question, what happens after the lights are turned off at Portfolio 2011

The Principal’s catalogue message gives much food for thought.  Dr. Best states that there is “currently much emphasis on the development of the cultural industries in Barbados” and “due to the dedication of students and staff in the various programmes that the quality of visual and performing arts in Barbados has improved in immeasurable terms to the point where these are recognized as fields in which careers may be built.” Do we even know how art careers are built?  There are persons (consultants, advisors, technocrats, experts, directors etc) who build their careers around the arts in this country, but it’s not the artists. 

Let’s begin with the BCC programme – the engine that shapes the young artists. I asked Ms. Thompson what the programme lacks.  She said “we need funds for the day-to-day running of the programme and maintenance of the physical plant.  The dance programme is located off campus.  The Performance Hall needs major repairs but has always been completely inadequate. We need a serious performance hall that can seat a minimum of 200 people. We rent tents and have people sit outside in the sun and rain to watch our performances.  We have to fight for chemicals for printmaking and photography.  We don't have enough cameras.  We should have internet access in our classrooms. We need more classrooms.”

As someone who has recently started back teaching at the College, I am also aware that the library is not up to par.

In terms of the emphasis on the development of the cultural industries, the reality on the ground is that we are a ‘developed’ nation without a National Gallery of Art and the cultural industries legislation is yet to be passed. There is nowhere for artists to display experimental, unconventional works that push the boundaries of artistic practice. 

Does the BCC, for example, have a collection of art, based on the regular acquisition of work from their graduating students?  How do we measure growth in the cultural industries?  Where is this immeasurable improvement that the Principal makes reference to? 

Dr. Best suggests that the Portfolio ‘is arguably the most important exhibition and provides the base for the initial exposure and growth in confidence for graduates.”  The five-year journey for the art students is undeniably important in terms of their own personal growth and development.  That is clear.  My concern is what happens next. Where do these students go once they leave the nest of BCC?

Dr. Best goes onto to write that ‘as more emphasis is placed on the development of the cultural industries we would likely see the names of the exhibitors in Portfolio 2011 featured because these students and their tutors will drive the growth of the industries.” The BCC is training artists and ushering them into the society – but does that mean that the cultural industry is growing in the way that these students or professional artists need? Which of the readers of this article have come or will come out to the see the show and when is the last time any of you bought a work of art?  Without visibility and without sales, there is no awareness of the production, no insight into the creative research being advanced by the practitioners and no growth – intellectually or economically.

All throughout the Anglophone Caribbean, the only oxygen keeping the visual arts alive, comes from the informal networks - the non-funded, independent artists and collectives, who at great personal costs, keep on keeping on.  Which leads to a positive note -  at the Portfolio 2011 opening, the Lesley’s Legacy Foundation – an informal initiative, gave the inaugural cash award of $500.00 to Ireka Jelani, the BFA student with the highest GPA.  The Division supports this award by offering the graduate the opportunity to hold a solo exhibition in the Morningside Gallery in the next 12-24 months. I challenge the BCC to contribute to this support and to the growth of the cultural industry by initiating the college’s own art collection by acquiring works every year from the Portfolio.  This will expand awareness of the cultural industry, contribute to an enriched cultural space and economic growth; and by extension, sustainable livelihoods for cultural producers.

Come Out Tings - Portfolio 2011 runs until Monday May 16th daily from 9am – 8pm.  Come out and see the show. Students are on hand to give you a tour. Purchase a catalogue for $5.00 which helps cover the costs of producing and printing the catalogue.  Acquire a work of art from the students – the 10% commission goes to running the Gallery.  Proceeds from the raffle of Ras Akyem-i’s limited edition lithograph go to the Creation Foundation which hopes to establish a scholarship for Graduate Studies in Art for graduates of BCC.

For more on the participating artists and their works please visit the students’ blog on www.comeouttings.tumblr.com

Photo credits – I gratefully acknowledge Corrie Scott who has kindly allowed me to use her photos of Come Out Tings. http://www.corriescott.net

Melissa Mings

April 2011

What is contemporary art?

A reader of my last article expressed confusion over the term contemporary art. She wondered how it was that Joscelyn Gardner, (www.joscelyngardner.com) could be considered a contemporary artist even though she is working within the old tradition of lithography using stone.

The use of the word ‘contemporary’ is confusing because it can suggest that all art made now is contemporary art. But this is not the case. The term ‘contemporary art’ has become a catch all phrase suggesting that there aren’t other movements happening and that all work produced conforms to some commonly understood manifesto. The reality is more layered and the term ‘contemporary art’ both does and does not make things clear.

So what’s considered contemporary art?

I schooled in the USA in the eighties. Although the work being produced at that time falls into what we still call ‘contemporary art’, there were many different kinds of work being produced at that time. I spent weekends traveling mostly to NYC, as well as to Philadelphia, and Washington DC where I saw Appropriation Art, Video Installation Art, Graffiti Art, Postmodern Art, and Institutional Critique among other types of contemporary art. The education I received visiting museums and galleries was supported by interacting with tutors who were very successful as contemporary visual artists, including Martha Rossler, Emma Amos and Leon Golub. In addition we attended the MFA visiting artist class and were exposed to visiting luminaries such as Hans Haacke and Adrian Piper.

Since my return to the Caribbean throughout the nineties and the noughties I have witnessed the advent internationally of Internet Art, Digital Art, New Media Art, Information Art and the rise of the Young British Artists and more recently VJ Art, Videogame Art, Virtual Art and Relational Art, among others.

Does contemporary art include all of the above? Yes. Does it include everything else being produced by all artists, everywhere, at the same time? No. So what’s the difference?

Many museums of contemporary art state that their collections include works made after the second world war. In addition, one of the defining characteristics is that contemporary art refers to works that offer something new in terms of their ideas and/or technical manifestation. In other words, there’s something unexpected and innovative conceptually and/or technically; the work makes us notice something in a fresh way. In response to my reader’s question, contemporary artist Joscelyn Gardner uses the ancient art of stone lithography in a subversive way to explore her identity as a (white) Creole Caribbean woman, with a novel twist to the labour intensive medium she employs as a white woman visually acknowledging the historical toil of black female workers.

Joscelyn Gardner, Mimosapudica (Yabba) Hand coloured Lithograph 2010

Contemporary Art in the Caribbean

There are many people in the Caribbean making artistic things at this particular moment in time, many of which are displayed in scores of art galleries throughout the islands. This often includes watercolours and acrylic or oil paintings that portray the flora, fauna, land and seascapes and portraits of people in ways that may (or may not) stress the technical virtuosity of the practitioner. Buyers of this work may enjoy the technical proficiency and beauty of these pictures. Or, sometimes the images rendered are reminders of a beautiful location and buying this painting allows us to hold the memory in a more tangible way. And yes, it might, on rare occasions, even include a lithograph portraying a riverside scene in a tropical forest.

This is emphatically different from the work contemporary art that I am interested in following and learning more about. It’s work that surprises me when I see it because I have not seen the formula before. Maybe I understand its reflection or its sentiment, not because I am already familiar with the particular image/performance/sound/installation/still or moving image but because it has a curious nature about it which resonates with my own inquiring mind. I respond to this work at a visceral and an intellectual level – the work becomes an experience. And it doesn’t happen often.

When we view the painting of Bottom Bay by English artist, Steve Bonner, those of us who have been to Bottom Bay on the east coast of Barbados, will recognize the rocky coastline and the wide expanse of beach. Some might like this image because it’s familiar or because it evokes a fond memory even though it does not offer a new perspective on our reading of the beach.


http://www.paintingsofthecaribbean.com/
Bottom Bay – Painting by Steve Bonner

Staying with the beach theme, we might view the subversive artwork by Blue Curry, a London based Bahamian artist, which was recently shown at the 6th Liverpool Biennial.



This installation uses an aquamarine coloured, customized cement mixer filled with twenty litres of sun cream. The strong scent of the sun cream elicits memories of a tropical beach and relaxed moments of lying in the sun. On closer examination, we understand that our tropical fantasy has been high-jacked and turned into a humorous even if frightening reflection on a region built as a playground for people from somewhere else, churning out all-inclusive, hedonistic getaways that local Caribbean people work at but don’t leisure in.

Both of these works were made in the same decade - Steven Bonner’s aged representation of a Caribbean seascape was painted in 2009, and Blue Curry’s satirical interpretation of tropical paradise was conceived and manufactured in 2010. Although both art pieces were produced in a similar time about a similar space, they couldn’t be further apart. My sense is that a contemporary art museum might want to acquire only one of these works. Which one do you think that may be?

March 2011

Sustainability and the Visual Arts - Annalee Davis

Is living and working in the Caribbean as a contemporary visual artist a viable aspiration? How is it possible to maintain the integrity of your practice while being economically viable? Although not unfeasible, it’s quite an accomplishment if you can. And although this is a challenge for most contemporary artists all over the world, it is a small wonder that we still have practitioners in the Anglophone Caribbean who continue to make their work despite the difficult terrain. More importantly, why is this the case?

Contemporary visual artists who live in cities where there is an infrastructure to nurture the arts can access networks which make it possible to sustain production, find support in intellectual circles and earn a living. It’s not easy anywhere to function exclusively as a Visual Artist, and more often than not, it’s fiercely competitive. Comparatively, it’s very difficult in the Anglophone Caribbean because we don’t have branded (i) galleries, (ii) dealers, (iii) collectors (iv) prizes (v) fairs (vi) MFA or PhD degree programmes in the Visual Arts (vii) curators (viii) critics (ix) residencies, or (x) auction houses.

There are stamps of approval or markers that denote value in every field. For example, a Mercedes Benz car or Luis Vuitton bag denotes worth. It’s the same in the world of contemporary art. There is recognition, respect and added financial value for your work, if, for example, you’ve won a Guggenheim Grant, the Turner Prize or if your work is in a major private or corporate collection, such as the Charles Saatchi or JPMorgan Chase corporate collection.

Imagine if Rhianna, the global icon as we know her, stayed in Barbados. How successful would she have been? Her name would not be the household word it is today. We have chosen not to develop or support excellence…we are more interested in maintaining a democratic approach towards the arts…Crop Over keeps us happy. But if you’ve won Pic o’de Crop nine times…where do you go next? You’ve hit the glass ceiling.

I draw these references because the readership will be more familiar with Red Plastic Bag and Rhianna than they will be with the world of contemporary visual art…but I want to draw a comparison with the ‘glass ceiling’ problem. The National Cultural Foundation is interested in development – to a certain level – and the Festival experience. But there is no existing state institution with the vision to take the talent any further and put it on the world stage. Many of my colleagues in the region have been building impressive resumes over the past two decades and showing work internationally, but ask them if their work sells?

Dr. Keith Nurse spoke about “Cultural Policy and Cultural Industries” at a forum held on February 25th at UWI, Cave Hill campus. He outlined that even though the world has changed, the Caribbean still functions as though it’s in the industrial era. He gave the example of the sugar industry – the conceptualization and development of which happened in Europe, leaving us to provide the labour. But the world has changed and now, for the first time, we are supposed to develop our concepts and take them to market. This requires a paradigmatic shift for which the region has not been prepared – to manage our own company, on every level, and to go global is a daunting task. The alternative, he suggests, is underdevelopment.

It is not that we lack the raw material, the intelligence, or the ability. We simply have not been coached throughout our history to be anything other than labourers in the agricultural field and more recently how to work in the service industry in hotels. We are not taught to build our own chain of hotels, but to make up the bed in someone else’s hotel chain.

It’s the same in the contemporary visual arts arena. There is endless talent and out put, nourished largely by an active regional informal network. Sadly, the formal institutions function, as Dr. Nurse says, in an outdated way and have not kept abreast of the needs of the practitioners. I have become interested in figuring out what needs to be done to change the landscape. What if a regional entity like the Caribbean Development Bank hired a curator and developed an outstanding regional collection of work? Or corporate Caribbean bodies chose to build collections.

Even the Embassy of the USA has a collection of work by artists from the Caribbean. This is not a new idea. Deutsche Bank began acquiring work since 1978 and has one of the most comprehensive corporate art collections in the world boasting 55,000 photographs, drawings and prints worldwide. The bank’s aim is” to support living artists, benefit local communities and create an energized work environment.” The Deutsche Bank’s mandate is not about acquiring art for investment purposes, “rather, the primary objective is to display quality works that embrace and reflect their time.”

Now that’s refreshing!

End notes
http://www.db.com/

Photo Captions

1. Rhianna on the Red Carpet at the Grammys
2. Red Plastic Bag - Nine time Pic O De Crop Winner
3. Charles Avery - Facets of Infinity. Deutsche Bank Collection, 60 Wall Street, NY

February 2011

This monthly column will look at the practice of contemporary art from the Caribbean and examine issues surrounding the production and projection of the work into a wider arena. When considering the Caribbean, I think not only of the archipelago situated in the belly of the Americas but my mind travels across the Atlantic Ocean to other Caribbean spaces in Miami, Brooklyn, Toronto, Brixton, Amsterdam and further afar – the result of globalisation which began here centuries ago when the world came to shape plantation economies.

The link between the Internet and Artist Led Initiatives

Now, we experience globalization virtually. The internet has opened up worlds of possibilities - significant for visual artists by facilitating the building of artist associations, allowing artists to access opportunities and function independently, and expanding awareness of work from the Caribbean. This virtual gateway has become crucial since the feeble nature of the region’s formal art institutions has given rise to artist led initiatives orchestrated by very active visual artists who are reshaping the face of our art world. Weary of a lack of acknowledgement or the formal institutional support required to take the visual arts into the 21st century, Caribbean practitioners have been renovating from the ground up by making refreshing work with breadth, depth and vitality while inventing constructive critical spaces to buttress their production. Importantly, researchers are increasingly studying and writing about contemporary practice enriching the analysis of the work being produced.

These artist-led initiatives are exposing contemporary art to a wider domain. At this time, several Barbadians are participating in regional and international pursuits, expanding the latitude of contemporary art production nurtured by a south-south circuitry, vitally sustained by the informal networks. For this first entry of Musings, I have chosen to highlight the current projection of Bajan artists.

The Reach of Barbadian Artists

Global Caribbean began in Miami at Art Basel in December 2009 and in March 2010 was supported with the conference “Global Caribbean: Interrogating the Politics of Location in Literature and Culture”. The exhibition was curated by Miami based Haitian artist, Edouard Duval-Carrie. http://theglobalcaribbean.org/ The three-day symposium included artists, writers, curators and academics discussing the Caribbean and its diaspora in relation to political, social and cultural issues. Canadian based, Barbadian, Joscelyn Gardner, (www.joscelyngardner.com) exhibited her work and was a keynote speaker in the symposium. The exhibition then moved to France and is now at the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Puerto Rico. Joscelyn also has a solo exhibition at Adhoc Galleria in Spain, called “Tending to an “unspeakable” past”. She recently collaborated on the Art Connections Residency Programme that brought together emerging Canadian and Barbadian artists who worked in Barbados throughout January. Noteworthy, her print work was included in British author, Richard Noyce’s newly published book, “Critical Mass: Printmaking Beyond the Edge”.

Along with Gardner, three other Barbadian artists are currently showing work in an exhibition which opened in late January at the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington DC and includes works by Ewan Atkinson,(www.ewanatkinson.com) Tonya Wiles and Sheena Rose. Curated by Trinidad based visual artist and writer, Christopher Cozier, and art historian, Tatiana Flores; “Wrestling with the Image” exposes pieces by artists from twelve Caribbean countries. The exhibition catalogue can be downloaded here at: www.artzpub.com/

Shortly after “Wrestling” opened, Sheena Rose http://sroseart.tumblr.com/ travelled to Suriname to start her three-month residency at the Tembe Art Studio to work alongside two other artists from New York and The Netherlands. Brainchild of Surinamese artist Marcel Pinas, the residency is part of his recently founded Kibii Foundation which includes an art park and art education centre housed in an old hospital building. Tembe Art Studio advances the use of art and culture to positively influence the life and future of the local Maroon people. Resident artists are required to build an installation for the park situated in the rural town, Moengo. Sheena’s is a billboard project inspired by how local stores paint items for sale on the shop walls. An article on Sheena’s work has been included in the current, inaugural issue of ARC – a quarterly Caribbean Art and Culture print and e-magazine, published by artists Holly Bynoe (St. Vincent/New York) and Nadia Huggins (St. Vincent/St. Lucia). ARC was recently launched in New York, St. Lucia and St. Vincent and will soon become available in Barbados. www.arcthemag azine.com

The south-south web that has shaped the informal artist network continues to be successful because it has a long-term vision based on solid, local foundations of inter-personal relationships among many practitioners. These are dynamic times. Stay tuned.

Annalee Davis is a visual artist who lives and works in Barbados.

Photo Captions

1. Joscelyn Gardner , Marcel Pinas (Suriname) & Rodell Warner (Trinidad) - Wrestling with the Image, (Photographer – Nadia Huggins)

2. Joscelyn Gardner – Global Caribbean, Puerto Rico - Image courtesy of the artist.

3. Ewan Atkinson - Wrestling with the Image, (Photographer – Nadia Huggins)

4. Tonya Wiles and Ebony Patterson (Jamaica/USA) Wrestling with the Image (Photographer – Nadia Huggins)

5. Sheena Rose & Pauline Marcelle (Dominica/Austria) - Wrestling with the Image, (Photographer – Nadia Huggins)

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