November 2012 Arts Events Magazine Barbados by Corrie Scott

BARBADOS ARTS EVENTS

NOVEMBER 2012

Welcome to Barbados Monthly Arts Events This is a completely free and unsponsored magazine created out of the need to inform so that we can get to exhibitions, artist talks, workshops and more, rather than hearing about events after they have taken place. I encourage anyone with a creative event or a new piece of work to get in contact with me at corriescott@gmail.com and I will add a free page for you. Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s get the arts out there! Please, pass this magazine on to others and so help the creative side of Barbados get all the exposure possible. Corrie

Cover Art by Corrie Scott

All information correct at time of publishing. Please phone or email relevant galleries to confirm dates of events as they may be subject to change. Updates as news of arts events comes in each month may be viewed on http://corriescott.net/page28.htm Published by Corrie Scott

corriescott@gmail.com

www.corriescott.net

The Arts Directory Barbados http://issuu.com/corriescott/docs/art_directory_barbados_dec_2011/1

ARTS DIRECTORY BARBADOS How It Happened I have, for so many years, wanted to create a free online reference book where anyone, in any part of the world, may access the creative people in Barbados. I could not do this on my own and Kathy Yearwood heard of my idea, offered to partner with me and I happily agreed. What started out in March as a small book of what I thought might be a maximum of one hundred and fifty pages turned into a tome of over three hundred pages. A mixture of excitement and fear at what we had taken on. And here we are in December 2011 with a book showing off the talents in Barbados. So exciting. The eight month adventure began. Finding artists, photographing them and their work. From March 2011 to October 2011 Kathy and I collated the artwork, the bios and statements and travelled around the island garnering images and information. Large collections of artwork in homes. Convincing people who thought they were too old and forgotten and watching them smile as their work was photographed and having them talk about themselves so that we could create a bio for them. Literally slipping down the hills of clay at Chalky Mount to see an original kiln and spend the day with the potters. Temple Yard with the Rastafarian community where they are blessed with talent, especially carving, and then coming away with gifts of pineapples and avocados. Photographing in the rain with an umbrella in one hand and a camera in the other to get the right angles. Going to openings and craft shows and talking to many. Coming to my home, going to Kathy’s, and going wherever was needed. Meeting the different personalities in so many locations as I photographed many of them for their portrait photo for the book. Remembering some who have left us. A labour of love, learning and fun. The thank you part as I could not have done this on my own. Norma Springer who encouraged me to “take the book and run with it”. Kathy Yearwood who offered to partner with me collating and to create the book for artists in Barbados. Alison Chapman-Andrews for helping Kathy and I proof read. Amazing how much you miss no matter how many times we went over it. Sue Bain for offering her professional opinion and suggestions as a copy editor. Peter Boos for all the encouragement. Laura Lin Hutchinson for her introduction. Finally, the most important people, the creative souls who put their trust in Kathy and I to show them off to their best. I hope we have done this. Corrie Dec 7th 2011

RAS AKYEM

TRIBUTE TO RAS AKYEM with ‘A TERRIBLE BEAUTY’ PORTRAIT OF RAS AKYEM – ‘ART ANIMAL’ By L L HUTCHINSON (published in MACO magazine)

RAS AKYEM

“A TERRIBLE BEAUTY” PORTRAIT OF RAS AKYEM – “ART ANIMAL”. BY L L HUTCHINSON (published in MACO magazine) One thing the brilliant, revolutionary Barbadian artist Ras Akyem makes clear is that he rarely distinguishes himself from his artwork. His art, from which he feeds, breathes and lives, expressed from the very core of his being, is filled with paradoxes of simplification and dark complexity. It is sacred and sensual and sacrilegious, it blows the mind and pummels the senses, seducing you with the pain and pleasure of the colour palette while beseeching you to shift your levels of consciousness and perception. You may or may not relate to the universal themes of black struggle - the fight for survival and respect - or his peculiar iconographic language, but you must appreciate it’s raw energy, its sometimes “terrible beauty”…. As an Artist he is the consummate, sometimes consumed “Art Animal”. PASSAGES IN A LIFE: Born in the 50s into the landscape of the Barbadian ghetto, Akyem sensed from early that he would be an artist and felt a kindred connection to famous artists like Picasso, whose work he was already familiar with at the age of nine, even sleeping with a book of his paintings under his pillow!! In 1973/4 Akyem embraced the Rastafari faith and way of life and in 1979 he was accepted into the vibrant interactive artistic community of the Edna Manley School of Visual Arts in Jamaica.. After returning to Barbados he formed what would become a formidable and enduring relationship with another blazingly talented artist - Ras I-Shi. Out of this symbiosis they morph into ‘AkyemandIshi’, for years, one seldom referred to without the other. Sharing a mutual philosophy on life and Art, they begin the battle for Art and Artists to be recognized and respected like any other legitimate profession or institution. Refusing to be weekend artists or have a ‘day job’, they often had to choose between buying food or paint “from then we were committed to painting as the ultimate sacrifice” The now infamous 1989 VEXX Exhibition was the clenched fist, the locked jaw, bared teeth; a defiant middle finger directed at the ‘establishment’ - the silent outrage of visual subversion. These bold revolutionaries were blazing a path and pushing their own parameters, trodding on hallowed ground and invading complacent psyches - rebels with cause! Passionate, vibrant, raw, militant… the young lions had stood and roared…. the Art world in Barbados quaked!

Intent on the path of realizing their full potential they relocate to CUBA to enrol in the Instituto Superior de Arte from 1995 to 97. Immersed in a different cultural landscape with its rich, poignant history, the stage is set for personal discovery and reinvention. Though fully appreciative of being within a society that treats its artists with honour and respect, there are challenges of language and conditions of social deprivation and confrontations with tutors who had difficulty accepting their peculiar aesthetic values and implementation of “a lot of drag and drip and passion and graffiti”, so very different from Cuban painterly traditions directly descended from Russian formalist schools of art - linear and logical. In the end they won over the critics and both artists’ work was selected for the very prestigious Santo Domingo Bienale where they won Gold! Ironically, in revolutionist Cuba, Akyem and Ishi were the revolutionaries. “ a cross section of a complicated man….” A small frame and understated manner disguise a swirling mass of multiplicity and contained energy. He is a composite being willing to shred and dissect the layers of his instinctual selves and spew his innards onto canvas in an ephemeral visual language that is brilliantly provocative and beyond one dimensional comprehension. (see paintings) He is open and accessible yet remains enigmatic. Conscious and still committed to the ‘fight’ and plight of the stigmatised people of the Diaspora, the subversion of outdated and erroneous value systems and the ‘upliftment’ of the artist. He loves life, the creative process and – even though he has been called misogynistic – women. Marijuana is his muse. He still enjoys liming in “Temple Yard” in Bridgetown, an area of commerce for the Rasta community, and in the ghetto. He considers these to be places of inspiration, raw energy and the perpetuation of collective ‘black angst’. In conversation, here in his studio, creative energy is contained, the restless mind shifts fluidly. He verbalizes himself smoothly, precisely… Akyem is the epitome of ‘articulate’.

His love of painting is beyond mere passion, he is so kinetically sensitised to the paint itself that certain colours evoke a response even in his taste buds. Art is his lifeline and the canvas is his home - the dwelling place of his spirit. “all the paintings are self portraits, even if it’s a landscape or still life…..it’s a characteristic portrait of something that ‘s going on inside of me….I don’t think of my work and me as being separate…” He doesn’t justify or define his art, but is willing to share his own understanding of his self, the process and the purpose in which he invites our participation. The paintings, seldom ‘pretty’, instigate a gamut of responses from revulsion, wonder, bewilderment, even shock…with titles like “Nigger Section” “Dark Angel”, “Bitch”. “If the intuitive becomes satisfied in the awe of the connection with the object, even if the intellect is not satisfied it is enough… It’s important for me that it makes you feel something… not that you sit and talk about how delightful those flowers are over dinner, I want to make you vomit at the dinner table and remember your own misdeeds…” Initially encountering his authentic visual language and peculiar iconography may indeed be puzzling - the bared donkey teeth, the barbed crown of thorns, the gloved fists, the obtrusive phallus, the profusion of incidental strokes - but when given the rare opportunity to see it in the context of a collective body, one starts to formulate a connection, to look for and find meaning… that is the compelling power of the work, the mastery of the magician, before you know it you are spellbound… Akyem is indeed a shaman. Deliberately allowing the intuitive to override his intellect, he accesses the complex realms of non-verbal reality, primordial energy streams, and “power animals” embedded within the vastness of the human psyche. Transposing the rituals of the shamanic tradition to the dominion of the Artist is a brushstroke of genius! As an artist in Barbados, “a space that doesn’t have much empathy or sympathy for visual expression”, the struggle to gain acceptance and respect, individually and for Art’s sake, has been long, hard and continual. The fact that his work can now command price tags as high as BDS$20,000 gives a cash value validation to the worth of that struggle and further entitlement to ‘nuff respect’. But as the barbed crown of thorns (see paintings) becomes the laurel wreath of success, Akyem hasn’t compromised his creative integrity or professional choices but remains true to his idiom and purpose. He doesn’t cater to market trends or what people think art should be, although he quite easily could, but rather he paints for himself and kindred spirits.

“If my work is selling it’s a real paradox …I’m surprised when people buy my work. My paintings actually tend to be quite offensive…remember my art is subversive… I reinterpret (traditional images) and reinvent them in order to subvert the values that were used to denigrate us, and I do it in such a way that you’ll want to buy the work and have it…. so that’s the success of the denigrated.” He has exhibited worldwide and gained international recognition yet Akyem - the artist, painter, poet, revolutionary, magician, griot, shaman - like his sometimes abbreviated figures, and seemingly unfinished pieces considers that ‘he is a work in progress, still becoming, incomplete, a point of endless possibilities, with no end in sight… ———————————”art is essential…. it has the capacity to give evidence to things that have no other means of manifesting themselves…”

Laura Lin Hutchinson

http://cosmiclotus.tumblr.com/

Ark Animal Welfare Society of Barbados COMING SOON: The Ark 2013 Calendar, using our dogs and cat in their new homes. ONLY Bds$20.00 each. 1st come, 1st serve basis, so please place your order early contact one of the Committee Members or send an e-mail to ark@caribsurf.com

VERSIA ABEDA HARRIS Versia has received an acceptance letter to a residency at the Vermont Studio Center. They are giving Versia a partial grant which covers half of the residency fees and a work exchange award. She still has to cover other expenses; such as airfares, materials and transportation. In seeking funding Versia has put up her portfolio of art for sale. Versia may be contacted at versheen@gmail.com or www.facebook.com/versia.harris

Link to portfolio picasaweb.google.com/105714821715531443977/VersiaAbedaHarris2012

VERSIA ABEDA HARRIS

versheen@gmail.com

RUSSELL WATSON

GORDON ASHBY timeclub8@gmail.com

ARTHUR ATKINSON ‘BAJAN LIGHT’ The Mexican Photographic Exhibition ‘COLOURS OF MEXICO’

Exhibition ends Nov 10th

BRIDGETOWN GALLERY AT SHERATON 9am - 9pm daily 230 1750 thebridgetowngallery@gmail.com

ARTHUR ATKINSON Atkinson has been exhibiting since 1968. His style of painting has been, for the most part representational, sometimes stylised, and for a period, totally abstract. His subject matter has been inspired by Barbados and things Bajan. He works mainly in acrylic, watercolour and occasionally mixed media. Over the years he has mounted 12 solo exhibitions, 5 exhibitions partnered with another artist and participated in over 25 major national and Caribbean exhibitions in Barbados, Cuba, Guyana, Jamaica, Japan, London, Miami, Paris, Sao Paulo The Dominican Republic, and Washington. In 2008 he was honoured with a retrospective exhibition and The Lifetime Achievement Award in the Visual Arts.

ARTHUR ATKINSON ‘BAJAN LIGHT’