Seductions of text and object

May 25, 2012, Medulla Art Gallery, Fitt Street, Woodbrook, in collaboration with ARC magazine.

As the name, “Interpretations’ implies the gathering will focus on various perspectives of Thomas-Girvan’s work through a critical, exacting and nurturing framework. Personal connections to her studio practice will be explored along with the various seductions of text and object. The presenters will engage with re-readings of Thomas-Girvan’s work from a literary, philosophical, art historical and liminal perspective. The event will showcase new works by visual artists Jaime Lee Loy and Michelle Isava.

Speakers for the night include writer and scholar Gabrielle Hezekiah, whose work centers on philosophy, visual art and theories of the moving image, short story writer Sharon Millar, co-editor of Robert & Christopher Publishers and Art Director of the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival Melanie Archer, artist and Rhodes Trust Fellow, Marsha Pearce, and Barbadian contemporary artist, educator and cultural activist Annalee Davis.

FIND out more here. READ a review of Jasmine Thomas Girvan's Gardening in the Tropics here.

Pictures from paradise

Pictures from Paradise: A Survey of Contemporary Caribbean Photography
(Robert & Christopher Publishers, ISBN: 978-976-95344-7-6, pp.222)

IN THEIR introduction, editors Melanie Archer and Mariel Brown make clear their intentions.

“Pictures from Paradise seeks to examine the ways in which contemporary art photography has evolved within the English-speaking Caribbean, rising beyond idyllic scenes to tackle more intricate issues,” they state.

“Within the past few years, regional artists working with the medium of fine art photography have provided us with an increasingly searching image of the Caribbean and the people who inhabit it. In recognising that the region is not the picture-perfect paradise of traditional depictions, these artists focus instead on what is not easily seen or that which is often ignored – the complex social, racial, political and physical relationships and landscapes that exist within the Caribbean.”

This is a book many have been waiting for. It succeeds — spectacularly — in not only showcasing the work of established and newer artists, but also in going beyond the old clichés of what photography from “the tropics” is thought to be about: building a far more complex picture which makes us stop and think about history and about some of the issues we deal with on a daily basis. Indeed, as the editors suggest, these pictures aim to photograph that which we cannot see or do not wish to see.

READ full review at Newsday here.

A mosaic

What is Caribbean art?: why we need art history, a discussion at the 2012 Bocas Lit Fest

*

WHO AND what is art for? Is art meant to be seen or experienced? Who is the intended audience? Do artists make work just for the sake of the work; for themselves or for others? Do artists create for a country or a region or an even broader audience? Do they imagine their work speaking to others, speaking after death?

We have to pose these questions when we address another: what is the importance of preserving Caribbean art? (And, by the way, what is Caribbean art?)

A special panel discussion put on at the recent Bocas Lit Fest  at the Old Fire Station Building in Port of Spain addressed the question of the need for art history. The panel, chaired by editor Nicholas Laughlin, included co-author of Art in the Caribbean, Anne Walmsley, artist Christopher Cozier, art teacher Andy Jacob, and cultural studies lecturer Marsha Pearce.

Walmsley spoke about the process of putting together Art in the Caribbean: An Introduction, which she co-authored with artist Stanley Greaves.

"The book is an attempt at chronicling the region's art," she said. "But it is not art history as art history is practicised today. It is a chance to look at work in different ways. I tried to find out more about the artists and their backgrounds. I found there was very little published material at the time." The idea behind the book was to be a kind of gallery or showcase.

"We would have a collection of images in a gallery in a book of reproductions with text alongside each: a visual anthology," she said. "We were very aware that it must be a regional book. It had to be regional. I was aware that we just did not know enough about art in the region. The Caribbean is--to use Christopher Cozier's phrase--an imaginary space. The work is all made here, even though some of the artists work abroad." With so much ground to cover, however, there were challenges.

"The actual selection was incredibly difficult," Walmsley said. "We had to pick work of quality that would repay close study." And work which was also in a form available for publication.

Pearce argued that the book presents a multi-faceted view, like looking through the lense of an insect's "compound eye".

"What you get is a mosaic," she said. "There is not only one lens. I feel that this book attempts that kind of mosaic." At a recap of the discussion published at art magazine ARC's website, she calls for, "a compound way of seeing the Caribbean in relation to artistic practice."

Christopher Cozier, Anne Walmsley and Nicholas Laughlin. Photo by Andre Bagoo.

"A compound eye is that which is made up of many, separate visual receptors.," Pearce writes. "Each receptor has its own lens and each lens catches its own image. A compound eye gives rise to a mosaic image. The more lenses the compound eye has, the higher the resolution or detail of the mosaic image. This compound way of seeing is critical for a space like the Caribbean, which we cannot hope to see and understand with one lens or in a stereoscopic way. Lenses are required in Curacao, St Vincent, Haiti; lenses must be focused in each of the various islands and anywhere else Caribbean people may find themselves: in Asia, in Africa, in Europe, in Brooklyn, in Melbourne. The mosaic image is a re-membering of the various lenses. A compound way of seeing can give us a higher resolution image of what a category, which we might call Caribbean art, looks like." Laughlin also noted that, "No single book is ever definitive."

There was discussion on the possibilities of the internet as providing a digital archive and the differences between seeing work in person, on the printed page and online. Cozier suggests that the internet opens up possibilities and takes on a life of its own.

"All artists are very concerned about the context of how their work is conveyed," he said. "The internet has changed everything. It allows all kinds of secondary genres: it becomes a parallel reality to the physical world." Pearce suggests that web archives address the inaccessibility of regional art.

"There is a glaring invisibility of art-work in the region for students. Students were not aware of art beyond Trinidad and Tobago. There is a need for students to know." Jacob saw no difference between the internet as a medium and printed forms.

"The difference between books and the internet is not that significant," he argued. "I don't think there is anything that is inherently different from the internet and the printed page."

*

SEE more here. Art in the Caribbean (New Beacon Books, 2010)

Risk

ARC magazine and Rodell Warner are up to some magic. SEE more here.

Photos from the launch of Trick Vessels at Bocas Lit Fest

Andre Bagoo, Vahni Capildeo and Nicholas Laughlin, Bocas Lit Fest programme director.

Photo by Rodell Warner. SEE more photos here.

Unforgettable moments from the Bocas Lit Fest

Photo by Rodell Warner

DESPITE the carefully planned build-up, the Bocas Lit Fest still came upon me like a thief in the night. But how happy I am it did! For four days, all of my senses were overwhelmed by riches. The programme had breath, depth and variety and managed to not be dominated by any one single event or person. I was left listless at the end of it: wanting, remembering, thinking and looking forward to more festivals to come. Here is a list of some of my favourite events in random order.

Audience at the Old Fire Station Building

Music ‘From the Old Yard’

One of the most enjoyable highlights this literary festival (and there was an embarrassment of riches), was the premiere of a new piece of music, The Old Yard: Carnival Portraits from Trinidad, composed by Adam Walters, for strings, wind and percussion. The performance, at the UTT Academy for the Performing Arts, featured poems by Muhammad Muwakil and images by the great photographer Maria Nunes. This was a stunning event: the music balanced the meshing of separate themes with an artfully deployed dissonance. The tone was sombre, but not melancholic: the inverse of the exuberance of the music of Carnival. This was a risk which, in my view, worked. The energy and danger of Carnival met with its beauty; there was shade and subversion and understated joy. The final movement was a spectacular battle between two themes, with one subterranean theme gradually, and quite majestically, overwhelming the other. The presence of poetry and the filmic qualities of the slideshow created questions and unexpected relationships. Is poetry not music? Are images poems? Is film both?

Celebrating the 2012 winners

The day after the 2012 OCM Bocas Prize announcement ceremony (a report on which you can find here) the prize-winning writers all read from their work. Novelist Earl Lovelace read a section full of comedy and pathos from Is Just A Movie; Loretta Collins Klobah read from her multi-lingual The Twelve Foot Neon Woman and Godfrey Smith read from his biography George Price: A Life Revealed. The prize having been announced the night before, all of the readers were relaxed and gave fine readings. This was a treat.

Kei Miller and Sharon Leach

Poetry readings!

There were excellent readings from poets all over the region, writing in different styles, including: Kendel Hippolyte, Lasana Sekou, Vladimir Lucien, Fawzia Kane, Nicolette Bethel, Lelawatee Manoo-Rahming, Vahni Capildeo*, Kei Miller, Mervyn Morris, Fred D’Aguiar, Shara McCallum.  The scope and variety made me wonder if poetry is beginning to have an even greater impact on the region’s sense of its literature. Or is it a constant stream through which the region finds expression?

Kendel Hippolyte

Writers also gave remarkable readings including: Sharon Leach, Erna Brodbar, Karen Lord, Rahul Bhattacharya, Joseph O’Neill, Monique Roffey, Rivka Galchen. There were also readings from new writers: Stephen Narain; Sharon Millar (whose piece provoked a strong discussion on the sense of “place” within the work of Caribbean writers) and Rhoda Bharath. One issue both writers and poets discussed in one event was the question of influence and how dangerous the idea of mapping them out can become.

Artist Christopher Cozier, editor Anne Walmsley, and Nicholas Laughlin, Bocas programme director

Pictures from Paradise

Without a doubt Pictures from Paradise is an important book and will go some way to putting photography and the work of photographers/digital artists in its rightful place: the spotlight. The launch event was a buzz of activity.

One day after the book launch there was a reading of poets and writers at Martin’s, a pub/bar in Woodbrook. The energy on the night was palpable and the night was unforgettable because of the hilarious readings from several including Merle Hodge, Earl Lovelace, Colin Robinson and Mervyn Morris.

Midnight robber showdown

The Bookman and Midnight Robbers

The festival featured art from Wendy Nanan’s recent show at Medulla Art Gallery, ‘Books and Stupas’. The show was based on the figure of the Bookman and several pieces found themselves at strategic points all over NALIS. You can read a review here.

By coincidence, the programme featured a Midnight Robber showdown with the likes of Kurtis Gross, Fedon Honore, Johnny Stollmeyer, and Bill Trotman. The robber-talk came alongside some heated discussions throughout the festival, many of which revolved around set themes. One example was the discussion on “What is Caribbean art?: why we need art history.”

There was so much more, more than any list can enumerate. What can be said, though, is that the festival is a vital part of creating room for more dialogue about our region, its writing and its art.

Vahni Capildeo reads EM Roach at Martin's

*who read with me, but more on that here.

A kind of mesmerism

LH: Can you sum up Trick Vessels in three words?

AB:  DREAM    COME    TRUE

LH: Do you like to perform your poetry? Have you done so?

AB: I’ll tell you a secret: I actually enjoy reading my poetry. But I love reading other people’s poems more: I feel like I am channelling them in a kind of mesmerism. I have read at Alice Yard and poetry events here and there. On 28^th April, I am going to launch Trick Vessels at the Bocas Lit Fest in a reading alongside the great poet Vahni Capildeo. I cannot wait!

From an interview at ARC. READ more here.

'Trick Vessels' at Bocas Lit Fest

Excited is an understatement. FIND out more here.

Unwritten stories

Wendy Nanan's 'Books and Stupas' at Medulla Art Gallery

The Sound of Ohm, papier-mache and acrylics, 40"x28"x5". Photo by Andre Bagoo.

THE BOOKMAN is one of the quieter traditional Carnival characters. But make no mistake, he speaks loudly.

Sometimes called Beelzebub, Gownman or Ruler, Bookman is a central character in devil mas portrayals.

He exists among a world of imps and beasts. His costume consists of Tudor-style gowns, richly embroidered; made of velvet and satin, with a pleated bodice and a flowing cape depicting biblical scenes.

It is an invocation of power, religious and political. On the Bookman’s head is a crown the shape of a large horned head: a pink-fleshed Satan mask.

Crucially, the Bookman is not only the silent puppeteer of the imps, but he carries a pen and a large book in which to write the names of the damned. It is a bulky book.

Wendy Nanan’s haunting show at the Medulla Art Gallery draws upon aspects of the character in order to, in equal parts, subvert and perpetuate the power of this form of old mas.

She places a microscope on the Bookman’s traditionally solid papier-mache pages, turning them into delicate tissues that reveal and mirror the reality of our society today. The pages are sculpture, painting and installation all in one.

They move, in unexpected ways, in the silence of the gallery space. Entering feels like an intrusion into a place where a group of people are already engaged in deep conversation.

READ full Newsday review here.

An evening of poetry and art

Poet Vladimir Lucien reads at the reading held at the Wendy Nanan show as part of the build-up to the Bocas Lit Fest 2012.

On Friday, a group of poets and writers read at the basement of the Medulla Art Gallery on Fitt Street. As they read, giant books done by Wendy Nanan as part of her ongoing show at Medulla, looked on in silence. The event was part of the build-up to the Bocas Lit Fest, to be held at the end of the month.  Among those featured were: Lisa Allen-Agostini; Barbara Jenkins; Anu Lakhan and Vladimir Lucien.

The reading took place among work done by Wendy Nanan for her 'Books and Stupas' exhibition.

Wendy Nanan (right) chats after the event

'Witness' by Wendy Nanan, papier-mache, acrylics and chalk, 33"x28"x20"

☿ (Mercury)

The Bocas Lit Fest has unveiled its festival art, done this year by Nikolai Noel in a series of limited edition silkscreen prints. READ more about it and find out how to get one at the Bocas Lit Fest website here. 

Dante's forest

Erik Feely at 101 Art Gallery

Doubles Line

The paintings of Erik Feely walk a fine line. They travel, tirelessly, through Dante's dark wood, the setting of The Inferno. Here, no traveller returns.

Light and dark meet: they form the central crisis and theme. The palette becomes a kind of Technicolor explosion, a kaleidoscope of embers which retreat, hotly, into a classical sense of painting. This is still, perfectly composed and--without a doubt--great work from an artist who is in dialogue with the Baroque painters and others.

All Soul's Night, St Joseph

Feely also regards his work as a battle of ideas.

"The things I read gradually pervade my process and the final product, in this case my art, is the result of an anxious battle between intellectual actions and visceral rejections," he says in a preview for his recent show at 101 Art Galley. 

"I like making things, beautiful things if possible or at least meaningful things. I believe in the studio. I like the idea of becoming and as such I always push myself along the paths of experimentation. While the subject remains constant the accident can enjoy new experiences."

The Inferno was an influence:

Midway in the journey of our life
I came to myself in a dark wood,
for the straight way was lost.
Ah, how hard it is to tell
the nature of that wood, savage, dense and harsh --
the very thought of it renews my fear!
It is so bitter death is hardly more so.
But to set forth the good I found
I will recount the other things I saw.
How I came there I cannot really tell,
I was so full of sleep
when I forsook the one true way.
But when I reached the foot of a hill,
there where the valley ended
that had pierced my heart with fear,
looking up, I saw its shoulders
arrayed in the first light of the planet
that leads men straight, no matter what their road.

"I decided to read it again: many of the works are based on sparks of light in the darkness," Feely says. "I delight in many external stimuli while painting: the wind and the surrounding sounds all enrich the visual phenomena, either those before me or others stored in my subconscious. Internally, I am conscious of a Classical muse which never abandons." 

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

Divali, Southern Main Road

Car Lime, Maracas

The Hunger Games - review

Not kidding around: competitors in The Hunger Games

Here's some advice: stay alive. So advises a key character in The Hunger Games, the first film version of the Suzanne Collins books.

Like most fantasy fiction set in a dystopian future, everything is meant to reflect the present. Consider the bizarre ritual of The Reaping where, every year, 24 kids from 12 North American districts are chosen at random to fight to the death on reality TV. Is this a comment about growing up? Is it meant to be a comment on the process of going to war? About the age of reality TV?

And what do we make of the weird disparities of wealth in this fantasy future, where one half of the population seems to live in some kind of Rococo world inspired by the punk wigs of Amadeus, pink and blue cotton candy and Nikki Minaj? They seem to enjoy the ritual of The Reaping and its violence, not unlike Romans enjoying the gladiator pits or the Spanish bull-fighting. The movie's star is the talented Jennifer Lawrence. As noted by Ebert, her character here could well be a manifestation of the character she played in the great film, Winter's Bone. 

The film comes across as a mix of The Truman Show, Apocalypto and The Lord of the Flies. It features a relatively uncommon love triangle at its centre and manages to maintain suspense throughout. The adventure elements of the film work, but the real star is the politics of this world, right up to the last shot which leaves you wanting more. Next movie please!

Wendy Nanan at Medulla

FROM THE ORGANISERS:


Medulla Art Gallery is pleased to invite you to "books and Stupas" by Wendy Nanan

Opening reception: Tuesday 03rd April 2012 
6.30pm – 9.00pm
at 37 Fitt Street, Woodbrook, Port of Spain
RSVP 740 7597/medullaartgallery@gmail.com


Exhibition continues until Tuesday 24th April 2012

Special Event:
Tales for the Bookman
Friday 13th April, 7.00 pm
presented by the NGC Bocas Lit Fest
Four writers read stories and poems responding to the works in "books and Stupas" - Featuring Lisa Allen-Agostini, Barbara Jenkins, Anu Lakhan, and Vladimir Lucien

ABOUT THE SHOW:

I wanted to make books because as a child, fascinated and frightened by the book-man mas’, still I wanted to peep behind the book and see what he was writing and hiding. Surprisingly The Devil is thinking of religion and the shortness of life. Yet it is the form that holds interest the most, that unwieldy bulky square of accordion pages. I feel I could explore forever, seeing where it leads. Wendy Nanan 2012

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Wendy Nanan was born in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago in 1955. After a foundation course at Manchester Polytechnic she obtained the BFA (Painting) at Wolverhampton Polytechnic in 1979. She currently lives and works in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. She has been exhibiting regularly since 1985, most recently in February 2012 at "Into the Mix" a group show of Caribbean artists at the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, USA.

Nanan has also exhibited in Paris, France; London, England; Nova Scotia, Canada and Dominican Republic. She is perhaps best known for her popular series Idyllic Marriage in 1997 and Cricket, Lovely Cricket first exhibited at the Clico Gallery, Port of Spain in 2005.


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Another chance to see Erik Feely

Divali, Southern Main Road by Erik Feely

THE ERIK FEELY EXHIBITION HAS BEEN HELD OVER FOR VISITORS TO SEE IT OVER THE EASTER WEEKEND. 

IT WILL BE OPEN TODAY SATURDAY 7 MAY 10AM TO 2PM 
AT THE ART SOCIETY HEADQUARTES IN FEDERATION PARK. 


FOR INFO CALL 628-4081


FIND OUT MORE HERE.


ABOUT ERIK FEELY

Erik Feely read Art History at Trinity College, Dublin, and spent one year on scholarship in Italy before qualifying with an M.A. in 1982. He also simultaneously graduated in Graphic Design thus combining art theory and practice. On his moving to Trinidad he was working in the abstract geometric style and exhibited several times. From 1997-2002 he lived in Caracas where he taught at the Armando Reveron Art School and the Central University. Specialising in watercolours, he showed in the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Caracas in May 2000. Interest in installations and social criticism led him to hold two individual shows at the Caracas experimental Galleries, Espacio Unus and Espacio Nexus. In 2004-2005 he held shows in Dublin and Rome--courtesy 101 Art Gallery.