Welcome to Mixed Media, the official blog of The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (NAGB).

Monday, January 28, 2013

NAGB Out & About T-Shirt Competition

NAGB Out & About T-Shirt Competition!

The NAGB social media team is pleased to launch our NAGB Out & About T-Shirt Competition today!

The rules are simple, take a picture of yourself in an NAGB T-Shirt out and about in Nassau and send it to us! The picture can be as basic or creative as you want it to be- we just want to see you moving around in our T-Shirts. 

Once we've received everyone's pictures we'll upload them to our Facebook page and the owners of the top 2 pictures that received the most 'Likes' will win an NAGB T-Shirt of their choice.

Send your NAGB Out & About T-Shirt Competition picture to aknowles@nagb.org.bs or send it to us via FB message by February 8th, 2013. The pictures will be uploaded to Facebook on February 11th for voting. Get the votes in fast because the competition ends 5PM Friday, February 15th and the winners will be announced shortly after that.

For further information or questions please call us at 328-5800/1 or email us at aknowles@nagb.org.bs.

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Feature From The Exhibition: Side Spaces

The idea of the apocalypse has been around for a long time. In most religious ideology the term refers to an end of time the end of the world. End of days and everything that is, will cease to exist. Universally the apocalypse spells doom and gloom for the extinction of mankind and the world as we know it, historically however this should have happened may times over.

In modern society this idea is being less recognized as a possible factual prediction for the mankind’s future but rather as term or a metaphor to describe a change or transformation; an age of enlightenment. How this is interpreted is based on the individual’s ideology, religious beliefs, environment, knowledge and perceptions of truth.

Lillian Blades installation, Mystic Veil, indicates such ideas of revealing the hidden. Lillian work represents a barrier, which can obscure the viewer or present a revelation. Shifting perspectives as the viewer walks through the assemblage both sides of the veil reveal the known and unknown. In Jonathan Bethel’s painting the unknown is in the distance. The storm represents an impending apocalypse in lurking in the dark, of what is to come. In another perspective it is post-apocalyptic and now everything is calm, the worst is over.


What A Maggot Calls The End Of The World The Master Calls A Fly by Christina Darville

In similar fashion Christina Darville’s installation, What A Maggot Calls The End Of The World The Master Calls A Fly, hints to the same ideas. The event after the apocalypse; a new beginning. However in works such as Del Foxton’s piece, Kingdom Come ... Moving into the Light, the artist describes the event as a time of possible enlightenment. Instead we move around in circles making the same mistakes and are the architectures of our own demise. But the work is still hopeful that mankind can find their way.


Kingdom Come ... Moving into the Light by Del Foxton

Other artists such as Jessica Colebrooke and Allan Wallace discuss the coming of the Kingdom from a literal and religious perspective. Wallace’s painting depicts the heavens opening up and the return of the lord in the end of days.


Thy Will Be Done by Jessica Colebrooke

In the video installation by Jackson Petit, Progress: Under Construction, Petit presents the idea in a real world practicality, where we move through this existence unaware of the impacts we impose on the environment, each other and nature. An impending darkness lies beneath the surface of the video and we feel uneasy and the video reveals many things about the society’s negligence and unwillingness to discuss particular matters.


Progress: Under Construction by Jackson Petit

The works in the NE6 are vast and diverse and the depiction of the theme by many of the artists is quite unexpected and revealing. In this section of the exhibition the artists discuss the theme both personally and in a social context; both subjectively and objectively.

-JP

National Exhibition (NE) 6: Kingdom Come is currently on display in T1 and T2.

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Feature From The Exhibition: Northeast Gallery 2

The triptych by Susan Moir Mackay, Anthropology 2012: Human, System, Object breaks the reality of human life into these three specific categories. It examines the relationship between people, their social networks and the apparatus of everyday routines. Mackay’s work offers a means of location and charting the diversity of society through a kind of modern excavation that reveals the symbols of collection preoccupations that ultimately obstructs us from a much meaningful existence.


Anthropology 2012: Human, System, Object by Susan Moir Mackay

Heino Schmid’s, This Is Remembering takes the viewer to a space of dreams where the suggestion of reality gets turned upside down. The large-scale mixed media piece becomes a portal through which our minds find new perspectives and possibilities outside the gravity of the mundane. Possibly through our levitation we will find a sense of balance and realignment.


This Is Remembering by Heino Schmid

Ascension, Suspension, Descent, Scharad Lightboune’s triptych looks into one’s identity and through mentioning Joseph Campbell it is said that a heroic crossing over or through water was usually a pivotal scene in a myth or epic, since it signals the hero’s encounter with his own unconscious. Lightbourne explores submerging oneself into water and its significant to a kind of death and a sense of rebirth.


Ascension, Suspension, Descent by Scharad Lightbourne

Never Again Shall This Beautiful Land Experience The Oppression Of One By Another, Lavar Munroe’s sculpture investigates how chaotic the world is or has become due to human manipulation. It deals with the societal, physical and psychological ways it has all come together. Munroe’s piece scrutinizes how our impact and the natural disasters have recreated it all to what it is today.


Never Again Shall This Beautiful Land Experience The Oppression Of One By Another by Lavar Munroe

-AW

National Exhibition (NE) 6: Kingdom Come is currently on display in T1 and T2.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Feature From The Exhibition: The Pathways

Jace McKinney’s work visually echoes the Biblical narrative of the Hebrews being delivered by God from the hands of the Egyptians where they sang a song of praise that became known as “The Song of Moses”. Mckinney’s choir is constructed from plaster molds made from the heads of young children from a grass-roots community and subsequently turned into 21 makeshift lamps. McKinney’s work acts as a metaphor for the innate divinity of the culture of youth and a call for us to elevate ourselves from our collective cynicism.

 
The Song of Moses by Jace McKinney

Jeffrey Meris’ Cradle explores human notions of death and finality. Meris’ coffins are reminiscent of standard coffins used in funeral practices. However, upon entering the piece and closing the two doors, visitors are confronted with their own eternalness as their image is replicated to infinity through the use of visual trickery and mirrors. Once your experience is over, you are able to exit the coffin through a different door. Meris’ work acts as a passage, one that forces the individual to confront their understanding of death. By exiting the coffin, Meris metaphorically speaks on spiritual continuity and the opportunity for a new, different life after the finality of death.


Cradle by Jeffrey Merris

In Lillian Blades’ Mystic Veil visitors experience a partial view of the Gallery. Large sections of Blades’ four veils are obscured by patchwork fabric designs, whilst smaller sections of sheer tulle allow visitors a glimpse of their surroundings. The veil’s random construction explores human understanding of the known and unknown- by randomizing the sections of the tapestry, Blades comments on the human need and effort to compartmentalize, order and construct knowledge, the known and unknown.

 
Mystic Veil by Lillian Blades

-AK

National Exhibition (NE) 6: Kingdom Come is currently on display in T1 and T2. 

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Feature From The Exhibition: Northeast Gallery

This gallery delves into the sub-theme of balance, which in matter of Kingdom Come itself is tied to spirituality; be it societal, individual or the lack thereof. Finding Balance, Tyrone Ferguson’s aluminum sculpture distinctly focuses on this theme. The balancing of a white disc and a black disc shows the constant point of equilibrium that we all try to find in our lives on a daily basis, and seeing that the figure is on a tight rope this stability is reiterated with other things that may be occurring in the world/society, that we walk the tight rope in hopes to survive.

 
Finding Balance by Tyrone Ferguson

Toby Lunn’s Alchemy and Samadhi makes the connections to spirituality; directly points to heaven and hell, with the language of the title alone being from a Psalm and the lightness/whiteness of the heavens in the top of the diptych and hell being in the darker colors at the bottom. Lunn’s piece speaks directly to the biblical words of the coming of the Kingdom.


Alchemy and Samadhi by Toby Lunn

Night and Day-O looks at the correlations between living and dying inside Bahamian society. The images that we reflect to the world and some social issues that actually occur at an alarming rate. Dave Smith’s message in this piece is very strong and the balance of good and bad, right and wrong is seen blatantly. The justice of it all and our attempt at survival looks directly into our identity.


Night and Day-O by Dave Smith

-AW

National Exhibition (NE) 6: Kingdom Come is currently on display in T1 and T2.