Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Jus call me Cooligan! Bois and bacchannal in meh blood

Mooma mooma yuh son in d grave ahready....

Some people, like Destra and her Lucy, are introduced to Carnival.
And some of us are just born into bois and bus’ head!
So, Ricardo, just call me Cooligan!... more

One of my earliest memories, so early that is only an impression on my memory and not a memory really, is of Pa, coming home with his head bust – blood dripping down the sides of his ears and Ma, mixture of fear and anger on her face, mopping up the blood with a wash cloth.
Then, the impression deepens into memory. I am sitting on Pa’s shoulders, a little more than a toddler. We are wading in predawn darkness through a forest of mud and grease-smeared bodies gyrating to the most sensational music of steelpan hung around the necks

Thursday, February 12, 2015

Arresting the Tears for us and the Haytian globe

Let’s observe a minute of silence in memory of the bodies that were found in various stages of decomposition somewhere in merging with the soil in our islands, in our region in our little world this morning, yesterday – our world that has become a metaphorically Hayti- for which we want to cry - and ask that we reflect on how we have contributed to making it that way, and how we could make it otherwise: with our words and our pens and our images and our thoughts and our actions.

Chief Ifa Oje Won Yomi Abiodun—Master Artist, Leroi Clarke our guest of honour, it is my distinctive honour, in this, my maiden public address as the Chair of the first board of the National Museum and Art Gallery - that the first public act of this Board is to throw open the doors of this institution to a phenomenon like this one. It is our honour that Master Artist Le Roy Clarke has recognised the need to sanctify this space with his art – a space which we call a National Art Gallery, but which to many has to yet live up to that name.
As you may or may not know, the board was so constituted by an Act of Parliament in 2000, and we became the first Board to take office under than act late last year – 14 years – that’s how long it takes to move from paper to action here, it seems – 14 years after the act was passed. (in insurance terms I believe that is a lifetime) But this is only its most recent incarnation of a system to exercise jurisdiction over this space.
Lest we forget, sitting as it does next to the shiny silver caterpillar next door, to some of us, this space might mean nothing; evokes no sentiment, stimulates no memory, but for many others it means many more things. In another life – it was known as the Royal Victoria Institute, established in 1892 – as a science and art museum.
Master Artist, if you might allow me to take a little of this space to reflect on some things that we do not know, or have forgotten, and because we have forgotten have lost respect so that we could wake up each morning unphased that another dead or decaying body of

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Ode to Dreams Sciences Arts convergence in Moses' Promised Land


Ode To Dreams The Legacy of Maureen Mancouck was title of the retirement function of The National Institute of Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology as it said farewell to its President of 30 years Mrs Maureen Manchouck.
But it was with soundly peppered reality of the challenges and changes facing the national and international science education community and her efforts to realise her humanist dreams for science popularisation that Mrs Manchouck said her farewells, including a final 'buff’ like appeal to authorities present that she not face the fate of the Biblical Moses leading his people to the Promised Land he would never enter.
Her ode was her dream to

So National Portrait Gallery Unveils New Painted Portrait of Writer VS Naipaul

National Portrait Gallery Unveils New Painted Portrait of Writer V. S. Naipaul



National Portrait Gallery Unveils New Painted Portrait of Writer V. S. Naipaul

LONDON.- A painted portrait of Nobel Prize winning writer V.S. Naipaul has been commissioned by the National Portrait Galleryand unveiled there today. 

The artist Paul Emsley won the BP Portrait Award, the National Portrait Gallery's annual painting competition and exhibition in 2007. It was on the strength of Emsley's portrait of fellow artist Michael Simpson that the Gallery was able to persuade the Nobel Prize-winning writer to have his portrait painted for the Collection. 

Late in 2008, the artist visited the writer's Wiltshire home. Naipaul wished to be depicted in his garden, and Emsley photographed him sitting on his folding stool. The attention to the pose of the subject is complemented by the artist's atmospheric treatment of the garden, which appears to disappear into the wintry darkness, an effect achieved through the application of layers of translucent glazes and the use of just two colours. 

A Nobel Prize-winning writer, Naipaul was born in Trinidad, coming to England in 1960 to study at Oxford University. His first novel The Mystic Masseur (1957) was followed by A House for Mr Biswas (1961). Naipaul's literary themes include exile and displacement; he won the Booker Prize with In a Free State in 1971. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001. 

Glasgow-born artist Paul Emsley (b.1947) lives and works in Bradford on Avon, near Bath. He grew up in South Africa before moving to England in 1996. Paul has exhibited widely and won several prizes. His BP Portrait Award winning portrait of 2007 was a large close-up of the head of 67-year-old artist Michael Simpson. 

Sandy Nairne, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, London, says: "This is a beautiful and mysterious portrait of a great writer, painted by BP winner Paul Emsley. I am very pleased that V.S. Naipaul enters the Collection as a new portrait." 

Jayde Card, Acting Director UK Arts & Culture, says: "Paul Emsley's hauntingly beautiful portrait of V.S. Naipaul is an outstanding demonstration of how the BP Portrait Award not only encourages the continuing development of portraiture but also introduces important new artists to the Gallery's permanent Collection." 

This portrait joins other works in the National Portrait Gallery's Collection of commissions by BP Portrait Award winning artists including Camila Batmanghelidjh by Dean Marsh (BP Portrait Award winner 2005); J K Rowling by Stuart Pearson Wright (winner 2001); Sir Peter Mansfield by Stephen Shankland (winner 2004); Dame Cicely Saunders by Catherine Goodman (winner 2002); Fiona Shaw by Victoria Russell (winner 2000); Sir Paul Smith by James Lloyd (winner 1997), and Dame Helen Mirren by Ishbel Myerscough (winner 1995). 

Sir V.S. Naipaul by Paul Emsley is on display at the National Portrait Gallery's Contemporary Collections in the Lerner Galleries (Room 41). Admission free 

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