Thru Novel Lenses! New Vision New Perspectives New Ideas New Directions For the New World! Futuring Sustainable Development in the Post Pandemic Planet From Pre School to Policy Making
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
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
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.
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 theNational 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
Mooma mooma yuh son in d grave ahready....
