Curated by Jodi Minnis, “FIVE” can be on view at TERN Gallery (in Nassau, The Bahamas) from July 28 to August 27, 2022. This exhibition helps the work of 5 rising Bahamian artists, Brent Fox, Amaani Hepburn, Dyah Neilson, Matthew Rahming, and Keith Thompson.
Description: This exhibition goals to focus on the work of painters, sculptors, and printmakers whose work expands and defies our concepts of “island-life” and pushes our understanding of the restrictions of visibility. A gap reception can be held on Thursday, July 28 at 7:00pm.
Starting from realism to abstraction, the works on this exhibition replicate the artists’ creating practices and experimentations. It additionally seeks to unearth this grouping’s experiential intersection in an area the place most Bahamians are both invisible or hyper-visible in relation to the model of tropicality that The Bahamas exists in.
Working primarily in acrylic paint, Dyah Neilson (she/her) typically makes use of imagery of wildlife indigenous to The Bahamas in sly and infrequently opaque methods. Neilson’s symbolism holds private meanings which “discover the complexities of spirituality, relationships and femininity.” The fantastically rendered work lull the viewer in whereas holding house for Neilson’s coded compositions. Brent Fox’s (they/them) apply is sincere and tender in its providing to the viewer. Fox is a multi-media artist working primarily in drawing, portray and images. On this exhibition, their charcoal renderings of abstracted figures show a confidence in mark-making and intuitive channeling of power into the work. Although these items are experimental, its sensitivity is seen all through the breath of Fox’s budding apply. Thematically, Fox facilities concepts of intimacy and masculinity.
Amaani Hepurn (she/her) is an oil painter who renders her instant atmosphere, the relics, fauna, flora, and folks in these areas. In distinction to Fox’s apply, Hepburn’s apply “makes use of the matriarch as a lens for exploring her group and re-examing her personal femme id.” Hepburn’s broad brush-strokes create a vibrancy in her intimate under-paintings. The choice to “go away issues naked” whereas relaying scenes of her instant atmosphere creates a direct path for connection and nostalgia to the viewers. The objects throughout the house carry persona and visual historical past that’s frequent in Caribbean yards. This tenderness, intimacy and rigor is clear within the work of Matthew Rahming. Rahming (he/him) is an interdisciplinary artist who makes use of on a regular basis supplies like paper, concrete, rope and clay to craft works of contemplation. Rahming’s apply calls forth discussions on “company, id, battle, tenderness, and Bahamian ethnography” whereas demanding an understanding of duality. His black and white mono-type prints ebb and movement between dense and textural embossments of fiber to visceral and minimal moments.
Like Rahming, Keith Thompson (he/him) tethers moments of vulnerability, tenderness, and calls for nuance and contemplation. Thompson’s tightly rendered work broach his expertise “rising up in a neighbourhood rife with crime and gang-culture. His portraits and self-portraits train his personal dread of simply falling into criminality.” This private historical past coupled with traversing an “elitist” business such because the artwork world impressed this new physique of labor.
Collectively, these 5 artists signify completely different aspects of Nassuvian life, the honesty of their practices both immediately contradict, broaden and one anothers. It’s our hope that inside these nuanced experiences, a wider understanding of “island-life” is gained. For extra info on the exhibition, please electronic mail Jodi at jodi@terngallery.com.
[Shown above: Amaani Hepburn’s “Seated Under Daddy’s Pear Tree I,” 2019. Oil on Acrylic primed paper, 24in x 36in; Keith Thompson’s “Unseen Gallery,” 2022. Acrylic on canvas.]