big River
18th April – 3rd May 1999

CCA hosted the first International Artists Workshop in Trinidad from April 18th - May 3rd 1999. The workshop, entitled big River, was a collaborative venture between the Triangle Arts Trust, London and CCA. Twenty-two participating artists from thirteen countries had the opportunity to work uninterrupted and were encouraged to experiment and develop new ideas and practices, often using unusual materials. The workshop was situated at the relatively remote and inspiring location of Grande Riviere, on Trinidad’s north coast.

The ‘working group’ (G3+) encouraged site specific work and collective interactions and was very much concerned with ecological and environmental development, especially in the light of modern political and economic divisions, and the ways in which the contemporary artist reflects these. Widening the notion of ecological and environmental issues, the working group was committed to sharing these ideas with artists from other countries, who learnt from each other’s diverse points of view regarding their practice and roles as artists in the developing world.

The opportunity to work free of everyday distractions over an extended period was often described by artists as ‘paradise’, bearing in mind the very difficult circumstances in which art is made in developing countries where there is often a lack of working space and materials. Artists also needed the freedom and metaphorical space in which to develop their creative abilities in a situation that was neither determined by aesthetic dogmas imported from Europe and America nor by the necessities of the market which often drives artists to make objects for the tourist trade.

While the workshop did not provide the complete answer to these problems, it made a substantial shift in helping artists to establish their own identity and develop their creative abilities, so that the quality of work made was demonstrably of a higher order on account of the workshop experience.

The Open Day was an opportunity for approximately 600 visitors from all over the island to see the work on-site. An exhibition of some of the work produced at big River was then held at the National Museum in Port of Spain on May 5th 1999.

It was crucial that this communal experience be documented, and a catalogue published. Banyan Productions has produced an hour long documentary on the Workshop.

Antonio Eligio ‘Tonel’ - big River’s writer
Text in English & Spanish

big River Participating Artists

big River Workshop

Artists Statements

Dean Arlen
Trinidad and Tobago

In moments
Between the sun and the moon
on the horizontal line
we Dance in constant motion
we Dance in constant energy
Therefore
constant motion x constant energy = truths in time.

Dean Arlen

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"Snake & Backdrop"
10' x 11'
© Dean Arlen 1999

Lisa Brice
South Africa

Drawing from the signage and display techniques seen in clubs, video arcades and cheap department stores, and shopping in downmarket areas of town for mass produced items of popular culture, Brice finds her source material in her purchases, in sex magazines, in the security firm pamphlets that are dropped in suburban letterboxes, in the lurid posters and garish plastic blow up toys sold by pavement vendors. We have already absorbed these images into our subconscious as part of our lives. So when Brice deconstructs and reassemble them into new layers, often adding her own powerful drawings, the resulting artworks resonate bodily in a way that seems both fatally fresh yet somehow familiar.

In attempting to situate Brice’s work within the context of contemporary art history in South Africa, one comes quickly to the realisation that Brice’s work has broken fresh ground.

Brice’s work is far from subtle, but neither are the targets at which she aims her deadly attacks. A keynote of her confrontational and powerful work is its materiality: her pleasure in finding the right stuff to express every new idea is very evident. Pursuing a change of direction, her challenge is always to identify the mode, hunt down the appropriate materials, to draw, to cut, to hack, to hammer, to weld until all the parts have been transmogrified into a new whole, transcending its parts, clear in its message, startling in its impact.

Excerpt from the article UNDER ATTACK -
the Work of Lisa Brice by Sue Williamson
September 1996

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"Just do it - Com'on com'on"
(Calabash lamps)
© Lisa Brice 1999

Kathryn Chan
Trinidad and Tobago

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"Symbols of Endurance"
(Wood carving)
© Kathryn Chan 1999

Susie Dayal
Trinidad and Tobago

My work is inspired by "female culture" and Trinidadian culture, fashion, feminism, folklore, as well as Carnival. Many of my pieces are body related, some are wearable and some are not. I construct these "body masks" from materials not usually associated with clothing to explore notions of comfort and discomfort, liberation, constraint, power, subservience, protection, violation, beauty and sacrifice. These have been the messaged behind the ideals of fashion and beauty for centuries.

Susan Dayal, Port of Spain, 1998
Excerpt from ‘Lips, Sticks and Marks’ Catalogue

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"Miss Universe as a Punch Girl"
72" x 14" x 12"
© Susie Dayal 1999

Godfried Donkor
Ghana

IMAGEMAKER - I work with paint on canvas, print on paper, mixed media collages on paper and canvas photography, multi-media and through public art installations. My images are constructed using a number of avenues. All the images I produce are based on research and study. This process enables me to combine my desire to consume information through questioning with my urge to recreate and reproduce imagery.

I am currently working on a series of images based on the idea of the ‘Primitive’ and ‘Modern’ and comparing the visual imagery of the 18th and 19th Century with those of the 20th and 21st Century.

Godfried Donkor 1999

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"The Power and the Glory"
24" x 18" (each)
© Godfried Donkor 1999

Antonio Eligio ‘Tonel’
Cuba

big River’s writer, was born and lives in Havana, Cuba. He received his licenciatura in art history from the Universidad de La Habana in 1982. An artist and art critic, in 1995 Tonel received a fellowship in painting and installation from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and, in 1997, a fellowship in humanities from the Rockefeller Foundation.

"In "Variantes del gusto," José Lezama Lima wrote, "After a vanguard that burned its ties each night, a classicism that would return to tie back its ropes and bypass the labyrinth was awaited." The so-called Cuban vanguard of the eighties burned its ropes, sails, and vessels. With some measure of anxiety, it left behind a labyrinth almost uninhabited and in danger of collapse. But this space was rapidly filled by others with a "reactionary classicism." This is ultimately the interminable story that repeats itself in Havana: props support what is about to collapse but never seems to fall. Feverish and ephemeral architecture is recycled, divided anew, restored, and damaged. The new tenants establish their residence "concealing their sparks which in the end, draw them closer to the other side." Now more than ever, that space is outlined like a tree-house, a pigeon loft in a ceiba (silk-cotton tree) whose sacred and moist roots spread out towards many shores.

Antonio Eligio ‘Tonel’
(an excerpt of the article, "A Tree from Many Shores: Cuban Art in Movement," art journal, Winter 1998, p. 73
[translated by Miriam Basilio] discussing José Lezama Lima, "Variantes del gusto," Algunos tratados en La Habana (Barcelona: Anagrama, 1971), 149.

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© Antonio Eligio 'Tonel' 1999

Embah
Trinidad and Tobago

I am a self-taught artist. In this community there is a very broad religious commitment which is quite evenly balanced between intellect, prowess and ideological finesse.

One of my better approaches to creating the composition of my artwork is the interpretation of my own poetic work. My artwork enables me to present controversial statements – especially those related to culture – without adding to the already ungainly bulk of rhetoric.

Medallion
Youth is but a medallion
worn with fervour for a while
Often making assumptions
about its role and new style
Looking in the book to find
impressions of good to apply
Faced with the disappointments
we renege and simply deny
the beauty of the noble concept of man

We are just a medallion
hanging out over the earth
in a spiritual position
to denote value and worth
We did not create earth, yet
our decisions alter its beauty
It is our decision to make; to beget
a place called Eternity
Be aware that to earth we are always youth

The Woman of nature, often hurt,
will be mother forever; forever
You are the child of nature of earth
Worn with fortitude and pride
The medallion on her breast
Truth the offspring frequently denied
Here for a while, then gone: perhaps
to hide from itself and the melodrama
of ego which allows real truth to collapse

Embah

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Top Row, left to right: "The Great Gift"
"What you See (I am)"
"In this Environment"

Bottom Row, left to right: "Are you listening?" (Sculpture)
"Lost and Found People"
"I was once a tree" (Sculpture)
© Embah 1999

Naomi Fisher
United States

The year I was born Helene Cixous wrote her essay "The Laugh of the Medusa". Her call for women to write their own experience is still necessary today, when feminism's main advances have mostly taken into account the experience of the middle class white woman. But as I am this middle class white woman, I am placed in a position which could enable me to ignore my privilege. Based on my experiences, it is impossible to pretend that the world is no longer hostile towards women. I want to make sense of this world, but I understand that there is no way to know what the unique situations and experiences of all people are unless their stories are actively sought after and honestly expressed. Thus I feel that the most important thing that I can do with my work is to visually synthesize my own relationship with the world. I am telling my story as a young woman who doubts that I can ever have a tangible relationship with anything that is considered natural, but who will keep trying, regardless of its seeming impossibility.

The settings for my (photographic) actions are the tropical landscapes of Florida. Whether my backyard or a national park, both become quarantined simulations of a vanished nature. The stylish garb worn by the subjects reflects the segment of youth culture that my generation forms and is formed by. The incidents documented in my photographs are acknowledgements of the impossibility of these constructs to ever merge, but find solace in pretending that they can.

It is not my agenda to deal with politics or use overt feminist tactics in my work, knowing that I will be marginalized for doing so. But as a woman, the presence of patriarchal authority permeates my simplest intention: the desire to find a connection with the lushness of nature. As a woman I am this nature. Uncontrolled and threatening, a living force to be paved over. In my work, tropical locales become symbolic of heterosexual desire in a patriarchal rape culture.

Naomi Fisher

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René Francisco
Cuba

"In 1992 René Francisco, a professor at the ISA, organised a workshop in which recent artistic developments could be debated. This workshop proposed to re-evaluate the emerging sociocultural situation on the island and to reflect on the changing possibilities for artistic practice. Examining these issues in this context occurred at a particularly opportune moment, when it seemed as if recent artistic production on the island was being forgotten. The workshop was an attempt to understand the previous generation’s artistic strategies and their potential viability in the context of conditions that differed from those of 1980, 1986, and even 1990. Francisco, along with his students, had experimented with radical artistic practices since 1990. He defined artists as hard-working craftspersons subordinates to the needs of their communities. For him and others, art was, in fact, akin to fieldwork addressed to specific groups to satisfy specific demands."

An excerpt of the article, "A Tree from Many Shores: Cuban Art in Movement," by Antonio Eligio ‘Tonel’, art journal, Winter 1998, p. 65-66.

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"Fufú"
250cm x 160cm
© Rene Francisco 1999

Joscelyn Gardner
Barbados

In
an ocean
of veiling,
wailing words
I arise I am
I am begot
The bed be blest that I lie not
my altar of acidic crimson birth
is stained and carved into charted turf
torn lips sutured by compass-web of gold
my womb-Basin wrenched twixt continental folds
nipples swelling ripples
aft and four
angels round my head (still guarding my bed)
I breathe the lapping moonlight …………paddle limbless in the blue
aquatic carcass of my youth submerged mother…
in genesis canoe
now I voyage onward immersed in birthing tide of tears
frothing foam from passage inward weeping through my bow of fears

entombed within my skin of scales I SEE I think I see
my pebble seeds scattered far across my turquoise sea
Atabeyra morphosed becomes Mary creoled caraval of white
mandorla of milk and nurturing silk cocooned
in immaculate light
slowly I plunge from my hollowed prow
down through my watery gate
as islands rise before my eyes my spirit escapes
in my wake
then…a
multiple martyred myopic birth from thorny uterine cage
bloodied ribs as cross of albatross criss-crossing waters of rage
blackened seeds shackled in suffocating tomb
mahogany fins melting in scorching womb

Ezili writhing breathless in the name of God and Gold
Slithers skinless from within her leaden casket mold
Father to watch and Mother to pray, And two angels to bear me sold away

If I should die before I wake, I pray thee lord my soul to take
from spiral chaos I journey on to the ichthys in my Soul
a sea change of ascension through my buried navel hole
nursing my salty bandaged scars
nestled in vessel under saccarify stars
safe in my sandy Virgin manger
hybrid pod sacred chamber
then
I swallow and I swell
crack off my shell of private hell
unravel the myriad layers of horror
unveil the curse
of ultimate sorrow
and there below
in my watery shrine
my skin slips off
in bubbles
divine

Joscelyn Gardner, 1998
In The Chamber of my Birth (a Repeating Voyage to my Self), Taken from The ‘Lips, Sticks and Marks ‘Collective

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"At the Altar of my River Womb"
© Joscelyn Gardner 1999

Laura Hamilton
Jamaica

I make paintings which explore colour, mark making and the physicalities of paint working in an intuitive way making work which is fresh and direct. Abstract marks evolve as result of working and reworking drawings, away from their subject matter. These are sourced from an awareness of architectural and domestic forms; personal obsessions, things small and intimate such as bags , dress patterns,bowls and vases or things larger and all enveloping such as the sky, the sea, towerblocks, shanty shacks, doorways, windows. I combine formal abstract composition with intuitive mark making creating work which has a playful and subtle presence.

I am a Jamaican living abroad, things Caribbean evoke very powerful emotion and memory. This is something I am interested in exploring in my work and I see Big River as an ideal opportunity for this.I have ideas of working in responce to the enviroment without preconceiving too exactly the form my work will take. It will be dictated by what I find and experience . The possibilities that I have in mind now are perhaps making a series of tiny postcard images, focusing on images and impressions from a new yet familiar enviroment whilst also considering the larger space and interacting on a bigger scale, somehow combining the two.

Laura Hamilton

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"Traces 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6"
© Laura Hamilton 1999

Glenda Heyliger
Aruba

When you as a person are part of different continents, or different continents are part of you, the eclectic feelings haunt you, leaving you bare, naked and empty. Only when there is nothing, there can be anything…. For me this state of bareness is a necessity of life.

Living between two continents.

The spirals stand for two continents. They turn in opposite directions. I am from Aruba and lived for a long time in Holland. I felt like I’m squeezed and this feeling left me bare and naked. In this state of mind lies my power, and this power is growing like the spirals. The crown stands for the Dutch monarchy and oppression by all the institutions I have to deal with in my profession. The aloe stands for the trademark of Aruba. Finally I took the aloe back to South Africa, where it was taken from in the first place (300 years ago).

Glenda Heyliger

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"Bed over water "
28.5" x 44.5" x 66"
© Glenda Heyliger 1999

Noritoshi Hirakawa
Japan

In my early childhood in Fukuoka, Japan, there were two goats dwelling in my home.
Sometimes, history tells us the reason of being attracted and how that is connecting with your location of mind to secure as the result. Very often, behind the scene of gaining the attraction is an illusion of transformation, and cruel destruction occurs in reality. But no one wants to see it on the time of being attracted."

Noritoshi Hirakawa, March 17, 1999, New York

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"Belief of Appearance" (Video Installation)
© Noritoshi Hirakawa1999

Remy Jungerman
Suriname

Born in 1959 from mixed parents in Surinam, a former Dutch colony and very multi-cultural society … multi-culturalism is imbedded in my nature. As an artist I want to express my being intrigued by the way objects can change their meaning in different (cultural) contexts, each culture has its own interpretation of e.g., umbrellas, In my work I am interested in the way objects can be stripped from their (traditional) meanings and associations when placed in a new context. In Surinam black umbrellas are used in burial ceremonies by the Javanese. When I visited India in 1997, I was struck by the way (mostly) black umbrellas are carried as part of the body, useful as protection against rain or harsh sunshine.

The way I use materials in my art work relate to this shift of interpretations in a changing society. With these materials I make installations and objects which could be translated into different layers of meaning and experience. Different backgrounds are playing a role in this process: political, social, spiritual, ritual, but also humoristic. A spiritual attitude is always present: I experience the act of creation as a ritual act, and the works of art as the ‘residues’ of this act. In this my Surinam origin cannot be denied.

One of the motives of my work is the frog and toad, as amphibic creatures. This also has its origin in Surinam. Frogs and toads take part of the stories and myths in Surinam. I am specially intrigued by the form of toads flattened under the wheels of a passing car. For me this form is a perfect metaphor for human beings who took the decision to move, taking the risks to undergo a transformation, a process which is not free of danger.

Remy Jungerman

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"Untitled"
© Remy Jungerman 1999

Mario Lewis
Trinidad and Tobago

Like many artists of my generation my work also began at the popular level by the artist showing and disseminating images on the street as T-shirts rather than as paintings in the Port-of-Spain gallery spaces. The idea was self-sufficiency and to create alternative imagery to the imported brand name culture. Since that time I have been fitting together my ideas gained from collaborations with costume designers, architects and video makers.

It is a disjunctive process that cannot be termed ‘formal’ schooling. However, I am determined to accrue a structure that will support an engagement with art practice and ideas that significantly impact to the multi-media approach to my public installations.

My responsibility as an ‘art maker’ is to acknowledge society’s evolution, identify its challenges and promote a cultural value system beneficial and applicable to the needs of all its members.

Mario Lewis, Port of Spain, April 1999

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"De Construction"
Height: 7' 5"
© Mario Lewis 1999

Che Lovelace
Trinidad and Tobago

Informed by and growing out of a post colonial, newly dependent, mass media society, my work is saturated with the residue and the possibilities of encounter. Historical moments in time that have created a dichotomy between preservationist strategies within culture and the more unpredictable progression of cross cultural assertions.

My work seeks to leave behind any self-conscious defensiveness about form, (or content for that matter). The work is concerned with embrace. The embracing of complex layers of a transformational self, reflection of an identity that cannot be contained within neatly packaged standards and cultural conventions. The multiplicity of New World imagery and ideology and the ‘weight’ of the motherlands manifest reinterpretative and redefining tendencies.

Process becomes a subject in my work. My pre-occupation with sewing, with leaving the marks of production reinforces the ability of the new world being to recontextualise images and objects, to outline a space spiritual, ideological, geographical.

My practice emerges out of this syncretic unifying tradition in which the act of mending, of joining and it's visual residue leaves emblems or ways of dealing with a complex world. Not offering all-inclusive answers, but rather showing available paths and options.

I am presenting information, developing historical narratives that lead to our present attitudes, reminders of our blunders and of our mutual responsibilities, all the while decorated by the pulsing aliveness of our semeiologic environment.

Che Lovelace

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Top: "Food and Shelter 1, 2, 3, 4"
13.5" x 14"
Bottom: "Medallions"
8" x 5.5"
© Che Lovelace 1999

Mica Marsh
Trinidad and Tobago

There is a definition of GOD that says… GOD is an Intelligent Sphere, whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. I am at the center. So are you. Each of us is a manifestation of this mystery and each of us radiates its individual truth in varying degrees of lighter to denser frequencies. To render this "radiance" of all things and of the human spirit is this artist’s joyful epiphany.

There is a Sacredness in All of Life. There is a GOD and GODDESS in All of Us. As one creates, one recreates oneself and indeed, like a pebble thrown into a pond, one’s art has a rippling effect on the subliminal mind and the subtler bodies of its waiting audience. It’s for this reason that in many ancient cultures and still-present traditions, the artist is the shaman; the initiator of truth; the stirrer of emotions, the healer of souls. Hers’ is a responsibility that carries both the weight of transparency and the legerity of Divine inspiration.

Mica Marsh

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"12 Tribesmen" (6 on display)
© Mica Marsh 1999

Turunesh Pommell-Raymond
Ethopia/Trinidad and Tobago

I love and hate art. It puts me in touch with the many facets of myself, with honesty. It allows me to enjoy my good sides and love my unusual sides. Art forces me to explore and face the most scary sides of me and exorcise them; and absolutely appreciate and love me for what I am and what I can become.

Turunesh Pommell-Raymond

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Top: "Untitled"
34" x 31"
Bottom: "Untitled 1, 2, 3, 4"
Variable sizes
© Turunesh Pommell-Raymond 1999

Luis Romero
Venezuela

I use two parallel structures in my work: reality and memory. These structures utilise a similar and complex code, and are based on the physical experience of the object and the traces that it leaves on the mind.

Starting with the decontextualisation of the images (visual or oral) and moving towards an unspecified narrative, referring to the personal souvenir more than to the collective imagery or to mass-media, I create temporal and spatial associations of texts, images and moods, in order to develop new relationships within their new environment, reworking new images based on memory.

My work has more to do with ideas than with objects. It serves as pretext for forming my plastic discourse. One needs to understand, to experience life in the street, to observe in a sensitive way the city environment and the venues that it creates. The associations legitimise reality from various points of view. Our eye must not tire in the brief encounter; the work expects even more from its readers, it expects someone who can revalue the image given through an appreciation of its multiple factors.

The work speaks from the inner space of the soul; it hopes to remove the veils from the heart and the mind of the viewer. Life is full of experiences related to art. These contain the sum of all realities belonged to our living. We now realise, once again, that artists are beings who sleep, eat and clothe themselves; who have eyes, love, and sacrifice themselves; and that all these processes are intimately related to their creation.

Perhaps the true meaning of the word "art" is partially related to it all, but in particular to the enrichment of the soul.

Luis Romero, 1999

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From left to right, top to bottom:
"Vine"
"Black Dot"
"Bird"
"Virgen Island"
"Plant"
"Boat"
"Laurel"
"I'm gonna give you some love"
"Die bird II"
© Luis Romero 1999

Irénée Shaw
Trinidad and Tobago

People deprived of their history can make up their own, and what better job can there be for an artist. Shifting through the anxieties of a Post-Colonial society where the divide between myth and actual experience often disintegrates we find ourselves in a unique contemporary space.

The assertion of self and the exploration of the idiocentric and other aspects of our personal psyche and will are what in fact distinguishes us from the boredom one may find in other societies which have been locked in iron clad tradition. They often use this tradition as a standard to which one must defer or rebel.

This process of defining the self is one that has a long history in the region and exists in many forms. When outsiders try to place, evaluate or define us, they often reduce us to easily digestible representations, for example, a "Belle Creole" or spiritual mystic. When we represent ourselves the brew is more complex as the boundaries of cultural practices, signs and their significance and historical context are constantly shifting.

We have never had a problem taking what we need to "play a mas"; the individually created persona in the theatre of the street that is Carnival. Be it a "Red Indian" or a "Fancy Sailor" the representation is inevitably transformed. The original significance of the role played is reconfigured to suit ones personal history, experiences, likes and dislikes.

The creation of spectacle to rival any old Hollywood film is second nature to us in this process and the ultimate challenge for the real performer /creator has always been to assert their individual presence in space. Certainly, in my painting of my self, "Balancing act", the figure and faces loom "larger than life" as the exaggerated gesture carries the role, as it is played, derived from myth and experience.

The small personal obsession of one woman looking at herself is superimposed onto the crucifix; one of societies big issues. Similarly, I have always felt free to use those so called "High Art" methods such as oil painting and combine them with what, had become a big no to the puritanical art world establishment, the use of what they would define as decoration and embellishment. I inform or "contaminate" with the methods and concerns of my singular vision.

Irénée Shaw

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"Clear Head Space"
32" x 32" (each)
© Irenee Shaw 1999

John Stollmeyer
Trinidad and Tobago

Realising that if we want to have a healthy life we must become guardians of the places where we live;

Recognising and celebrating our local connections with land, plants, animals, water and air, as well as human community;

Recovering our links with native traditions and with local systems of trade and production;

Rejecting political boundaries devised by human beings to allocate land ownership and legal responsibilities, which sever our connections to the earth;

Returning to the reality that our lives are joined in a living wholeness with all other species of life;

Respecting the indigenous human cultures that have loved their home places for thousands of years, crafting a life according to the attributes of their specific geography.

Reducing; Reusing; Recycling;

My work is created in as earth-friendly a manner as is humanly possible in our compromised world, an attempt to live more lightly on our mother.

Sovereign Child Spirit
Kairi
John Stollmeyer

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"Alpha and Omega 3D"
88" (diameter)
© John Stollmeyer 1999

"Black Boat"
16' x 8' x 3'
© Vivan Sundaram 1999