On View
Nov 21, 2024 - Jan 4, 2025
I See All The Way Back To Where I’m Supposed To See
April Bey
TERN is proud to present, I See All The Way Back To Where I’m Supposed To See, by Bahamian visual artist April Bey. April Bey is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice presents Afro-futuristic and Afro-surrealist representations of her fictitious planet, Atlantica. Each installation by Bey gives insight into another dimension of Atlantica. For this exhibition, Bey takes us through the mysticism of “Magical Blue Holes found around the planet Earth”, the space stations found in those blue holes, and “Atlantica Magazine” lead images and headlines.
I See All The Way Back To Where I’m Supposed To See is on view from November 21st, 2024 to January 4th, 2025 with an opening reception on Thursday, November 21st from 6pm to 8pm.
Past Exhibition
Sept 5 - Oct 19, 2024
Gesture of The Unseen
Debra Cartwright
John Reno Jackson
Demetrius Wilson
Gestures of the Unseen is an abstract and semi-abstract painting show bringing together stories of migration, memory and history. With an anchor artwork by the late Bahamian-American artist Purvis Young (1943-2010), this exhibition connects three emerging artists and shows their own relationships with islands across the Caribbean: Debra Cartwright (Bahamas-USA), John Reno Jackson (Cayman Islands) and Demetrius Wilson (Haiti-USA).
The Caribbean is habitually aligned with realism, resulting in figurative painting and the desire to portray the geographical natural beauty of our surroundings. However, there is also a strong tradition of non-representational abstract and representational abstract works, often created as an offshoot of spiritual practice or by self-taught artists that therefore remain less acknowledged or appreciated. With a complex history of movement both in and out of the region—from the historic trauma of the transatlantic slave trade, to the quest for a better life through migration, to the contemporary brain drain—we become more diasporic and lose track of our stories. Shared histories and connections sink into obscurity only to resurface in disparate places, connected by the invisible umbilical cord: Gestures of the Unseen aims to reclaim and reconnect both people and practice.
Past Exhibitions
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SUMMER SUMMER
SUMMER SUMMER is a group exhibition focused on abstract figuration within three distinctive Caribbean practices. The exhibiting artists are Leonardo Benzant (Dominican-American), Ronald Cyrille (Guadeloupe), and Steven Schmid (The Bahamas). SUMMER SUMMER focuses on the artists’ unfettered yet encompassed figurative approach in their respective mediums.
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Carry
Carry is a solo exhibition by Bahamian painter, Tessa Whitehead. Known for her prolific large-scale oil paintings, Whitehead’s practice centers the landscape as a metaphor for her interpersonal relationships. Our first solo exhibition by Whitehead, Carry explores themes of motherhood, femininity, and the landscape through oil paintings and mixed media drawings.
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In Relation
In Relation is a group exhibition featuring Caribbean artists, Gherdai Hassell, Simon Tatum, and Drew Weech. This exhibition brings together three practices from the Anglophone Caribbean to illuminate intimacy within the personal and the political. Each artist grounds their work in personal anecdotes that push their audience to the ever-present politics of our existence within the Global North; however, they allow tenderness and intimacy to remain in place. In Relation gives breath to this dichotomy.
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One of The Boys
One of The Boys is a solo exhibition by Cydne Jasmin Coleby exploring the dynamic of local bars in our community. Cydne Jasmin Coleby is a Bahamian digital and mixed media collage artist; for One of The Boys, Coleby created works on panel that rendered images from a video her father recorded in his regular haunt in the 1990s and she imbedded images of herself in the works.
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Prix Pictet Human
Prix Pictet Human showcases the work of twelve outstanding photographers shortlisted for the tenth cycle of the award. Their work constitutes a powerful exploration of the various facets of the theme Human. In their own unique way, each of the shortlisted photographers explores our shared humanity and the vast spectrum of our interactions with the world. The shortlisted portfolios span documentary, portraiture, landscape, and studies of light and process, and explore issues ranging from the plight of indigenous peoples, conflict, childhood, the collapse of economic processes, to the traces of human habitation and industrial development, gang violence, border lands, and migration.
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Evidence of Possibility
Evidence of Possibility is a two-person exhibition by regional artists, Mark King and Rodell Warner. Mark King is a Barbadian interdisciplinary artist working in photography, installation, fashion, and sculpture. Rodell Warner is a Trinidadian artist working primarily in new media and photography, whose works assume various forms in a process of exploration and rediscovery. Together, King and Warner present the “evidence of possibility”, pushing each other past the boundaries of their respective practices at the intersection of fine art, research, and technology.
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To All Who Come to This Happy Place: Welcome
To All Who Come to This Happy Place: Welcome, a group exhibition featuring three emerging Bahamian artists, Delton Barrett, Kachelle Knowles and Keith Thompson. This exhibition centers the thematic assertion of internationally known Bahamian artist Lavar Munroe’s eponymous painting, created in 2022, and provides space for the emerging artists’ practice to be in conversation with Munroe’s.
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Balancing Act
Balancing Act is a two-person show featuring new work by Bahamian artists, Jodi Minnis and Drew Weech. The artists—who both hail from Nassau, New Providence, The Bahamas—were paired together for their keen acuity, as both observe their environment with consideration, clarity and critique.
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Old Week Home
Old Week Home is a solo exhibition by Bahamian visual artist, Anina Major. The artist, who works primarily in ceramics and installation, investigates the relationships between self and place as a way of cultivating moments of reflection and a sense of belonging. “Old Week Home” Major’s first solo exhibition in her hometown Nassau, reflects upon childhood nostalgia, and celebrates the role of women in society, specifically those within the Bahamian straw industry.
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In This House is a Home
In this house is a home..., is a solo exhibition of new paintings, drawings and sculptures by the artist Heino Schmid, curated by Jodi Minnis. Born and raised in Nassau, Schmid’s work is heavily drawings based but will often include objects from the landscape—poinciana pods, dried coconut husks, palm leaves, scraps of wood and various building materials—to create bold and forceful installations.
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Elements
Elements is a two-person exhibition by ceramicists Florence St. George and Freya Bramble-Carter. Both British artists with ties to The Bahamas and Guyana, the duo drew inspiration from their mutual love of our land and sea to create this body of work. This collaborative collection is a celebration of friendship, the elements and The Bahamas. For this exhibition, Florence and Freya created vessels that are rooted in its locale with foraged clay from the East End of Grand Bahama, an island in the northwestern Bahamas. After waiting over three years for the clay to mature, Florence and Freya reconnected this summer in Grand Bahama to engage in a two-week intensive working session.
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In Situ
In Situ is a solo exhibition by Melissa Alcena, a Bahamian photographer. In Situ represents the dichotomy of Alcena’s approach as a documentarian photographer and fine art photographer who centers Bahamians in their totality. The exhibition comprises over twenty (20) photographs spanning Alcena’s practice over the past five years.
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Leisure Aesthetics
Leisure Aesthetics is the first major solo exhibition by Blue Curry in his birthplace of Nassau, The Bahamas. Curry will intervene in the gallery space to bring his unique observation on the clichés that continue to frame the Caribbean imaginary and its consumption.
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FIVE: An Emerging Artist Exhibition
FIVE is an exhibition supporting the work of emerging Bahamian artists, Brent Fox, Amaani Hepburn, Dyah Neilson, Matthew Rahming, and Keith Thompson. This exhibition aims to highlight the work of painters, sculptors, and printmakers whose work expands and defies our ideas of “island-life” and pushes our understanding of the limitations of visibility.
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A Deep Haunting
A Deep Haunting, is a solo exhibition of new paintings by the artist Leasho Johnson. Born and raised in Jamaica, Johnson’s work reconfigures mythic archetypes to evoke embodiments of queerness. Description goes here
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Colonial Swag
Colonial Swag is a solo exhibition of paintings, tapestries and mixed media by artist April Bey. Raised in Nassau on the island of New Providence in The Bahamas and currently residing in Los Angeles, Bey’s interdisciplinary work combines American and Bahamian visual culture and contemporary pop culture into potent and imaginative social critique.
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Stick It
Stick It is a collage-based exhibition featuring four artists: Cydne Jasmin Coleby, Ronald Cyrille, Gherdai Hassell, and Steven Schmid. Within this collecting and re-presenting, each artist weaves their histories and curiosities into the fabric of the work, giving space for the audience to present their own.
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Splinters and Shards
In this new body of work, Beadle combines natural and manufactured materials to create pieces that reference and warp their original forms. Beadle, who trained as a painter and printmaker, applies a similar attitude toward materiality in these sculptures. These new works are examples of Beadle’s ability to merge painting, sculpture and installation, creating a rich sense of line, dimension and texture.
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The Other Side of the Pentaprism
The pentaprism is a five-faced reflective surface that refracts light at a 90 degree angle. This type of prism is used in a traditional single-lens reflex camera, re-inverting the image in the viewfinder that is sent to the eye by the camera’s lens. The lens initially reverses the image both vertically and laterally and the prism then re-inverts it. Hence, the image that is received by your brain has been transformed in order to deliver you a version of “reality.”
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Notions of Self
Notions of Self is a group exhibition featuring artwork from Leasho Johnson, Dominique Knowles, Heino Schmid and Tessa Whitehead. Notions of Self is an investigation of self-hood and defining identity within a neo-colonial space.
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Augmented Archives
In Augmented Archives, Warner has examined the intersection of art, photography, and technology, exploring the ways in which imagery and information are experienced and disseminated. Using digital animation and sounds, Warner seeks to augment the apparent idyllic narrative presented to the viewer, challenging the viewers relationship to visual representation of cultures, while also unveiling the inherent underlying complications and bias within the documentation and representation of history.
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Inherited Values
Inherited Values looks to the straw industry and Mortimer’s Candy Kitchen through the work of Anina Major and Kendra Frorup. Both artists utilise memory and cultural value to illustrate contemporary understandings of these micro-economies and, within their investigations, lie possible solutions for the endurance of historical, consequential, and modest businesses.