Contemporary artists on display at the Belisle Art Gallery
A prolific art exhibit is currently hung at Belisle Art Gallery. The curator had scoured the country for artists who are constantly working to improve their trade. Some of the faces have been on display before but all of the emergent artists are hungry to share their work. Some pieces are vibrant and others carry a bold message but News Five’s Jose Sanchez found out that passion was the common ground for all the artists that are participating in the show called the Young, Gifted and Restless.
Jose Sanchez, Reporting
Young Gifted and Restless is the title of an art exhibit that Curator, Gilvano Swasey, says accurately represents five artists that are consumed by their passion.
Gilvano Swasey
Gilvano Swasey, Curator
“The idea was to get a feel of the youths and artists of today and even some artists that have been painting for a while out of the spotlight, what they were going through. I have been working a lot with the young artists like Briheda, I know a bit from Daniel; his work before and Rick, I had met him but more as a subject of Briheda’s work not an artist. Gifted, I picked that because of the style and talent that they had; restless…I’ve been doing a lot of work with them and I realize that they don’t stop. Very beautiful there is no end to their madness. The concept was mainly…whenever I do a show, a lot of things that the audience don’t understand is process. It’s great, it’s wonderful and that’s where the comments lay. I would like the audience to understand what it takes to put them together.”
Briheda Haylock
The works of Isaiah Nicholas, mirrors the departed soul of his father Benjamin. Matea’s works are volcanic explosions cut by a palette knife on paper. Other installation pieces utilize found objects and toys to add to a current discourse on social issues, while the torsos of Briheda Haylock’s mannequins each tell a different tale.
Briheda Haylock, Artist
“This time around I’ve decided to use mannequins. I was experimenting and it was something that I’ve always wanted to work with. This is half of a mannequin. I’m still working on getting the full mannequin. The torsos, I drilled them onto a backboard and decorated each one individually. That one is about having a broken heart…I believe once
you break someone’s heart, they are no longer the same. I find that it is very humorous when I added the flowers on her stomach. For me that was symbolizes death. It’s like you’re dead.”
Alex Sanker, Artist
Alex Sanker
“A little bit of reality, a little bit of artwork that people could relate to. Most of my paintings depict old Belize. And why I love the beauty about the word old Belize is that we notice for a fact that probably the next twenty-thirty years, a lot of these old sceneries like an old wooden house with a zinc fence won’t be around anymore. So I tried to capture those type of sceneries right now so that twenty, thirty, fifty years from now people can really appreciate how Belize used to be, the way we knew it, the way we grew up knowing Belize.”
Gilvano Swasey
“My main goal in this whole exhibit putting it together as the curator and working with the different talents was to bring out things that were hidden or that are fresh. For example the works of Daniel Velasquez and Rick Galvez, they are more like under art. Their stuff are hidden in their houses, under their beds; they are not stuff that are out in the public. And Briheda’s work, even though she has been in media it is still new. In a sense. Some people try to grasp it; some see it as rebellious youth stuff and then some people understand it. The work of Alex Sanker, has a bit of nostalgia like when you were a child rungin through the zinc, catching makala. Now everything is very concrete. Isaiah Nicholas, his work captures something nostalgia from his father of a Garifuna culture where they have been, where they still are, where they want to go and where they are going. Then you have works of Matea…where her style is completely different. She works on a smaller scale but against her colors and techniques is not traditional. And so that is the main thing to see where artists are today. We are not only doing crafting any more we are doing lot of others things: contemporary art, installation art, assemblage, super-realism, illustrative stuff; it is a mixture of everything.”
Reporting for News Five, Jose Sanchez.
The show, which opened on Wednesday, will remain open until the end of the month.
