Apologies for cross posting.
Now and Coming Time: A Symposium on Aubrey Williams and the Textual and Visual Arts of Guyana and the Caribbean
Saturday, 26 April 2014
English Faculty, University of Cambridge
Contact: Tim Cribb ([log in to unmask])
Website: www.english.cam.ac.uk/nct<http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/nct>
In 2013, courtesy of the trustees of the Williams estate and October Gallery, the English Faculty Library at the University of Cambridge installed two paintings by the Guyanese artist, Aubrey Williams (1926-1990). From one of his major series, The Olmec Maya: Now & Coming Time, the paintings have acted as a concrete signal of an increase in attention to the Caribbean and its cultures at Cambridge; their arrival just one of a series of events that have marked an expanded interest in Guyanese and Caribbean arts across the country since the turn of the century.
This symposium seeks to draw on this recent upsurge in attention to Caribbean visual and textual arts, both to celebrate the arrival of Williams’ paintings at Cambridge and to reflect on the impact of Caribbean artists, in all media, on the world.
Aubrey Williams was a typical Caribbean artist in the diversity of his interests: he trained first as an Agricultural Officer and worked for two years with Warrau Indians in the rainforests of Guyana, he undertook independent studies of the petroglyphs and the archaeology of the Maya, and he was a member of the Royal Astronomical Society and a keen amateur observer. This symposium draws together a range of scholars to reflect the constellation of influences that worked together to create his, and others’, Caribbean artists’ aesthetics. In particular, it is honoured to feature a contribution offered by Williams’ countryman, the novelist Wilson Harris.
Panel presentations will touch the following topics:
* Critical Approaches to Caribbean Visual Culture
* Visual Art and Caribbean Literature
* Painting, Writing and Environment in Guyana and the Caribbean
* Curating Caribbean Art through the Decades
Scheduled guests and speakers include:
Guests of honour Maridowa Williams and Rasheed Araeen (Founding Editor, Third Text); Caribbean arts historians Anne Walmsley, Mel Gooding, Guy Brett, Andrew Dempsey and Leon Wainwright; art critics Andrew Lambirth and Jonathan Jones; literary scholars Michael Gilkes, Louis James and Gemma Robinson; astronomer Robin Catchpol; curators Chili Hawes (October Gallery), Adrian Glew (Tate Britain) and Reyahn King (Walker, Liverpool); and Kobena Mercer (Yale).
The symposium ends with a screening of a feature film about Williams’ work, The Mark of the Hand (Dir. Imruh Bakari, 1986), and features two exhibitions of his paintings at the Cambridge English Faculty and Churchill College, respectively.
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