Exhibitions
27 July 2023 - 02 September 2023
Tern Gallery / Nassau, Bahamas
Keith Thompson, "Brotherly connection". Courtesy of Tern Gallery.
To All Who Come to This Happy Place: Welcome, is a group exhibition at Tern Gallery 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.
The exhibition To All Who Come to This Happy Place: Welcome—much like the multi-media work after which it is titled—features drawing, painting, and photographs and also highlights the importance of mentorship within our creative community.
Munroe’s painting, To All Who Come to This Happy Place: Welcome (2022), was initially made for the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (NAGB)’s 10th National Exhibition (NE10) and is now in the Baha Mar collection. This large-scale mixed-media work is made of acrylic, spray paint, oil pastels, inherited photos, copper, electrical extension, cords, staples, broken glass, carpet, pendant, earrings, broken pencil and fabric on canvas. While a painter at heart, Munroe is known to disrupt the canvas by adding and accruing personal items or detritus. He also cuts and rips the canvas, often producing unlikely shapes or a damaged or misshapen surface. Conceptually, Munroe’s practice draws on his childhood experiences growing up in The Bahamas—specifically Grants Town, Nassau, an underserved historically Black settlement—his familial bonds and his relationship with the landscape and the wider African diaspora.
The emerging artists Delton Barrett, Kachelle Knowles and Keith Thompson all explore similar themes within their individual yet varied disciplines.
TERN Gallery Mahogany Hill, Western Road Nassau, The Bahamas info@terngallery.com / +1 242 698 6300 ext 450 Website