Seein’ Sperrit

Seein’ Sperrit is a two-person exhibtion with Bahamian artist Alexandria Robinson and Jamaican artist Richard Nattoo exploring themes of masquerading, spirituality, land degradation, and reclamation. This exhibition marks both artists’ inaugural presentation with TERN Gallery, and Nattoo’s first exhibition in The Bahamas.

Alexandria Robinson (b. 1996, Nassau, The Bahamas) is an emerging visual artist whose practice ranges from painting to metal sculpture to performance. Living and working in The Bahamas, Robinson’s practice is “rooted in a Pan-African lineage that bridges the Caribbean, North America, and the African continent” through figuration and history painting. For this exhibition, Robinson investigates the effects of land development and urbanization on spirit and plant life. She asserts that the consistent destruction of nature to accommodate human expansion wears away at the human spirit while exploiting the ancient spirit of nature. Through her oil paintings on patinated steel, she weaves Biblical references, indigenous ideologies, and other iconography to render the transcendence of spirit and nature in the face of destruction.

Richard Nattoo (b. 1993, Spanish Town, Jamaica) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice centers spirituality and magical realism through a Caribbean lens. Nattoo’s paintings render his “Majic World,” where “ancestry, spirituality, majic, and youth collide into a multilayered song.” He researched masquerading and processional parades in the Caribbean for this exhibition, landing at Jonkonnu (Jamaica’s parade). Nattoo decenters the colonial gaze on Jonkonnu and elevates characters like Pitchy Patchy, Cow Head, and King and Queen, into his own ethereal world where they march under the moonlight. His watercolour paintings meld landscape, spirit, majic, and river water into beautiful compositions carried by his signature “blue” aesthetic.

Seein’ Sperrit is a collection of watercolour and oil paintings influenced by the elements–Robinson’s steelworks patinaed by the atmosphere and Nattoo’s paintings created with river water. Each artist carefully considers their relationship with land, spirit, history, and our futures as they advocate for the preservation of the totality of our beings.