It isn't everyday that younger artists like Gilvano Swasey share the same stage with the likes of George Gabb, Pen Cayetano and Yasser Musa but Swasey's 1998 'Contemplating the Revolution' was one of the 29 pieces in The National Collection of Art entitled "29: Artists Works Years."
29: Artists Works Years is a collection of paintings, sculpture, photography and mixed media which feature pieces by 29 artists including Richard Holder, Benjamin Nicholas and Lucky Chiang.
The exhibition which is organized by NICH along with the National Celebrations Commission and has been on a country-wide tour and which ended today in Belize City.
Bill Skinner, Consultant to NICH told Seven News that this is no ordinary exhibition
Bill Skinner, Curator NICH
"We started to discuss having an exhibition for the 29th anniversary and so we decided to go with 29 works of art by 29 artists to celebrate the 29th anniversary of the nation. We have a national collection of art within NICH and so the 29 were chosen from that much larger collection. And we decided to have a range of different mediums so we have photography, painting, and sculpture and then we try to have a range of artist as well from different areas. We are still predominately Belize City heavy but we do have some representation by the districts as well. We decided that a lot of this happens culturally in Belize City but we wanted to get out to the districts and to get to other areas of the country, so as to increase the exposure of the exhibit. So we started in the north; in Corozal in the beginning of June and we pretty much went from north to south. We stopped in Orange Walk, Benque, Dangriga, PG as well as Belmopan before coming here so it was really a chance to get it out and let everyone have the opportunity to see this work. Overall it was very good. A lot of positive feedback, people signed our guest book, gave us their insights and advice and even criticism. But overall it was really fantastic, people were very happy that we made the trip out there and that we brought and we shared this artwork with them."
Gilvano Swasey, Curatot and Artist
"Traditionally exhibitions in Belize will be mainly solo exhibits. It will just be the artist with all his works, or he might do a group exhibit 1 or 2 and it will be similar themes but it's the first time it's put in a historical context. Like I said this is the national collection, it's just a portion of what has been collected through NICH and it's basically showing where we stand as artists, as creative people, what images we have been capturing, there's images of the market scene from the 70s. There are images of Belizean characters, there is photographic stuff, there is contemporary works, and there are installations. So it's like a snapshot of what makes Belize creative. It's actually a piece that I did in 1998 which is a very long time ago."
The Exhibition opens tomorrow at the Bliss Center for the Performing Arts and runs through to Friday September 24th.
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