Category: Exhibitions

Flotsam and Jetsam: The Cost of Modern Living

For over 50 years April has been designated Earth Month – a yearly pause in the calendar to encourage us to reflect on the state of our planet and take stock of humanity’s impact upon it. Established in 1970 with a mission to “diversify, educate and activate the environmental movement worldwide“, the organisation has since immobilised an estimated 1 billion individuals from 192 countries to advocate for the future of our planet. 

The theme for 2022 is Invest In Our Planet, which encourages communities to come together to preserve and protect the earth. This theme is also at the core of Flotsam and Jetsam: The Cost of Modern Living, a photographic exhibition by Meredith Andrews, which closes in the BNG Project Space at the end of this month.

The striking exhibition, which is produced by the Bermuda National Gallery in collaboration with Keep Bermuda Beautiful (KBB), looks at the environmental impact of life in the 21st century and celebrates the Bermuda government’s proposal to ban single use plastics by the end of 2025. 

This exhibition is sponsored by Zurich Bermuda (a member of the Zurich Insurance Group).     

Click here to read the exhibition catalogue.

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Limited Fine Art Edition Prints

As part of a fundraising programme, we have released a series of limited edition fine art prints by Meredith Andrews to accompany Flotsam and Jetsam: The Cost of Modern Living. The initiative, which has seen prints bought for both private and corporate collections, including the Green family, Clarien, Conduit Re and Butterfield Bank, has so far raised $30,000, with proceeds go to Bermuda National Gallery and Keep Bermuda Beautiful. 

Help us raise more for these two registered charities by purchasing a print today. A limited edition of 20 fine art prints of each artwork in the exhibition, numbered and signed by the artist, are available to purchase, priced at $250. Size 16 x 20, unframed. 

A very limited number of large scale prints, sized 28 x 36 in, are also available to purchase, with price on request from director@bng.bm.

Click here to purchase a print. 

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Celebrate Earth Day at BNG

Join us on Thursday, April 21 to celebrate Earth Day and the close of Flotsam and Jetsam: The Cost of Modern Living.

Join us for drinks reception and private viewing of the exhibition at 5pm, followed by Meredith Andrews in conversation with BNG Executive Director Peter Lapsley and KBB board member and the Waste Education and Enforcement Officer for the Waste Management Section of the Ministry of Public Works, Vanese Flood Gordon. 

Tickets are $10 for BNG members, $20 for non-members. Drinks at 5pm, followed by the panel discussion at 6pm. 

Click here to register. 

Spaces are limited and tickets must be purchased in advance. 

New Exhibitions

We are excited to announce the opening of two new exhibitions this week: Our People, Our Places, Our Stories: The African Collection, on display in the Humann and Young Galleries, and Testing Boundaries: In the Studio with Nancy Valentine and Christina Hutchings, on display in the Upper Mezzanine. 

BNG Members get exclusive preview access fromThursday, February 17 through to Saturday February 19. The gallery is open 10am-4pm on Thursday and Friday and 10am – 2pm on Saturday. 

If you are not currently a member, you can sign up for a BNG membership at a discount of 30% to celebrate our 30th anniversary year (valid through to March 2023). 

Private tours of the new exhibitions can be arranged by appointment. Please email director@bng.bm. 

We will be hosting a members only drinks reception on the evening Thursday, February 24 to celebrate the opening of the new exhibitions. Invitations will be sent directly to members later this week. 

The exhibitions will open to the public on Tuesday, February 22 and will run through until June. 

This is your last chance to see Illusion and Abstraction: Capturing the Landscape and The Shadow Land: Cape Dorset Prints from the Bacardi Collection, which will be closing on Saturday, January 22.

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Illusion and Abstraction

Illusion & Abstraction: Capturing the Landscape looks at how the landscape, once taken for granted, has taken on new meaning and re-ignited our imagination as we continue to navigate the Coronavirus pandemic and the ensuing travel restrictions. 

Curated by Mitchell Klink, the exhibition provides the opportunity to see how others experience our shared world and encourages us to consider other perspectives; and, perhaps, see the world anew ourselves.

The exhibition is supported by SolTerra Landscape and Design with education programming sponsored by AXIS. 

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The Shadow Land

Focusing on stone cut prints from the 1960s, The Shadow Land: Cape Dorset Prints from the Bacardi Collection presents artworks produced by the first generation of full time Inuit artists, including Kenojuak Ashevak and Pitseolak Ashoona, two of Canada’s most esteemed artists. 

Produced in Cape Dorset, Nunavut, in the Arctic Territories of Canada, which is considered the epicenter of printmaking and contemporary Inuit art, the exhibition presents a visual history of their culture and captures the strong bonds that the Inuit share with their ancestral homelands.

The exhibition is sponsored by Bacardi Limited with support from the Canadian Consul.

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BNG Kids Activity Books

BNG Kids Activity Books to accompany both Illusion & Abstraction: Capturing the Landscape and The Shadow Land: Cape Dorset Prints from the Bacardi Collection are available in the gallery and can also be downloaded on the exhibition pages.

The booklets, which are free, encourage children aged 11 to 14 to explore the exhibitions independently and learn through art. 

By Meredith Andrews

As part of a fundraising programme, a series of limited edition fine art prints have been produced to accompany Flotsam and Jetsam: The Cost of Modern Living by Meredith Andrews. Proceeds benefit Bermuda National Gallery and Keep Bermuda Beautiful.

Limited edition archival prints of each artwork in the exhibition are available to purchase for $250 each (16 x 20 in unframed). Each one is numbered and signed by the artist.

Click here to shop.

An edition of 3 large scale prints, sized 28 x 36 in, are also available to purchase, with price on request from director@bng.bm. 

Now Open in BNG Project Space

Produced by Bermuda National Gallery in collaboration with Keep Bermuda Beautiful (KBB) to celebrate the launch of a public consultation process on the proposed ban of single use plastics by the Bermuda government, Flotsam and Jetsam by Meredith Andrews is a stark reminder of the cost of modern living.

In 2020 KBB cleared 22,250 pounds of litter and illegally dumped waste from locations across Bermuda. Much of this was generated on island, where it is estimated that 85% of litter is intentionally discarded. Bermuda also sits within one of the world’s largest oceanic garbage patches, where four major currents in the North Atlantic force marine debris into an accumulation of floating trash the size Texas.

This is made up of a large swathe of harmful micro plastics, as well as larger items such as bottles and discarded fishing gear. KBB have recorded growing numbers of plastic octopus pots reaching our shores all the way from Africa, as well as lobster trap lids from the Gulf of Mexico and the Eastern Seaboard.

Here, Meredith Andrews turns our attention to intrinsic everyday items – a broken hair comb, a lost football and forgotten toys – reminding us of the short life span of these plastic objects and the implications of using them and discarding them.

It is estimated that one third of all plastic waste ends up in nature where it will never fully break down. These striking collages, each one made up of items that the artist has collected along Bermuda’s shoreline, create beauty out of chaos and bring to the forefront the ramifications of the 21^st century’s throwaway culture.

Flotsam and Jetsam: The Cost of Modern Living is sponsored by Zurich Bermuda. With support from Colourlab and Frameworks.

The Shadow Land

We have launched a new, immersive digital walkthrough of the The Shadow Land: Cape Dorset Prints from the Bacardi Collection. This unique, 360 degree experience is generously supported by the Canadian Consul.

The exhibition presents artworks produced by the first generation of full time Inuit artists based at Cape Dorset. The settlement, which is situated in Canada’s Arctic Territories, is considered to the epicentre of contemporary Inuit art. The works, which were collected by Bacardi’s Canadian office in the 1970s, include prints by Kenojuak Ashevak (1927-2013) and Pitseolak Ashoona (1904-1983), two of Canada’s most esteemed artists.

We recently welcomed the Honorary Consul of Canada in Bermuda, Isabelle Ramsay-Brackstone, to the gallery (pictured above with BNG Executive Director Peter Lapsley. She said: “Canada’s cultural contributions are a big part of who we are as a people and what we value as a country. The Cape Dorset exhibition beautifully highlights our diversity of voices and we’re happy to see this art shared at the Bermuda National Gallery.”

Click here to explore the digital walkthrough. 

The Shadow Land: Cape Dorset Prints from the Bacardi Collection is on display through to the end of the year. 

U.S. Consul Grissette

We recently welcomed U.S. Consul General Grissette to the gallery for a private tour led by Bermuda National Gallery Executive Director Peter Lapsley and Chairman Gary Phillips.⠀

She explored our current exhibitions: Illusion & Abstraction: Capturing the Landscape (above), I Am Because You Are by Gherdai Hassell (below), The Shadow Land: Cape Dorset Prints from the Bacardi Collection, In Dark Seas: Swimming with Sea Butterflies and A Source of Inspiration: St George’s Through the BNG Collection. 

Current Exhibitions

We have been hard at work behind the scenes at the gallery and are pleased to now have a total of 5 exhibitions on display. In Dark Seas: Swimming with Sea Butterflies is our newest exhibition, now open in the BNG Project Space and produced in collaboration with BIOS.

We also recently opened The Shadow Land: Cape Dorset Prints from the Bacardi Collection in the Upper Mezzanine Gallery. The exhibition, which will be open through to the end of the year, presents a selection of artworks from the company’s private collection. 

If you haven’t yet seen Gherdai Hassell’s first solo exhibition,I Am Because You Are, we urge you to do so. It is a unique experience, and the show, which is currently on display in the Watlington Room, will be closing at the end of September.

On display in the Humann and Young Galleries through to October is Illusion & Abstraction: Capturing the Landscape, which examines the ways in which artists, both contemporary and historical, have both faithfully translated and refracted the landscape. 

Focusing on Bermuda works from our permanent collection, A Source of Inspiration: St George’s as Seen Through the BNG Collection, was curated by Alice Moniz as part of the BNG Internship Programme and is currently on display in the Ondaatje Wing. 

Finally, don’t forget to pop into the Par-La-Ville Sculpture Park, a joint project between BNG and the Corporation of Hamilton, situated in the Queen Elizabeth Park in the centre of Hamilton. There are a number of artworks on display throughout the grounds, which form part of Bermuda’s National Sculpture Collection.

Admission is $5 for adults, free for BNG members, seniors, students and NARM members.

Opening hours:                                                   
Monday closed                                                 
Tuesday to Friday 10am – 4pm                        
Saturday 10am – 2pm