Jul 27 - Sept 2, 2023
To All Who Come to This Happy Place: Welcome
Delton Barrett
Kachelle Knowles
Keith Thompson
TERN Gallery is excited to present, To All Who Come to This Happy Place: Welcome, a group exhibition 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.
To All Who Come to This Happy Place: Welcome, 2022
Lavar Munroe, acrylic, spray paint, oil pastels, inherited photos, copper, electrical extension, cords, staples, broken glass, carpet, pendant, earrings, broken pencil and fabric, 54 x 84in., The collection of BahaMar
Delton Barrett
Delton Barrett (b. 1991, Nassau, Bahamas) is a first-generation Jamaican-Bahamian. Barrett’s parents migrated just before his birth, and it was in The Bahamas where he began to learn more about his gifts and the newfound art skills acquired in High School.
Kachelle Knowles
Kachelle Knowles (b. 1990, Nassau, The Bahamas) is a mixed-media artist who explores gender identity, cultural preservation/production, and social relations within the Black community. Knowles’ graphite drawings on paper center portraits of men of the African diaspora, specifically Bahamian men.
Keith Thompson
Keith Thompson (b. 1996, Nassau, Bahamas) is a studio artist, curator, and framer. Thompson’s approach centers his perception of the Bahamian experience and translates this outlook into a painting practice.