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‘Diverse’ seems to be the word that best describes this year’s Bacardi Limited Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary Bermuda Art. At least that’s what the sponsors, artists and gallery curator say.

The Biennial 2006 opens to the public on Friday, April 21, and features 83 works from 50 Bermudian and resident artists. The collection includes video installations, conceptual works and sculptures, paintings, drawings and photography.

Bermuda National Gallery director Laura Gorham said: “The vision of the BNG in staging the first Biennial in 1994 was to not only seek to recognize living Bermuda artists but also to encourage and challenge them to create work that could stand comparison with work on an international level.”

BNG curator David Mitchell agreed: “There is a very high standard of art here. The international jurors often come expecting to see ‘island art’, but they don’t… This exhibition shows the diversity and quality of local art in a whole range of mediums and styles.”

Three dimensional

Take Katherine Harriott’s Red for example. This three-dimensional piece includes a life-size red dress made of screen wire suspended inside a roughly six-feet tall box, also made of screen wire. Embroidered in red needlepoint on the sides of the box are the words of a poem — a poem written by the artist’s sister, Margie Harriott, who also has artwork on display for the first time at this year’s Biennial.

This is the second time Katherine Harriott’s art has appeared in the exhibition. She works at the Women’s Resource Centre, so her artwork usually reflects feminist issues from her point of view.

Facing Red is something completely different. Graham Foster’s Golden Ocean is a large painting that features about 200 different fish — real and make-believe — swimming in a golden ocean. Men walk on tightropes above the water. Foster said a Hindu saying that depicts heaven as a golden ocean was the inspiration behind the piece.

“When we die our souls fall into the golden ocean, and we become one and the same as the Creator. The tightrope walkers are forging their way through the trials and tribulations of life… Some people fall off and some people make it to the end,” he explained.

Foster said he worked on the piece while watching his young son — he painted when his son napped.

But he confessed he was sick of painting fish by the time he finished. (There are between 200 and 300 of them.)

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