PAINT LIKE THE SWALLOW SINGS AT KETTLES YARD
Paul Dash Masked Stick-Lick Fighters
Vibrant and vital , here is an exhibition designed to look at Carnival in all its forms. The tradition weaves its way through Catholic Europe, the Feast of Fools, Bachanalia and Masked Balls - all rooted deep in history. The strength of the rituals and the colour of the events virtually leaps off the walls of conservative Cambridge’s Kettles Yard . It was the beginning of emancipation that allowed Caribbean once enslaved peoples to even participate As enslaved people they were forbidden.. Twenty eight artists across several centuries celebrate this phenomenon of fable. But it is the three Caribbean artists Paul Dash Errol Lloyd and John Lyons who shape the gallery experience.
Paul Dash ‘ Carnival Dancers Mingle’
I had the rare chance of a tour around Paul Dash’s pictures for this dazzling show . He is an artist relaxed and cool about the limelight but he was bowled over to find himself sharing a wall with the brilliant work of Breughel nearly six hundred years after that master of demotic art painted his crowded study of the riotous village feat to honour their local saints’ days. Paul Dash is one of the most prominent artists of his time but he is delighted with the juxtapositon.
A graduate of Chelsea School of Art and the admired Goldsmiths College, he looked mildly stunned to see his work displayed next to Breughel’s. We gazed at the medieval painter’s carnival-style fun filled picture; it positively pullulates with life “ Even the music feels alive” Paul remarked as he looked at the collection of players and instruments and as our eyes wandered around the canvas , he pointed out the details the artist had chosen to include from theatre performance to subversive romantic encounters.
“ I cannot really believe it. “ Paul sighed in a dazed kind of way at the first sight of the enormous masterpiece of medieval times next to his own intricately worked studies of Carnival in the Caribbean “ The more you look at this painting the more you see.”
A Village Festival with a Theatrical Performance and a Procession in Honour of St. Hubert and St. Anthony by Pieter Brueghel the Longer 1564
We moved on to his own Stick Lick figures grouped in a striking painting across the wall from Breughel. These Carnival performers are masked in white “ And they all carry sticks” Paul explains “ Not to attack, they are not swords, but as symbols of defiance, the sticks mean they, these black Caribbeans people are ready to stand up for who they are and to defend themselves” The Carnivallers sport the elaborate costumes of centuries gone by, but have their own identity to proclaim “ Carnival comes down the ages, Paul says ‘ I have been to Brazil and Argentina to see the amazing displays they put on. And from Spain comes a great version of Carnival. This year we are going to Valencia for the Easter Festival, it is apparently amazing, like Cadiz which we have seen.Caribbean Carnival includes its European ancestry. In some of my pictures I show figures in conical hats. It is a hint of the Klu Klux Klan , a reminder they are still around in some way.”
As we move on to other pictures, Paul explains how very complex and time consuming are the gouache studies he executes: we look together deeply into them, the confusion even chaos of Carnival emerges.
“ The street is where many people in the world go to express themselves’ Paul remarks, ‘ It is often all they have and they make it their own space’
Kettles Yard have certainly made a marvellous space for this latest joyous celebratory show, And interspersed Caribbean artists with others from the Fitzwilliam Museum , some ( like the Breughel) more deserving of inclusion than others . Who could match for instance Errol Lloyd’s exuberant collage style oil painting below ?
It truly does deserve a visit. One dimension is missing nevertheless -I suggested to the artist that music would be an obvious addition to lift the spirit even further. Too obvious? The paintings have to sing and play for themselves and of course they do.
Errol Lloyd Carnival
