The Olmec-Maya And Now
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The Olmec-Maya And Now
''The Olmec-Maya and Now'' (1981–1985) is a series of large, oil-on-canvas paintings by Aubrey Williams. The series grew out of Williams' enduring interest in pre-Columbian cultures of the indigenous peoples of the Americas (he himself claimed Carib ancestry). It explores parallels between Olmec and Maya civilizations and contemporary global culture, focusing in particular on the threat of rapid demise and self-destruction. Background Williams' interest in the pre-Columbian cultures of the Americas first developed while he was living and working among the Warao people in the north-west region of Guyana (now Region One) in the 1940s. Although he had been painting and drawing for many years, he claimed that it was among the Warao that he "discovered imelf as an artist" and "started to understand what art really is". This experience triggered an involvement with pre-Columbian art and artefacts that he described in 1987 as "the core of his artistic activity". Williams found a ...
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Aubrey Williams
Aubrey Williams (8 May 1926 – 17 April 1990) was a Guyanese artist. He was best known for his large, oil-on-canvas paintings, which combine elements of abstract expressionism with forms, images and symbols inspired by the pre-Columbian art of indigenous peoples of the Americas. Born in Georgetown, Guyana, Georgetown in British Guiana (now Guyana), Williams began drawing and painting at an early age. He received informal art tutoring from the age of three, and joined the Working People's Art Class at the age of 12. After training as an Agronomy, agronomist he worked as an Agricultural Field Officer for eight years, initially on the sugar plantations of the East Coast and later in the North-West region of the country—an area inhabited primarily by the indigenous Warao people. His time among the Warao had a dramatic impact on his artistic approach, and initiated the complex obsession with pre-Columbian arts and cultures that ran throughout his artistic career. Williams left ...
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Shostakovich (1969-1981)
''Shostakovich'' is a series of thirty oil-on-canvas paintings by the Guyanese artist Aubrey Williams, created between 1969 and 1981. Each painting in the series is based on a particular symphony or quartet by the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, whom Williams regarded as "the greatest composer of istime". Background The ''Shostakovich'' series grew out of an intense involvement with Shostakovich's work that extended throughout Williams' adult life. Williams first heard Shostakovich's music ( Symphony No. 1) as a teenager, when he was studying for an agricultural apprenticeship in Guyana, and the experience had a dramatic effect on him. In 1981 he described how hearing the symphony's finale had made him realize "a sonic connection with a new wellspring of this state of human consciousness we call ART"; and in 1987, he recalled that the music had "hit imreally hard" in a way that had "profound visual connotations" and that made him "feel colour". By 1969, Williams had been ...
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New Beacon Books
New Beacon Books is a British publishing house, bookshop, and international book service that specializes in Black British, Caribbean, African, African-American and Asian literature. Founded in 1966 by John La Rose and Sarah White, it was the first Caribbean publishing house in England. New Beacon Books is widely recognized as having played an important role in the Caribbean Artists Movement, and in Black British culture more generally. The associated George Padmore Institute (GPI) is located on the upper floors of the same building where the bookshop resides at 76 Stroud Green Road, Finsbury Park, London. History New Beacon Books started out as a publishing house that was run out of the Hornsey, North London, flat of John La Rose and Sarah White. It was named after the Trinidadian journal '' The Beacon'', which was published between 1931 and 1932. In 1967, La Rose and White moved New Beacon Books to new premises, in Finsbury Park, where the company also began to function as ...
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October Gallery
The October Gallery is an art gallery in central London, established in 1979.October GalleryAbout Us
Accessed 22 December 2007.
The October Gallery has shown the work of many artists. The gallery has promoted the ''Transvangarde'' movement and also been able to host talks, performances and seminars.


History

The October Gallery was established in 1979. From its beginnings, the October Gallery has promoted the art and artists of the ''Transvangarde'' or trans-cultural . The gallery has exhibited the work of artists from more than 65 different countries, and from ...
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Tate
Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the UK Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. The name "Tate" is used also as the operating name for the corporate body, which was established by the Museums and Galleries Act 1992 as "The Board of Trustees of the Tate Gallery". The gallery was founded in 1897 as the National Gallery of British Art. When its role was changed to include the national collection of modern art as well as the national collection of British art, in 1932, it was renamed the Tate Gallery after sugar magnate Henry Tate of Tate & Lyle, who had laid the foundations for the collection. The Tate Gallery was housed in the current building occupied by Tate Britain, which is situated in Millbank, London. In 2000, the Tate Gallery transformed itself into the curre ...
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Terry Waite
Terence Hardy Waite (born 31 May 1939) is an English humanitarian and author. Waite was the Assistant for Anglican Communion Affairs for the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, in the 1980s. As an envoy for the Church of England, he travelled to Lebanon to try to secure the release of four hostages, including the journalist John McCarthy. He was himself kidnapped and held captive from 1987 to 1991. After his release he wrote ''Taken on Trust'', a book about his experiences, and became involved in humanitarian causes and charitable work. Early life and career The son of a village policeman in Styal, Cheshire, Waite was educated at Stockton Heath County Secondary School where he became head boy. Although his parents were only nominally religious, he showed a commitment to Christianity from an early age and later became a Quaker and an Anglican. Waite joined the Grenadier Guards at Caterham Barracks, but an allergy to a dye in the uniform obliged him to depart after ...
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Denis Bowen
Denis Bowen (5 April 1921 – 23 March 2006) was a South African artist, gallery director and promoter of abstract and avant-garde art in Britain. He was founder of the New Vision Group and the New Vision Centre Gallery, both of which played an important role in the post-World War II British art scene. Life Denis Bowen was born on 5 April 1921 in Kimberley, South Africa. His father was Welsh and his mother English. After being orphaned at a young age, Bowen moved to England where he was raised by his aunt in Huddersfield. He enrolled at the Huddersfield School of Art in 1936. After serving in the Navy in World War II, Bowen resumed his art studies at the Royal College of Art in London in 1946. Between 1940 and 1986 Bowen taught art at numerous institutions including: the Kingston Institute of Art, Hammersmith School of Art, Birmingham School of Art, the Central School of Art and Design, the Royal College of Art and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. In 1951 ...
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Commonwealth Institute
The Commonwealth Education Trust is a registered charity established in 2007 as the successor trust to the Commonwealth Institute. The trust focuses on primary and secondary education and the training of teachers and invests on educational products and services to achieve both a beneficial and a financial reward to fund future charitable initiatives. History The Commonwealth Institute was an educational and cultural organisation promoting the Commonwealth of Nations that was based in Kensington, London. It was established, as the Imperial Institute, by royal charter from Queen Victoria in 1888 on Imperial Institute Road (now Imperial College Road). Its name was changed to the Commonwealth Institute in 1958 and it moved to Kensington High Street in 1962. By statute, the operations were the responsibility of a Minister of State from 1902 to 2003 and the property occupied for the purposes of the Institute, and of the same name, was held separately by Trustees as a charity asset ...
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Reyahn King
Reyahn King is a British curator and museum director. She is the chief executive officer of York Museums Trust. Early life and education King grew up in Surrey. From the age of 11, when her family went to Tanzania, she divided her time between there and boarding school in the UK. She studied for an undergraduate degree in modern history at Oxford University and, briefly worked at the National Portrait Gallery in London, before attending Boston University to study for a master's degree. Career King worked as curator of prints and drawings at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery before moving to the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry. She returned to Birmingham Museums as a manager before, in 2007, joining National Museums Liverpool as director of art galleries. From 2012 to 2015 King worked for the Heritage Lottery Fund as the head of the West Midlands region. She chaired the Jury for the John Moores Painting Prize in 2008 and 2010, and was a judge for Liverpool Art Prize in ...
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Abstract Expressionism
Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the Western art world, a role formerly filled by Art in Paris, Paris. Although the term "abstract expressionism" was first applied to American art in 1946 by the art critic Robert Coates (critic), Robert Coates, it had been first used in Germany in 1919 in the magazine ''Der Sturm'', regarding German Expressionism. In the United States, Alfred Barr was the first to use this term in 1929 in relation to works by Wassily Kandinsky. Style Technically, an important predecessor is surrealism, with its emphasis on spontaneous, Surrealist automatism, automatic, or subconscious creation. Jackson Pollock's dripping paint onto a canvas laid on the floor is a technique that has its roots in the work of André Masson, Max Ernst, and David Alfaro Siqu ...
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Jamaica
Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola (the island containing the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic); the British Overseas Territory of the Cayman Islands lies some to the north-west. Originally inhabited by the indigenous Taíno peoples, the island came under Spanish rule following the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1494. Many of the indigenous people either were killed or died of diseases, after which the Spanish brought large numbers of African slaves to Jamaica as labourers. The island remained a possession of Spain until 1655, when England (later Great Britain) conquered it, renaming it ''Jamaica''. Under British colonial rule Jamaica became a leading sugar exporter, with a plantation economy dependent on the African slaves and later their des ...
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Pre-Columbian
In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, the era covers the history of Indigenous cultures until significant influence by Europeans. This may have occurred decades or even centuries after Columbus for certain cultures. Many pre-Columbian civilizations were marked by permanent settlements, cities, agriculture, civic and monumental architecture, major earthworks, and complex societal hierarchies. Some of these civilizations had long faded by the time of the first permanent European colonies (c. late 16th–early 17th centuries), and are known only through archaeological investigations and oral history. Other civilizations were contemporary with the colonial period and were described in European historical accounts of the time. A few, such as the Maya civilization, had their own wri ...
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