RA: Representing Artists Newsletter

Publication

Aug 17

The quarterly Barbadian and Caribbean arts newsletter RA (Representing Artists) was produced in the early nineties, spearheaded by a group of Barbados-based artists who saw the need to create a forum for more critical writing around contemporary arts in the region.

Along with a small group of Barbadian visual artists, Annalee Davis was one of the co-founders of RA and edited its newsletter which was printed by the Government Printing Press. Her experience with this albeit short lived initiative (1992-1994) was, in hindsight, a precursor to the Tilting Axis forum that came into being twenty years later.

As part of her Tilting Axis Fellowship that has seen her travel to arts spaces throughout the Caribbean, Jamaican writer and curator Nicole Smythe-Johnson has digitised all six editions of this newsletter to make them available for public access on the Fresh Milk website. This inaugural curatorial fellowship is supported by the British Council.

With so many ongoing conversations about the development and future of Caribbean art today, it is important to know the history of spaces and what has laid the foundations for these discussions. Over the last 24 years, how have things changed? What has remained the same? We hope that these texts can be a source of inspiration, evaluation and critique, both for the state of the creative environment then and for encouraging productive discourse moving forward.

Edited by
Annalee Davis

Designed by
Arthur Atkinson (Issues 1-4)
and Kristine Dear (Issues 5 & 6)

Contributors:
Annalee Davis
Allison Thompson
Ras Akyem,
Ras Ishi
Christopher Cozier
Nick Whittle
Alison Greaves
Roger Lipsey,
Ken Corsbie
Dominique Brebion
Stan Kuiperi
Marianne de Tolentino,
Dennis Tourbin
Petrona Morrison
Gayle Hermick
Geoffrey MacLean,
Elizabeth Barnum
and Sharen Carmichael