by Suelin Low Chew Tung
On Tuesday, 12 March, St Lucian Economic Development Consultant and award-winning Poet, Producer, and Carnival Designer Dr Adrian Augier presented “The Role of Media in Reporting on the Visual Arts in the OECS: Is the depth of analysis adequate?”
This was one of the evening talks hosted at the temporary art space The Gallery and the Reflexion retrospective exhibition, which features 30 years of artworks created by Grenadian abstract artist Oliver Benoit, PhD, at the St Paul’s Community Centre.
Of the many noteworthy snippets from Dr Augier, I was struck by: “The ignorance of the world about us is not our shortcoming. What is our shortcoming… is how we define ourselves. First for ourselves and then for the world.” Grenada’s media defines Grenada to the world. The irony was that only one media house attended.
The Gallery’s evening talks, which are free and open to the public, are supported by the National Organising Committee as part of Grenada’s Jubilee Independence anniversary celebrations.
Dr Augier is an award-winning creative and avid advocate for the closer integration of art and the creative industry into mainstream economic development. He is also St Lucia’s first Caribbean Laureate of Arts and Letters. As Chief Economist in the Ministry of Finance and Planning and Economic Policy Advisor to the Prime Minister of St Lucia, he established the Office of Private Sector Relations (OPSR) and designed and implemented the country’s first Private Sector Development Strategy.
From his opening salvo, “Welcome, subversives and revolutionaries and nonconformists,” his thought-provoking talk covering the reach of the visual arts across the Caribbean society, its importance to Grenada’s historical documentation, societal knowledge, and engine for revenue generation was well received by the dozen or so likeminded in the audience.
His intentionally provocative oratory skills and poetry of lecture captured and kept us, moving us through seeing art as being reflective of our lives and being important and as part of our history. Dr Augier insisted and persisted: “So are we going to do about our history? What are we going to?” The audience response, for the most part, was to take his lecture to the Prime Minister, the Culture and Education and Tourism ministers, the Grenada Chamber of Industry and Commerce (GCIC), the Grenada Investment Development Corporation (GIDC) and the Grenada Hotel and Tourism Association (GHTA) — individuals and entities that shape Grenada’s progress and transformation — to confront them with their ghosting of a sector with social, educational and economic power that can contribute to mainstream economic development.
Those who missed the evening talk missed engaging Dr Augier regarding Grenada’s arts and artists in our societal evolution after 50 years of independence, enquiring about Grenada’s 7th Pavilion at the world-renowned Venice Biennale in Italy, the pinnacle for world artists to participate and a privilege for Grenada’s artists to represent the nation; and enquire from Dr Benoit about his use of bricks that constructed some of the built heritage of Urban St George.
Dr Augier broadened our minds on the intersections of visual arts and creatives with finance, planning and economic policy in St Lucia and the wider Caribbean, and how that can be actioned as part of the current administration’s transformative agenda.
At the end of his lecture, the audience agreed that we need to “build more cohesive communities of artists and fellow conspirators and collaborators” — and that the Grenada media has a strong role to play.
The next Evening Talk at The Gallery will be today, Thursday, 14 March from 6–8 pm, featuring Dr Adrian Augier and Cecil Noel who will discuss “An Examination of the art in Carnival looking in particular at Comancheros Mas Band over the last 50 years.”
