National Gallery honours Philip Moore

Pushing for re-launch of National Visual Arts Exhibition

The National Gallery currently has on display the paintings and sculpture from the National Collection by doyen of Guyanese art, Philip Moore, in honour of his exceptional contribution to the filed. Moore celebrated his 90th birthday on October 12, shortly before the National Awards ceremony bestowed him with the Cacique Crown of Honour (CCH).

The gallery’s display honours this most influential of Guyana’s artists for his lifelong creativity which has produced hundreds of works of art since his first sculptures begun in the late 1940’s, after he experienced a vision of a hand reaching down to him from the skies with a sculptor’s tool – recorded in his painting in the National Collection, ‘Receiving the Gift’ (1971-80).

National Gallery Curator Elfrieda Bissember and staff visited Moore on his birthday at his home in Corentyne with gifts and also with the painting, titled ‘Janet Guyana’, which the artist had donated to the gallery last year in memory of the late Janet Jagan, Chairman of the National Gallery’s management committee and former president of Guyana. Contrary to his usual practice, the artist had not signed the work and had promised to do so later; the gallery therefore returned with the work for the artist’s signature.

A special card printed by the gallery this December honours Moore with a reproduction of his colourfully patterned 1966 painting ‘Journey – Rosignol to Georgetown’. The card, along with another by Winston Strick, MS, ‘Birds in the Forest’ (1987), printed this month, can be purchased from the National Gallery’s foyer shop along with others reproducing works from the National Collection.

Exhibition to re-launch

National Visual Arts

Additionally, the main first floor gallery at Castellani House is exhibiting works by artists who have won awards at the National Visual Arts Exhibition, the premier visual arts competition in Guyana which ceased in 1994 after nearly four decades of such competitions being organized and presented, first by the National History & Culture Council, later renamed the National History and Arts Council, and its further successor the Department of Culture, which also administered the National Collection prior to the founding of the National Gallery in 1993.

Castellani House, in wishing to revive an earlier proposal for a re-launch of the NVAE event, is promoting the idea of such a competition through the presentation and examination of the quality of prizewinning works and artists, many of whom have had their careers and reputations enhanced, if not established, by the winning of NVAE awards.

The current exhibition therefore includes paintings and sculpture by prize winning artists from the National Collection, such as Stanley Greaves, George Simon, Oswald Hussein, Bernadette Persaud, Kenneth Ward and Gary Thomas. The exhibition runs until February 4. (Text by National Gallery Curator Elfrieda Bissember)