John Beadle, Artist Portrait. Courtesy of the artist and TERN Gallery.

Create! Magazine is pleased to share the announcement of a forthcoming solo exhibition by John Beadle at TERN Gallery (Nassau, The Bahamas). The show, titled Splinters and Shards, will include new sculptures by the Nassau-based artist. On view from Dec. 11, 2021, to Jan. 22, 2022, the show will mark Beadle’s first exhibition with TERN. Due to his reach and longevity, Beadle is considered one of the seminal artists of the contemporary Bahamian art scene.

Ambers and Embers, 2021. Mahogany and metal. Courtesy of the artist and TERN Gallery

In this new body of work, Beadle combines natural and manufactured materials to create pieces that reference and warp their original forms. Beadle, who trained as a painter and printmaker, applies a similar attitude toward materiality in these sculptures. These new works are examples of Beadle’s ability to merge painting, sculpture, and installation, creating a rich sense of line, dimension, and texture.

Beadle’s carbonized mahogany carvings fuse a variety of natural wood textures into single compositions. In his sculptures, round indentations, thinly etched lines, and curving hollows mimic the various textures found naturally in wood, allowing these different patterns to blend into one another. Beadle sees all of his wood carvings as a kind of drawing—except that instead of adding onto the existing material, these carvings require him to subtract from it, as one would do to a woodblock for printmaking.

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Pictured artwork: Artifact II, 2019. Carbonized mahogany and metal. Courtesy of the artist and TERN Gallery

About the artist:

John Beadle (b. 1964, Nassau, Bahamas) is a multi-disciplinary artist and masterful artisan. Beadle describes universal narratives with an incredible proficiency that manifests into meticulous presentations that elevate the raw and the common materials he often uses. Painter, sculptor, mixed media, and installation artist, Beadle creates bodies of work that touch on migration, labor, security, and the perception of value given to certain materials, objects, and people. He creates an ambiguity between the delineation of fine arts, utilitarian artwork, and craft. Trained as a painter/printmaker, Beadle also has an impressive practice in the traditional arts of Junkanoo, having served as a principal designer and sculptor in the One Family Junkanoo group.