Watching a Monkey wid a beer bottle while drinking mauby and listening to music in the art gallery

Image from Hilton Chan

Man said "the music is good.. but he should have had the clair de lune or was it moonlight sonata with the night time images' and I said no, no.. Hilton is probably being sarcastic and maybe there is deliberate synchronisation of the moonlight music with the photographs in bright sunlight..




The invitation said an evening of photography with music. 400 slides.

 

Moray House Trust has held a series of Photography Sessions in which Guyanese photographers discussed their work. 

My own interest in photography was generally as talentless voyeur saying 'wow', until recently when the interest has become more functional to sort out images for the writing.

The man had thing about flowers and rainbow on the invitation and I read 'interex' as Intersex and I wondered what Hilton  and Castellani House were going to do. There was going to be

6pm and the place is getting dark. The Art Gallery is cleared and there are the paintings left over from the previous exhibition. There is a short essay which is read - I do not understand most of it as it goes with the general writing about art and so with the complex language and sentence constructions. I mean.. beyond me saying 'it nice' or 'it not so nice'.. 

Place is dark. Hilton puts on the music and starts the slide show from the laptop.

Image after Image. My mouth hangs open and I keep going 'eh ' 'eh' and I hope that nobody hears me.   The gallery is dark and the images are vivid on the large screen.

At some point I have to stand (it is nice to use projector screens but the base of the screen is sometimes blocked by heads.. we have that problem in a few rooms in Guyana). 

It is pointless to describe the pictures. A range of animals, flowers, people, landscapes, buildings. Some of the usual Stabroek Market and so. There are the ironies.. the beautiful city buildings reflecting in the flood waters around them. The sliding of the images from one of beautiful people to another of a monkey.

The humour of the monkey near the bear and glass (somewhere on the highway) to the brutality of the sloth with the bloodied pike which was used to kill it.

The Parliament buildings with the people in front with umbrellas. The jandhi flags which seemed arranged in a fan shape.. but were not really. The red boat on the mud flat.  The five manatees. It was the zoo but not the zoo.

The barber shop.. not only the barber and the customer and also the boy looking in the mirror.  The nice Diwali image.. with the man using his phone to take an image of the diyas. It's not one subject.

There is a break.  Mauby and buns and cheese straws. A man says that these images are beyond the quality of some which have won international competitions. Hilton does not seem too bothered by the praise.  

The second half uses the old time slides and projectors. Flowers mostly and images from other places. Camera low down, Camera High up. Some with people. The last slide has the mirror reversal. There was another image in the reverse , but I thought it was some art thing.

 Some of the portraits are not too interesting. Some are phenomenal. T

here is one in my head of a man I know and his young son... carefree , laughing.. the man I have rarely seen laughing in public..  

There is not much discussion. Hilton said 'sorry, it was 2 o'clock  in the morning and I loaded the slides in the reverse'. 

I laughed..and wondered.. you clever b.....  

all the beautiful images in the second half were 'back to front'..  so much for appreciation of things which were not intended to be. 

 He said the music was to syncrhonise but it did not work out. He had no intention of talking much.. 'is nah pitchah yall come fuh see'?

Hopefully there will be another chance to see the work.