Land of many waters

By Alim Hosein

It is impossible to travel far in any direction in Guyana without encountering water. Walk a few yards north of where you are and you are at the edge of the South American continent facing the Caribbean Sea which is actually the western end of the Atlantic Ocean. And a few miles south of Georgetown brings us to the first of the numerous creeks, now recreational areas, which lattice the hinterland regions of the country. This slice of land on which we live, bordered north and south by the sea and the creeks, is further boundaried from east to west by other natural bodies of water: the great rivers – the Berbice, Demerara, Essequibo – which create the natural divisions of, and give their names to, our 3 counties. And there are even more other impressive bodies of water running like these rivers from south to north nd in different directions across our landscape – rivers such as the serpentine Barima/Waini, and the huge Corentyne, the boisterous Kamarang river tumbling down the mountain, and the creeks such as the Mahaica, Mahaicony and Abary (which also runs parallel to the coast) and many, many more.

The history of Guyana is inextricably tied to water. The first settlers, the Amerindians, found it possible to sustain life in the estuaries of the rivers, where they were able to gather sufficient fish and other seafood. They also used the natural waterways as highways into the interior and so reached and settled the deepest parts of Guyana. Walter Rodney tells us that the slaves moved millions of cubic feet of mud to create the many canals, trenches, and sidelines that drain the coast, allow an economy to be developed there, and so create the conditions for the sustenance of habitation and the flourishing of large-scale human settlement on the Guyana mudflat. Each village along the East Coast is bounded by these man-made canals, a fact which has contributed to the forming of our sense of space and political and cultural geography.

Castellani House therefore chose a worthwhile theme on which to mount an exhibition to mark Guyana’s 42nd Independence Anniversary. The exhibition also marks the observance of International Museums Day 2008. The 47 pieces on display, extracted from the National Collection, show that ‘water’ has been a significant motif in the imagination of Guyanese artists over many decades.   The pieces – overwhelmingly paintings (there are only 2 pieces of sculpture) – date from 1930 to 2006.

Not surprisingly, the koker is a recurring theme in the exhibition. There are four paintings exclusively devoted to this device which is essential to Guyana’s continued existence on the edge of the South American continent. The earliest, E R Burrowes’ undated The Koker is a picturesque capturing of Guyanese landscape with a pretty cottage and a flamboyant tree in bloom next to a staid koker. It marks a time of steadiness and discovery of quiet beautiful passages in the Guyanese landscape. By the time we get to Ivan Hinds’s Sluice Gate done in 1991, the prettiness has disappeared, to be replaced with ordinariness. In between these two are George Bowen-Forbes’ Cane Cutters and Koker, done in 1962, which celebrates a quiet but precarious balance between man and nature and  Kingsley Lambert’s Koker Scene (DIH Turn) done in 1977. The landscape in this one is a squatter settlement on the foreshore, but Lambert turns the rusty zinc sheets of the hovels into a colourful pattern of oranges and browns.

There are many depictions of water as a shaper of the landscape, as a sustainer of life, a powerful force, a source of superstition, an abiding feature in our landscape, and as a subject for flights of fancy.

The many paintings of Edward Fredericks, an Amerindian artist of the 1980s who had been painting scenes of Amerindian life for a number of years, show how intimately water is involved in Amerindian life. Apart from depicting water as landscape, his paintings show water as a part of the economy of the people (Transporting Timber Down Rapids, 1980-85) as a means of communication and transportation (Going to School at Cabacaburi Mission, 1980) as a helper in getting everyday chores done (Woman Washing Clothes by a Creek, 1980-85) as a sustainer of life (Fish Traps in a Swamp, 1980-85).

This relationship between water and livelihood is also a feature of coastland life in a less-all-inclusive but still powerful way. Hubert Moshett’s Shrimping (1972) is a very evocative depiction of water providing a lifeline of nourishment for the poor, while Merlene Ellis’s Three Fishermen (1997) shows a similar dependency on water – this time on a bigger scale, the sea –for nourishment. In Jerry Barry’s Dusk at Plaisance (1986) a little boy, half-hidden in the gathering darkness, fetches water from the canal that runs by the village. Moshett’s Port Georgetown from Vreed-en-Hoop (1965) and Waterfront (1977) allude to the same theme, but on a grander scale of human activity.

But water has also been the source of powerful imagination. ER Burrowes’ The Spirit of Kaieteur (nd) hints at the mythology behind this famous waterfall, but does so by using the human figure as a symbol of the spirit. George Simon’s Oriyu Shikaw (Kaieteur, House of the River Spirit) (1995) brings the myth right back to its Amerindian roots. Similarly, Philip Moore’s Wata Mama (1965) is another indigenous revelation of how powerfully water impacts on our imagination. Dudley Charles’s phantasmagoric River Spirit (1985) takes pride of place in this category as a painterly and imaginative interpretation of the religious, folkloric and mystical ways in which we have tried to capture the power and mystery of the realm of water.

Other artists have been captured by the power of water itself. Of course, there is a painting of the majestic Kaieteur Falls, but this is one done by Vivian Antrobus in 1930, long before images of this natural wonder became popularized. While Kaieteur falls in majestic self-containment in these paintings, other paintings such as Cletus Henriques’ Pakaraima Gorge (1968) and Ronald Savory’s Creek (1978) show how water has carved out spaces and shaped the landscape like a sculptor itself.

Land of Many Waters is a very pleasing show, if only because it serves to remind us about the beauty, power and importance of something that is all around us but which we usually take for granted. The exhibition continues to July 19.