Wes­ley Gib­bings

Vivien Eliz­a­beth Ar­mour’s re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Some­thing Sa­cred ex­hi­bi­tion chal­lenged vis­i­tors to Arn­im’s Art Gallery in Port-of-Spain to con­sid­er new ways of see­ing fa­mil­iar things.

The work of this mul­ti­me­dia artist in­vit­ed view­ers be­yond the im­me­di­ate­ly recog­nis­able in­to a ter­ri­to­ry where na­ture, imag­i­na­tion and emo­tions con­verge.

“For me, Some­thing Sa­cred speaks to that sense of won­der, to our re­la­tion­ship with the nat­ur­al world, and to the mys­tery of be­ing part of some­thing so much larg­er than our­selves,” Ar­mour ex­plains.

Through ce­ram­ic sculp­ture and paint­ing, the ex­hi­bi­tion of­fered “a shared ex­plo­ration of colour, nat­ur­al forms and the pos­si­bil­i­ties of ab­strac­tion”, ac­cord­ing to the ex­hi­bi­tion brochure.

Its ti­tle grew out of a po­em she wrote while de­vel­op­ing the col­lec­tion – a process she de­scribes as hav­ing served as its “ethos or touch­stone”.

“It was sort of my ethos or touch­stone for the show. I was try­ing to cap­ture a feel­ing that has be­come in­creas­ing­ly im­por­tant to me, both per­son­al­ly and in my artis­tic prac­tice,” Ar­mour says.

For in­stance, on open­ing night, Oc­to­ber 15, vis­i­tors con­verged mag­net­i­cal­ly around And Still It Stirs – de­scribed as “iron-rich dark stoneware with sweep­ing pale blue and green glazes del­i­cate­ly con­trast­ing the sculp­tur­al rup­tures and fo­li­a­ceous ac­cents”.

All of that is to say that the 10” x 8” x 10” piece com­bines el­e­ments in a way that sug­gests or­der amid a cer­tain chaos. It was among the first works to dis­play a red sold stick­er.

Paint­ing, she con­fess­es, was her first artis­tic love, but ce­ram­ics has now be­come her pre­dom­i­nant medi­um. Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, she has found ways for both dis­ci­plines to in­hab­it the same artis­tic space along­side oth­er com­pe­ten­cies.

“What I love about clay is how phys­i­cal and ver­sa­tile it is. It’s earth, af­ter all, and there’s some­thing won­der­ful about us­ing a ma­te­r­i­al so di­rect­ly con­nect­ed to the nat­ur­al world to ex­plore my own re­la­tion­ship with it,” she con­tends.

How­ev­er, as she is quick to point out, clay does not al­ways sub­mit to the artist’s in­ten­tions. “There’s a con­stant con­ver­sa­tion be­tween what you imag­ine and what the ma­te­r­i­al al­lows, and some­times the most in­ter­est­ing dis­cov­er­ies hap­pen when you sur­ren­der a lit­tle con­trol,” she ex­plains.

Ar­mour’s in­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary back­ground helps ex­plain the flu­id in­ter­play be­tween her ce­ram­ics, her paint­ings and her ap­pre­ci­a­tion of how they in­ter­face with the ex­ter­nal en­vi­ron­ment, in­clud­ing the peo­ple look­ing on.

Her aca­d­e­m­ic back­ground in­cludes uni­ver­si­ty de­grees and cer­ti­fi­ca­tions cov­er­ing vi­su­al arts, the­atre and film. She has found ways to ex­plore the emo­tions stirred by those dis­ci­plines through her art and the mes­sages they con­vey.

Though much of Ar­mour’s ear­li­er ce­ram­ic work cen­tred on func­tion­al pot­tery, the ex­hi­bi­tion pieces rep­re­sent­ed a de­par­ture, al­low­ing forms to be­come more sculp­tur­al and ex­per­i­men­tal.

Colours, tex­tures and shapes move be­tween her paint­ing and ce­ram­ics, cre­at­ing what she de­scribes as an emerg­ing “alche­my” be­tween the two main prac­tices.

“I love the idea that some­one might look at a piece and see coral, while some­one else sees bone, a flower or an imag­ined land­scape. Nei­ther in­ter­pre­ta­tion is nec­es­sar­i­ly right or wrong,” she says.

For her, there is val­ue in re­sist­ing the de­mand for im­me­di­ate ex­pla­na­tion. “There’s val­ue in cu­rios­i­ty, in trust­ing our in­stincts, and in al­low­ing our­selves the free­dom to ex­plore the un­known,” Ar­mour ex­plains.

Some of her ear­li­er projects ex­plored di­as­po­ra, iden­ti­ty, be­long­ing and the il­lu­so­ry space be­tween fan­ta­sy and re­al­i­ty.

Her past so­lo ex­hi­bi­tions in­clude Wel­come to the Fete­Land, pre­sent­ed in Van­cou­ver in 2018, and Mas No Pow­dah Ta­ban­ca, ex­hib­it­ed at Arn­im’s in 2021.

She was al­so a fea­tured artist in Through the Eyes of Women: A Ta­pes­try of Trin­ba­go’s Art at the Ro­tun­da Gallery in 2023.

In 2021, she found­ed Vivien Eliz­a­beth Cre­ative Stu­dios in Port of Spain. There, she of­fers pot­tery, sculp­ture and paint­ing class­es and work­shops for young peo­ple, adults and cor­po­rate clients.

Her work com­bines arts ed­u­ca­tion with com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment and men­tor­ship. As for her own artis­tic cre­ations, she is ready to ex­plore the full uni­verse of pos­si­bil­i­ties.

Some­thing Sa­cred, she ex­plains, al­lowed her to turn her at­ten­tion to­wards ab­strac­tion. In­spired by sim­i­lar­i­ties be­tween or­gan­ic struc­tures at mi­cro­scop­ic and mon­u­men­tal scales, her forms “stretch, fold, rup­ture and grow in­to ob­jects that seem fa­mil­iar with­out be­com­ing en­tire­ly recog­nis­able”.

She con­sid­ers her artis­tic jour­ney to be in per­pet­u­al progress but of­fers ad­vice to new­com­ers to the world of art.

“Ex­per­i­ment as much as pos­si­ble, es­pe­cial­ly while they’re young. Try dif­fer­ent medi­ums, learn from oth­er artists, trav­el if you can, read, ex­plore, and don’t be afraid to make things that don’t work,” she says.

“Some­times the pieces that fail teach you far more than the ones that suc­ceed,” she adds. “You don’t have to have every­thing fig­ured out be­fore you be­gin.”