If Anyone Knows Any Reason Why…
This work is a direct reference to the historic application process to obtain Caymanian status; a process which, at the time this work was created, required the applicant to publish his/her photo in the local newspaper to allow any Caymanian the opportunity to register their disapproval about the applicant’s suitability with the Immigration Board. To communicate his feelings about the process, the artist offers a typical two-part police mug shot of himself, holding his advertisement number on a placard, like an arrested person.
About the Artist
David Bridgeman
b. 1959
Born in Oxford, Bridgeman acquired a BEd (Hons) at Worcester College of Higher Education and moved to the Cayman Islands in 1987 to teach. As a professional artist, he has received important commissions from the Cayman Islands Government and from the Cayman National Cultural Foundation. His work is in private collections and the public collections of CNCF, CINM, NGCI as well as at the Governor’s Residence. He is a founding member of the Cayman art collective C4. NGCI exhibitions include: Anchored in Landscapes (2005) and Arreckly: Towards a Cultural Identity (2007), Art of Assemblage (2013), The Road Not Taken (solo show, 2014), Metamorphoses (2014), tIDal Shift: Explorations of Identity in Contemporary Caymanian Art (2015), All Access (2015), Upon the Seas (2017), Mediating Self (2017), Cross Currents – 1st Cayman Islands Biennial (2019), and Tropical Visions (2019).
