Last year, Mr. Bill Ming achieved the singular honour of being named as the first holder of the Liverpool John Moores University Fellowship, funded by The Henry Moore Foundation.

This month, his Fellowship has culminated with a major solo exhibition at the Bluecoat Arts Centre in Liverpool.

Now, Dr. Charles Zuill, Chairman of the Bermuda Arts Council and Deputy Chairman of the Bermuda National Gallery's Board of Trustees, says he hopes that sometime next year a special exhibition of Bill Ming's work will be staged at the Gallery.

Dr. Zuill has just returned from Britain, where he made a special, "semi-official'' trip to Liverpool to see Mr. Ming's exhibition.

"I was very impressed with his work,'' he says, adding that he was given a special tour of the show by the Bluecoats Gallery director, Mr. Bryan Biggs.

"I had heard that Bill Ming had received this very significant award, and Ruth Thomas had helped me track him down in England. So while I was there, I went to see him at his home in Newark-on-Trent. He wanted me to attend the opening, but that was a bit tight as I had to leave for Bermuda the next day.

That's when he very kindly arranged for me to be shown round before the show opened. It was well worth the visit and I was anxious to let Mr. Ming know that Bermuda was taking note of his achievements.'' Dr. Zuill says that the gallery is one of the best in Liverpool, just near the historic Albert Dock which has now been developed into one of the city's leading cultural complexes.

The prestigious Henry Moore Foundation established the new Fellowship with the express purpose of encouraging the work of an artist of non-European background. The artist's work would focus on ways in which "cultural crossovers'' could be a catalyst for artistic innovation and development.

Mr. Ming's Bermudian roots are reflected in the title he has chosen for the show -- Two Rock Passage to Liverpool. He feels that Liverpool was a natural mecca for him. He says that it is "the black community of Liverpool, which is the oldest in Europe, has played a central role in that market place, as traders, labourers and, chillingly, as commodities''.

He says that since taking up the Fellowship, he has tried to reflect in his work, the nature and history of Liverpool as a maritime centre and meeting place of different cultures.

Bill Ming, who was born in Devonshire in 1944, left Bermuda in 1971 with no formal art training. He apparently had a reputation, even as a child, of being able to make toys and model cars and bikes out of almost any materials that came to hand. He was a natural drawer of cartoons, and began writing lyrics for a band while working as a printing assistant. He worked on the Queen of Bermuda and on ships operating out of the Caribbean, and North and South America.

As Bermuda became enmeshed in the racial tensions of the '60s, Mr. Ming became a member of the Black Power movement. As a result of that, he says, he first became aware of the existence of black artists and this fired his own ambitions: "I worked and saved and painted.'' By 1971, he had made the decision to go back to school, his reasons for leaving his homeland expressed in a poem he wrote in 1979: "22 sq.mls., n education runs outta lan...

...n goes abroad.'' Abroad turned out to be England, where he attended the Mansfield College of Art for one year and then gained a degree in Sculpture and Creative Writing from Maidstone College of Art in 1979.

Ironically, he says, it was in Britain that he began to sense his own cultural heritage. It was there that he found African artefacts in British museums.

In choosing sculpture and carving as his medium, Mr. Ming says he is following the traditions of the African woodcarvers, and "like them, I am a storyteller trying to share visions, messages and meanings with the village''. The only difference, he says, is that he is addressing a modern, global and multi-cultural village, and he links his own early impressions with contemporary western perspectives which have formed through his education and later experiences.

The focus of his solo exhibition is "the vessel'', which he describes as being both a positive and negative shape, a shelter and prison, and a means of spiritual travel.

Mr. Ming sums up his artistic philosophy as "a journey of exploration in which other travellers are essential. An art of healing, no dealing, exorcism not commercialism''. He feels that as "a black artist whose experience is shared with many (black and white) people in Britain, I too, have much to contribute''.

Mr. Ming has gained a reputation as a champion of young artists, and devotes much of his time to community projects. He has worked on such projects as the Arts Education for a Multicultural Society, Artreach and the Liverpool Anti-Racist Community Arts Association.

He has held an impressive number of solo shows in such prominent locations as the Africa Centre at Covent Garden and the Commonwealth Institute, both in London, the renowned Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, and the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

Mr. Ming's work is also held by the Africa Archive in London, and is in various private and public collections in Britain, the US and Bermuda. He has also been featured on British TV, on Channel 4's Hear and Now and BBC Radio's Back-a-Yard.

MING CREATION -- Preservation Log, of bog oak, sticks, rop and bitumen -- 6' x 2'6.

SCULPTOR HONOURED -- Mr. Bill Ming (second from left) shows visitors his work at the Commonwealth Institute in London exhibit.