Sculp­tor and vi­su­al artist Hew Locke's Give and Take de­picts a pro­ces­sion­al per­for­mance cu­rat­ed by Claire Tan­cons for the BMW Tate Live se­ries at Tate Mod­ern in Lon­don (an in­door Car­ni­val at the time of the last Not­ting Hill Car­ni­val in Au­gust 2014).Locke grew up in Guyana but spent most of his pro­fes­sion­al life in Lon­don. He ex­pe­ri­enced Not­ting Hill Car­ni­val over the years but in re­cent years, has been put off from go­ing by the po­lice bar­ri­cad­ing and tight con­trol of the event.

It is a com­men­tary on our cur­rent world of Car­ni­val care­ful­ly block­ad­ed and cir­cum­scribed whether in Port-of-Spain, Brook­lyn, Toron­to or Lon­don.The cos­tumed mas­quer­aders act­ed like po­lice push­ing back the au­di­ence in the hall like the po­lice in their ri­ot gear but won­der­ful­ly trans­formed with shields that have im­ages of gov­ern­ment pow­er and mul­ti-mil­lion-� man­sions of the rich who now live in Not­ting Hill.

The shield hold­ers were sup­port­ed by the Brazil­ian sam­ba-reg­gae group Bata­la Lon­don–of­ten seen at Not­ting Hill Car­ni­val–and the shield hold­ers joined in the rhythms beat­ing on the back of the shields.

It was a very clever take on mas tak­ing back the streets from the au­thor­i­ties. As Locke notes for the per­for­mance, his mas mak­ers "al­ter­nate be­tween en­cour­ag­ing the au­di­ence to join with them in cel­e­bra­tion or pa­rade, and then turn­ing on them, herd­ing them and re­strict­ing move­ment around the ar­chi­tec­ture of the hall, even­tu­al­ly sweep­ing them from the space en­tire­ly. Push and pull, give and take."

There are two Ja­maican artists in the ex­hib­it who give very dif­fer­ent takes on the mas. With In­vis­i­ble Pres­ence: Bling Mem­o­ries, Ebony G Pat­ter­son has cre­at­ed a stun­ning mas band with full-sized coffins with "colour­ful fab­rics, beads, tas­sels, and plas­tic flow­ers" car­ried on sticks at the 2014 Ja­maican Car­ni­val with a march­ing band.

A re­lat­ed, ear­li­er ver­sion of this work had been part of a per­for­mance at Al­ice Yard with a short pro­ces­sion through Wood­brook in the sum­mer of 2011. It was de­scribed as "a 'bling' fu­ner­al us­ing the artist's char­ac­ter­is­tic heav­i­ly dec­o­rat­ed ob­jects."

Pat­ter­son com­ment­ed at the time that she had heard some­one in the Port-of-Spain store Sama­roo's lament a death, which led to her mak­ing a cof­fin a day for sev­er­al days. Per­haps there is a some con­scious or un­con­scious con­nec­tion to the cus­tom coffins in Ghana.

The bright ma­te­r­i­al of Pat­ter­son's mas coffins, the un­ex­pect­ed ori­en­ta­tion of coffins on sticks point­ed up­ward to­ward the heav­ens (ex­cept for one that is car­ried with­out a hearse in the hands of the mas­quer­aders) with an ex­u­ber­ant march­ing band mu­sic–like the band cut­ting loose at a jazz fu­ner­al af­ter it has reached the ceme­tery and the rau­cous danc­ing and mu­sic ther­after–makes one won­der why coffins have to be so drab and somber.

Oth­er parts of the ex­hib­it are hard­er to ful­ly take in. The oth­er Ja­maican artist Charles Camp­bell, showed a piece called Ac­tor Boy: Frac­tal En­gage­ments.

Camp­bell de­scribed it a mix­ing of up­town and down­town. It was a per­for­mance with a neigh­bour­hood tour in a poor, po­ten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous com­mu­ni­ty of down­town Kingston ar­easwith a num­ber of street artists, singing co­conut man, mu­si­cians, a con­tor­tion­ist, and Camp­bell him­self as "Ac­tor Boy" all in white with a white mask, hand­ed out masks of ge­o­des­ic de­sign.

It was one of the more ab­stract pieces in the ex­hib­it and left many ques­tions about Camp­bell's artis­tic in­ten­tions.Nicol�s Du­mit Est�vez, a Bronx-based artist from the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, in an ex­hib­it area of pho­tos and a video, re­flect­ed a pri­vate cer­e­mo­ny root­ed in Do­mini­can Vodou tra­di­tions which oc­curred at the edge of 2014 Car­ni­val when he re­turned home to his vil­lage San­ti­a­go de los Trein­ta Ca­balleros.

As ex­hi­bi­tion cu­ra­tor Tan­cons notes, the cer­e­mo­ny is trans­for­ma­tive and un­set­tling, "an ar­ray of pre­vi­ous­ly util­i­tar­i­an el­e­ments (kitchen uten­sils, bath­room wares, and bed­room ap­par­el, along­side or­gan­ic re­fus­es) trans­formed in­to adorn­ments (over­turned sifters be­came hats; hol­lowed or­ange peels, gog­gles; net­ted hats, face veils; clothes­pins, ear and nose pin­cers; thin stock­ings, long arm gloves)."

In Look­ing for a Head­piece, the con­cep­tu­al artist Lor­raine O'Grady seeks to take the view­er in­to a med­i­ta­tion of the artist seek­ing in­spi­ra­tion by look­ing in­to footage of Brook­lyn Car­ni­val and oth­er footage, look­ing for a head­piece with her com­men­tary.Just out­side the ex­hib­it is a range of books on Car­ni­val and clas­sic footage by Jules Cahn of New Or­leans Mar­di Gras In­di­ans shot on the streets back in the 1970s.

Car­ni­val can­not just be the lat­est ver­sions of en­crust­ed biki­nis, it must car­ry on com­plex tra­di­tions, find new ways to rein­vent it­self, stay rel­e­vant and vi­brant, seek to un­bal­ance the sta­tus quo, and re­turn to the root pol­i­tics of Car­ni­val it­self.The rich­ness of mas tra­di­tions has al­ways looked to in­di­vid­u­als and small bands who bring unique vi­sions, new cre­ativ­i­ty, bring sur­prise and de­light, in­deed the to­tal­ly un­ex­pect­ed.

This ex­hib­it is a fas­ci­nat­ing ex­plo­ration of how per­for­mance artists seek to un­set­tle and en­gage with Car­ni­val as the res­o­nant chord.

�2 Ray Funk is a re­tired Alaskan judge who is pas­sion­ate­ly de­vot­ed to ca­lyp­so, pan and mas.