Mythology, Mayhem, Mystery, Marketing is the intriguing title that heralds an exhibition of high invention at Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art. It is the new show from the permanent collection and will propel the Museum into the new year. The opportunity of the gap left by the decision to hold the Charman Prize every two years has been seized by an entertaining exhibition with edges as sharp as the triangular booth that houses part of the exhibit. The joy of having such a vast collection must be in presenting it in new interpretive ways for us to study. This is a clever show: a marriage of knowledge and imagination.

The four motifs of the title that make up Bermuda’s persona are explored for this exhibition through painting, photography, marketing ads and movies. Its themes serve as a way for us to understand ourselves and look beyond perception from abroad.

The notion of Bermuda as an enigmatic paradise island was embroidered by the genius of literary imaginations. Poets, Andrew Marvell and Tom Moore wrote about Bermuda along with Mark Twain, who, in the late nineteenth century celebrated the Island as another world of “breezy groves…flower gardens…, and lovely vistas of blue water”. It did everything to burnish this jewel in the Atlantic across the centuries since the fateful shipwreck in 1609 that began Bermuda’s story. The Island’s status as the “Isles of Rest” — a haven and retreat — was popularised when Princess Louise, Queen Victoria’s daughter, wintered in Bermuda.

It was not always a tranquil vision though. Contemporaneous accounts of the shipwreck of the Sea Venture and the subsequent settlement of Bermuda provided inspiration for Shakespeare’s The Tempest and the brief mention of “the still vexed Bemoothes”. Bermuda was originally known as the “Isle of Devils” after scared sailors described strange noises later found to have been made by wild hogs and birds. Superstition was reawakened in the mid-twentieth century when tales of lost aircraft and ships were spun to form the infamous “Bermuda Triangle” theory. The exhibition examines Bermuda as a place where fantasy and fact, myth and reality merge to form a split personality.

Mythology, mayhem, mystery and marketing are symbolised by four potent wall-sized images as you enter the exhibition. There is a beguiling early travel poster, next to Bermuda’s prophetic crest, “Quo Fata Ferunt” - “Whither the Fates Carry Us” and a disaster movie poster “Misteri delle Bermude”. The fourth image is of a 1950’s Ford Edsel model called “Bermuda”. It was to appeal to an affluent American upper class country club set. Bermuda had become the byword for luxury and high-end exclusivity. This is evidenced later in the show where sophisticated travellers are illustrated in a magazine advert dating from the same post war period. The moon rises over a Bermuda beach while nonchalant men in tuxedoes enjoy “Webster Cigars”.

The exhibition continues to explore how the Island was marketed and illustrated with the invention of lithography making a new era of poster art possible and coinciding with the boom in travel for pleasure. In the 1930’s, Adolph Treidler created the iconic posters such as “Bermuda in oleander time” – still so popular today – redolent of a bygone Bermuda and the pristine pastel marketing that built a formidable tourism brand. Early local marketing slogans such as “Frost to Flowers in Forty Eight Hours” were typically entrepreneurial. In those days you could take a Pan American World Airways clipper and sail the skies to paradise in three hours.

Charles Hopkinson’s watercolour “Windy Day, Wreck Hill”, 1947, shows how artists have depicted mayhem in an island that is at the mercy of hurricanes and risks potentially devastating storms. The dramatic fire that destroyed Hamilton’s Bermudiana Hotel is referenced in the oil painting by British artist William Harrington’s “Still Life”, 1958. The painting depicts the artist’s breakfast table on the morning after the tragedy with paint brushes and paints strewn about. The Royal Gazette is propped up, and, the clearly painted headline from Friday September 5th 1958 reads “Fire Guts Bermudiana Hotel Guests Evacuate Quietly”. The morning mail poking from the table reveals an Airmail letter addressed to the artist and an envelope, perhaps a letter of condolence, addressed to the hotel’s general manager Carroll Dooley.

Charles Lloyd Tucker (1913-1971), the renowned Bermudian artist, always had a keen eye for capturing social life. He depicts the aftermath of an earlier disastrous fire in 1956 that broke out in room five-thirty-three and gutted the Hamilton Hotel – the site where City Hall now stands. In the foreground of this 1958 oil painting, “Hamilton Hotel on Fire”, painted amid gloomy hues, stand a couple who partially obscure the cross-like form of a shiny red fire hydrant – a subtle reminder there was no salvation for the hotel.

Mayhem as upheaval too can viewed in the guise of Cubism which radically reshaped art in the twentieth century. Albert Gleizes’s, one of the movement’s main protagonists “Portrait of Juliette Roche”, Oil, 1917, contours are stripped away and Bermuda is portrayed in a new startling way. Niles Spencer too — “House Bermuda (St George)”, 1929 is exhibited: low toned geometries in an industrial view of Bermuda of the original capital.

Bermuda has inspired film and film-makers and posters display the genre, including That Touch of Mink, that starred Cary Grant and Doris Day and The Admirable Crichton with Kenneth More as the lead — incidentally it was released in the US as Paradise Lagoon. The movie plays in a darkened nook of the Museum. There is a giant detailed floor map depicting the discoveries of thirty-eight wrecks and part of the legacy of Bermudian Teddy Tucker whose precious finds were the inspiration for Peter Benchley’s novel The Deep, later to be filmed on the Island.

In the past the Museum has included a car, boat and even a working photo booth. Which art museums have you visited recently have done that? Never a gimmick though and always a device designed to convey meaning and engage. This exhibition has a triangular booth – an iconic symbol to the Triangle mystery – containing early to mid-twentieth century American and Canadian marketing ads for Bermuda. Step inside this portal to simpler times of yesteryear.

There is a curious arrangement of mangled car parts positioned under the spiral staircase and beside the floor map of Bermuda’s ship-wrecks. Eerily, music seems to emanate from the car stereo playing upbeat Bermuda inspired songs. Here is the beating social heart of the exhibition whose goal is to make us think. The mechanical wreck is a prescient metaphor for chaos in our times beyond the vehicular mayhem of the present day roads. It’s message is emphasised by Masterworks’ founder and director, Tom Butterfield, in the prefatory wall text displayed before entering the exhibition as Bermuda tries to remain “another world”.

The exhibition deals with mortality in a dark and creepy painting in gouache by Martha Vister’ Hooft (American 1906-1994) “Bermuda Cemetery”, 1946.

A show of this energy and spirit would not be complete without the inclusion of the contemporary Bermudian and Charman Prize winning artist, Graham Foster, who is deservedly displayed among internationally revered artists. An artist of infinite imagination, range and originality his reputation can only grow. One of two pieces by him exhibited is the sweeping sculptural mobile, “The Seas of Europa”, 2010, complete with mutant creatures spiralling unknown depths below a boat rowed by three figures. The wires that hang the numerous elements catch the light like celestial rays from an eternal place. Viewing the mobile with a neutral background for full dramatic effect is preferable so a trip up to the mezzanine level helps.

The logistical demands for staging such a show are immense. I think it is important to note just how much work has been put into creating this show: the kind of things you don’t fully appreciate unless you are fortunate enough to preview the show as I did. The hanging is highly skilled as are the dedicated installation team who rigorously prepare the Museum for the opening. The flow of the exhibition is aided by succinct wall texts and graphics that strike the right balance – informative without being overly heavy. This show maintains its momentum and makes a memorable walk through the Museum.

Mythology, Mayhem, Myth and Marketing is an exhibition that is curated with zest and pushes the imagination. Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art has found a new interpretive hook for its collection, upon which ideas for future shows will surely hang.