Jemima Charles: Cones

20 to 25 January, 2010




Cones is an "interactive exhibition of colour and light transparency" by the young artist Jemima Charles. She writes:

"Cones deals with visual perception and the role of the retina. The cone is one of the basic building blocks of form construction, and seeing is one of the processes of visual art. The viewer interacts with the work when light coming from inside the work falling on the retina of the eye generates visual stimuli that are transmitted to the brain via nerve impulses. Arriving impulses are combined with established experiences and habits of seeing, thus visual perception can differ from person to person....

"Perceptions can be influenced by social connections, political connections, spiritual connections and many more. I hope that the viewer will leave marks of intimate relationships they have to these colours."

The materials of this project are inspired by the art of nebuta, a Japanese paper lantern festival. In 2008, Charles participated in a nebuta workshop in Japan. On returning to Trinidad, in order to further explore the medium, she began experimenting with wire-bending and basic geometrical shapes.

The artist will begin installing Cones at Alice Yard two days before the formal opening. On Wednesday 20 and Thursday 21 January (12.00 to 7.00 pm), visitors are welcome to participate in the installation by helping to paint the paper cones. (Please bring a paintbrush.)

The exhibition opens at 7.00 pm on Friday 22 January and runs until Monday 25.

All are invited.

Helping Haiti

Child’s shoes, Haiti, 2002


Following yesterday’s catastrophic earthquake in Haiti, many people in the Caribbean are keen to help with relief efforts. The MEP blog has posted a list of links to international agencies which are accepting money donations online, as well as information on groups based in Trinidad organising donation drives, including:

= Foodstuffs, blankets and clothing can be dropped off (please label all bags) to the COP (Congress of the People) Flagship Office on the corner of Tragarete Road and Broome Street in Port of Spain between 9am and 3pm

= ITNAC (Is There Not A Cause) is collecting non-perishable food items, clothing, bedding, temporary building supplies, medical supplies, and toiletries. For details, contact Avonelle Hector-Joseph (firstsamuel1729@yahoo.com) or Mellissa Lezama (868-714-5610/396-3330)

We urge all friends of Alice Yard to make a donation of some kind. Recovery from this disaster will be long, painful, and very expensive. It’s still unclear how many thousands of people have been injured or killed, and damage to Haiti’s infrastructure seems immense.

For ongoing coverage, see the Haiti Earthquake 2010 special coverage page at Global Voices.

UPDATES: Silicon Caribe has posted information on where to make donations of food, clothes, etc. in Jamaica.

Another list of relief links from Miami-based Jamaican writer Geoffrey Philp.

Other international NGOs who have launched appeals:

Partners in Health: community-based health services in Haiti
Architecture for Humanity: supporting infrastructure reconstruction, including earthquake-resistant housing

•••

The photo above was posted online by Christopher Cozier in 2008. He wrote:

“This was the only photo from my entire time while in Haiti. On my last visit [in 2002], I just could not take pictures. I had to ask a colleague (Karole Gizolme) to take this image for me. I noticed the shoes on the ground near to where I was sitting. Something about the way that the shoes had become so worn out struck me. I kept thinking that no one growing child could have worn that shoe long enough for it to become so worn down. The shoes were just on the ground in a yard in the Capital.”

12 the Band (+ special guests) in performance

Friday 8 January, 2010, at 7.30 pm



Sheldon Holder of 12 performing at Alice Yard. Photo by Richard Rawlins


2010 is nearly a week old, but it's not too late the celebrate the start of the new year with 12, Alice Yard's house band. On Friday 8 January, 12 will host a special concert with guest performers Blue Emperor, Gyazette, and Stop.Motion, at the rooftop terrace of Tamnak Thai (13 Queen's Park East, Port of Spain). The show starts at 7.30 pm, and tickets (purchasable at the door) cost $150.

The event will help raise funds for 12's upcoming trip to Hartford, Connecticut, where the band will perform at Real Art Ways as part of the ongoing Rockstone and Bootheel programme.

For more information, contact helloaliceyard@gmail.com.

Reading: Ishion Hutchinson and Valzhyna Mort

Wednesday 6 January, 2010, at 7.00 pm



Ishion Hutchinson and Valzhyna Mort

Alice Yard is currently hosting its first two writers in residence, both poets: Ishion Hutchinson of Jamaica and Valzhyna Mort of Belarus. They are also the first residents of our new Habitat space, intended to host visiting artists, writers, musicians, and other creative practitioners interested in living and working in Port of Spain and interacting with Alice Yard’s creative network.

On Wednesday 6 January, at 7.00 pm, Hutchinson and Mort will read from their recent work at Alice Yard, and engage in a conversation about questions which their separate bodies of work address from different directions: language, translation, home, abroad, and personal and national history.

All are invited.

About the writers:

Ishion Hutchinson was born in 1983 in Port Antonio, Jamaica. He has an MFA from New York University and is currently researching his doctoral dissertation at the University of Utah. He has read at the Calabash International Literary Festival in Jamaica and participated in the Cropper Foundation Caribbean Writers’ Workshop. In 2005 his chapbook Bryan’s Bay appeared in the Calabash Chapbook Series, and his first full-length book of poems will appear in 2010.

Valzhyna Mort was born in 1981 in Minsk, Belarus. Her first book, I’m As Thin as Your Eyelashes (2005), was a collection of poetry, prose, and selected translations from Polish and English. Since 2006 she has lived in the United States, where she is a writer in residence at the University of Baltimore. She has also been a writer in residence at the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin and Sylt-Quelle in Germany and at the International Authors’ House in Graz, Austria. Her second book of poems, Factory of Tears, translated by Mort in collaboration with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Franz Wright and Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright, appeared in 2008.

I took my name from the aftersky
of a Mesopotamian flood,
birdless as if culture had shed its wings
into a ground vulture on the plain....

— from “A Surveyor’s Journal”, by Ishion Hutchinson

even our mothers have no idea how we were born
how we parted their legs and crawled out into the world
the way you crawl from the ruins after a bombing....

— from “Belarusian 1”, by Valzhyna Mort

The reading is co-hosted by Town.

Three young artists: Stanita Clarke, Justin Hay, Arnaldo James

Alice Yard recently hosted the work of three young photographers, all of them university undergraduates.



Photo by Stanita Clarke

Stanita Clarke is a student at Trinity College, Connecticut. She spent the Fall 2009 semester working in Trinidad under the mentorship of Christopher Cozier. Her research focused on traditional architecture, the evolution of urban space, conservation, and preservation. On Monday 21 December she showed a series of photographs documenting Trinidad's urban fabric at this current moment of transition, and gave a short talk. She also documented her work at the Trinity at Alice Yard blog.

===



Photo by Justin Hay



Photo by Arnaldo James

On Wednesday 30 December, Justin Hay and Arnaldo James staged a collaborative exhibition of recent work in photography and other media. Hay is a student at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver. He showed a sequence of photographs alongside several works on paper and a sculptural work. James is a student at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine. He showed a sequence of 100 photographs, many of which also appear on his Flickr page.

The event also included music by DJ cozyprone metronome.