More Than Just a Place to Sit

An exhibition of new objects by Marlon Darbeau

11 to 15 December at Granderson Lab (a project of Alice Yard), 24 Erthig Road, Belmont

Designer Marlon Darbeau will show his Peera for the first time in Trinidad and Tobago, along with other new design objects, at Granderson Lab in Belmont. First shown in the Global Africa Project exhibition (2010) at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, Peera is a reinterpretation of a familiar and ubiquitous little bench. Usually made by their users and constructed out of wood, peerahs are used for sitting on, and as a step up to reach items on a shelf. Says Darbeau, “I remember seeing my father sitting on a peerah while polishing his shoes or while painting the mailboxes he made. To this day he still has two of them.” 

Combining aluminium and cedar, Darbeau’s Peera is a contemporary and beautifully designed interpretation of a very mundane object. Writing on the Interior Design blog, one critic commented: “It is wonderful to see such forward-thinking design coming from parts of the world that the design world traditionally glazes over; Darbeau’s work is locally inspired, locally functional, and beautifully combines smart design aesthetics with local resources.”

More Than Just a Place to Sit: An Exhibition of New Objects by Marlon Darbeau opens on Tuesday 11 December, 2012, 7 to 9 pm, and continues from Wednesday 12 to Saturday 15 December, 11 am to 6 pm daily, at Granderson Lab, 24 Erthig Road, Belmont.

Alternative Open Studio 2012

For two days in December 2012, Alice Yard will host an Alternative Open Studio event, featuring work by four Trinidadian designers working in jewellery, fashion accessories, and woodwork.
This is a satellite event of the Style Spirit Fashion Weekend 2012.

Friday 7 December, 4 to 9 pm
Saturday 8 December, 10 am to 5 pm

For more information, contact:
Janice: 769 0771
Lupe: 490 8853
Jade: 325 8524
Richard: 726 4010

The Ballad of Francisco Bobadilla

An installation by Marlon Griffith

31 October to 2 November at Granderson Lab (a project of Alice Yard), 24 Erthig Road, Belmont

Artist’s conversation on 3 November at Alice Yard, 80 Roberts Street, Woodbrook

V.S. Naipaul’s 1962 travel narrative The Middle Passage begins with his return to Trinidad on board “the Spanish immigrant ship Francisco Bobadilla.” Marlon Griffith borrows the name of the vessel for his new installation project, which runs for three consecutive nights (Wednesday 31 October to Friday 2 November, 7 to 10 pm) at Granderson Lab in Belmont (a project of Alice Yard).

In The Ballad of Francisco Bobadilla, Griffith explores the experience of returning to Port of Spain — and the Belmont neighbourhood where he grew up — after an absence of three years. The artist contemplates the ways the city has changed, the ways it hasn’t, and how his own work changes in different geographical and social contexts. It involves “learning to be comfortable in an uncomfortable place.”

On Saturday 3 November, from 7 pm at Alice Yard, Griffith will discuss the evolution of the project and his recent work, in conversation with Christopher Cozier. The evening will also mark Alice Yard’s 6th anniversary as an independent space and network for experiment and collaboration.

All are invited.

Images above: details from the artist’s sketchbook 

Allen Prize fundraiser

The Allen Prize for Young Writers is a programme supporting budding writers aged 12 to 19 in Trinidad and Tobago. On Saturday 27 October, from 9 am to 2 pm, Alice Yard will host an Allen Prize fundraising event:

100 Years after Independence (Not Ours)

A conversation with Tatiana Flores

Tuesday 28 August, 7.00 pm

Zapatistas at Rest, by Fernando Leal (1922, oil on canvas)


Tatiana Flores, Alice Yard’s current researcher in residence, is an art historian and curator, based at Rutgers University in New Jersey. She specialises in twentieth-century Latin American art and contemporary art. Her first book project examines the development of avant-gardism in post-revolutionary Mexico, in relation to the Estridentista (“Stridentist”) movement, which encompassed art and literature. She is also active as an independent curator, and was co-curator with Christopher Cozier of the 2011 exhibition Wrestling with the Image: Caribbean Interventions (Washington, DC).

On Tuesday 28 August, Flores will give an informal talk at Alice Yard on the development of modernism in Mexico, one century after independence and immediately following the Mexican Revolution. It ponders the place of the arts in a postcolonial and socially agitated context, and offers a creative revisioning of the period typically known as the “Mexican Renaissance.” In her conversation with the audience, Flores will consider parallels with circumstances in post-independence Trinidad and Tobago.

All are invited.

A public intervention by Estridentistas in Xalapa, c. 1926: car parked on the steps of the city cathedral

GPS / A conversation with Carlos Garrido Castellano

Tuesday 21 August, 7.00 pm

From Cosas del Corazón, by Pascal Meccariello

GPS: Video Art from the Caribbean is a series of seven video works curated by Carlos Garrido Castellano and Dagmary Olívar Graterol, first shown in Madrid in March 2012, as part of the International Congress on the Caribbean.

The curators write:

“... a GPS is a system that helps us to locate directions, spaces, and, in that way, to place ourselves spatially. Elaborated with the most advanced technology by international enterprises, a GPS seems to be the ideal tool to measure the increase of mobility and connectivity in the present moment. But a GPS is not infallible. Its accuracy depends on so many factors: the person who listens, the position of the satellites, an updated model, and some local adjustments made by local governments in order to elaborate cartographies of small, otherwise inaccessible spaces.

“From that position, GPS intends to approach the visual creativity of the region by showing the work of seven artists who share an interest in questioning the position of the self and the society in a changing context ....”

GPS will be shown at Alice Yard for one evening, on Tuesday 21 August, and Garrido Castellano will lead an informal conversation about questions such as:

= How “responsibility” can be articulated from the present perspective, and how can it be linked to a expanding, changing context.
= How to measure initiatives developed by artists concerning their relations with the public and institutions across the Caribbean.
= How ideas of place and diaspora have been changed by the inclusion of digital technology in the artistic process.

All are invited to join the conversation.

Carlos Garrido Castellano is an art historian specialising in Latin American and Caribbean art, and an assistant professor at the University of Granada in Spain. He has done long-term research stays in countries like India, Jamaica, Serbia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Martinique, and Puerto Rico, and he is the author of the book Arte en Diálogo: Conversaciones sobre práctica artística contemporánea, identidad e integración cultural en República Dominicana. He is currently researcher in residence at Alice Yard.

From Let’s Punish Your Body, by Lázaro Saavedra

Artists included in GPS:

= Joëlle Ferly (Guadeloupe), A MazeD, The Strange Fruit
= María Elvira Dieppa (Colombia), Waiting Room
= Pascal Meccariello (Dominican Republic), Cosas del Corazón
= Sheena Rose (Barbados), Town
= Lázaro Saavedra (Cuba), Let’s Punish Your Body
= Argelia Bravo (Venezuela), Biografías encubierta
= María Teresa Díaz Nerio (Dominican Republic), Homenaje a Sara Bartman

A conversation with Marta Fernandez Campa

Wednesday 8 August, 7.00 pm

Marta Fernandez Campa is a scholar based at the University of Miami. She is currently visiting Alice Yard on a research residency. On Wednesday evening she will give an informal talk on aspects of her recent work. She writes:

“I will be discussing the possibilities that Caribbean visual arts and literature offer for addressing more alternative and personal forms of memory, looking at work from visual artist Christopher Cozier and poet M. NourbeSe Philip. I am interested in how their work investigates, challenges, and stretches the boundaries of what archiving means and entails in Caribbean contemporary arts practice and expression.”

All are invited.

A conversation with Mariamma Kambon

Friday, August 3rd, 6.30pm

Olatunji, 2011

Mariamma Kambon will discuss her ongoing series of photographs entitled " Black Power's Inheritence" - a series that examines " the repercussions of the Black Power Movement of the 1970s in Trinidad and Tobago, on the progeny of its leaders... it offers a participant observer's perspective on the cross generational impact of the movement"

Contemporary Dance at Home & Abroad

New Perspectives in the Global Village 
Transnational Body Histories & A Mapping of the Future

PHOTO -MARIA NUNES

Part 1
Saturday, 21 July

Today at 09:00 until 

Part 2
Saturday, 28 July at 12:00 until


A Mapping of the Future Discussions led by Scholar in Residence, Dr. Ananya Chatterjea, a dancer, choreographer, dance scholar, and dance educator, who envisions her work in the field of dance as a "call to action".
See details here

Tonight at 7.00pm

A conversation with Mark King

6.30PM / Friday / June 15th.
 


























Mark King is a Barbados-based photographer. He has been in residence, at the Yard, developing a new project. In 2011, he participated in a screen printing artist in residency at the Frans Masereel Centrum in Kasterlee, Belgium. In the same year he was selected by Lucie Foundation for their E-pprentice program and paired with acclaimed photographer Roger Erickson for a six month apprenticeship. Mark has called Barbados, The Bahamas, Brussels, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. home. His international experience directly informs his projects. As a constant outsider, Mark's work examines the people he encounters during his travels as well as his relationship with an ever-changing environment.

A conversation with Karen Mc Lean

Tuesday 22 May, 7.30 pm 

Artist talk and presentation

In late May, UK-based Trinidadian contemporary artist Karen McLean will be in residence at Alice Yard. On Tuesday 22 May, she will give an informal talk discussing her investigations of local vernacular architecture and the Cadbury Photo Archives, located in the UK, which have allowed her to visually revisit connections between our colonial past and current realities.

During her time at Alice Yard, McLean will be doing research, sharing and discussing her ideas, and developing a new project in Trinidad. The artist’s visit is supported by the Arts Council England and National Lottery England.

Sweet Ethics is a site specific installation sited in Bournville, near Birmingham. This project confronts the way in which philanthropist and businessman George Cadbury is traditionally represented and by extension critiques the ethics of capitalism.

  
“Relocating to England, I became interested in the interconnected history of the two countries that I have lived in, and the on-going effects of those historical connections.... Of particular interest to me is the vernacular architecture of the Caribbean and the language that these structures express.... My interests in the Bournville archives stemmed from the discovery of a picture of a hut online. I was actually situated in Bournville... it’s where my university campus was, and I had been there for five  years. I had lived in Trinidad for 40 years and had never known that George Cadbury had owned a cocoa estate in Santa Cruz — as a matter of fact he owned two, Ortinola and La Mercia.”

 

A conversation with Jennifer Pritheeva Samuel

This Friday, March 16th @ 7.30pm
Artist talk and presentation.

Shirley Naidoo (far right) at work at her Hair Sensations Salon in Durban, Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa. Feb 2011.

"....Home away from Home is a multimedia project on the global South Asian (East Indian) diaspora. Through this project I explore the universal issues of identity and belonging among populations as they migrate from one culture and adapt to another - examining what they take with them and what they leave behind. I will be showing work from South Africa, Kenya and Trinidad at this talk.... "

Jennifer Pritheeva Samuel is a Sri Lankan-American photographer and filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. Samuel's personal work shares untold stories of identity, home and Diaspora through powerful, intimate imagery and narratives. She uses documentary photography and film as mediums to examine her own experiences and tell stories that connect the present to the past and the future. She has produced short films for UNICEF and has also worked on several documentary films for PBS FRONTLINE. Samuel completed her B.A. in Anthropology at New York University in 1998 and subsequently was a Peace Corps volunteer on the island of Dominica for two years. After working in local and international development, Samuel received her Master of International Affairs from Columbia Universityºs School of International & Public Affairs.

TODAY 4 PM TRINIDAD TIME

CHEAP & CLEAN
"... awarded the Rex Nettleford Fellowship for Cultural Studies... I will be working with 14 young men designing outfits based on their ideas and perceptions of masculinity . The project has many layers which includes a viral component. Which means you are able to view the project in real time..." Ebony G Patterson
Please click on the image below at 4pm Trinidad time
[3pm Kingston time]

A Dialogue on Rapso - Past and Present

Friday 20/01/2012 / 3- 5pm /Alice Yard
Moderated by Patricia van Leeuwaarde Moonsammy


















This event is "a coming together of rapso artists (past and present) to have a dynamic conversation about significant moments and movements in the history of this genre. ."
- Patricia van Leeuwaarde Moonsammy

Patricia van Leeuwaarde Moonsammy is an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at Dickinson College, where she teaches courses on the African Diaspora and the Caribbean. Trained as an anthropologist, her scholarly work focuses on the intersections of performance, activism and identity politics in the Caribbean. Adding to material from interviews she has conducted with artists over the past 8 years, she hopes the event would offer a more dynamic conversation between artists and highlight significant moments and movements in the history of this genre. Those expected in attendance are Brother Resistance, 3Canal, Ataklan, Ozy Merrique, Gillian Moor, Sista Ava, Brother Book, and other members of the Rapso community.

Photo -Network Rapso Riddum Band Truck Banner, Emancipation Parade.