Tonight at 7PM ( June 20th )

Nicole Awai, artist in residence.

Since the beginning of June, New York based, Trinidadian artist  Nicole Awai has been researching and working from Alice Yard on an Art Matters Grant. Her investigations lead her to La Brea and, after all this time, to a puzzling personal story of a childhood school excursion, she recalls, or imagined but actually may have missed.

"...In the last 12 years there has consistently been the presence of an ‘oozing’ materiality in my work. At first it was viscous and lava-like and it manifested itself in the colors red, white and blue. Finally it became a black ooze in the drawing series,  Specimens from Local Ephemera. I began to think of it as a site of simultaneous creation and destruction, becoming and ending where time is elastic and non-linear....Now that my black ooze has become such a vital, physical element in my work, I decided to have the real experience of the La Brea Pitch Lake. I am curious about how the mythology of this imagined space germinated in my head...."

Awai was awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant in 2011. She earned her Master’s Degree in Multimedia Art from the University of South Florida. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, and currently serves as a Critic for the Yale School of Art. Her work has been included in several seminal exhibitions, including the first Greater New York: New Art in New York Now, at P.S. 1/MoMA (2000), the Biennale of Ceramic in Contemporary Art (2003) the 2008 Busan Biennale in Korea, Infinite Island: Contemporary Caribbean Art (2007), and Open House: Working in Brooklyn (2004), the latter two held at the Brooklyn Museum. Ms. Awai was a featured artist in the 2005 I.P.O. series at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Recent exhibitions includes her solo exhibition, Almost Undone at the Vilcek Foundation, Mi Papi, Dream On – Happy Ending… ,Washington Square Windows, 80wse Galleries NYU and the Biennale of the Caribbean in Aruba. Be Inspired! is currently on view at the Kemper  Museum of Contemporary. The exhibition features recent acquistions to the museum collection.

Help support two projects by members of Alice Yard's network

Promotional trailer for Kingston Shottas

Two current projects by members of Alice Yard’s network are raising financial support via the crowdfunding site Indiegogo.

Kingston Shottas, directed by Mariel Brown, is a documentary film in progress. “At a time when contemporary art from the Caribbean is catching fire internationally,” Brown writes, “Kingston Shottas follows Jamaican artists Marvin Bartley, Marlon James and Ebony G. Patterson as they take on the controversial issues of race, class, slavery and homosexuality; making photography-based work that captures, with an arresting honesty, the challenges and contradictions of being Jamaican in the 21st century, and simultaneously navigating the vicissitudes of rising through the ranks of the international art world.” The film is inspired in part by Shot in Kingston, an exhibition of photo-based work by younger Jamaican artists, curated by Christopher Cozier as part of Alice Yard’s 4x4 programme in 2010.

Find out more about the film and how you can lend your support here.

Artists Alicia Milne and Luis Vasquez La Roche, aka Pinky & Emigrante, have been selected to participate in a two-month residency at OAZO AIR in Amsterdam in July and August 2013. Their Indiegogo campaign will help cover travel, living, and materials costs for this residency. Find out more here.

Both crowdfunding campaigns offer special perks for donors.

Rodell Warner: Year of the Snake Eating Itself

Mohammeds

An exhibition and talk by artist in residence Sandra Brewster

Thursday 4 April, 2013, 7 to 10 pm, at Alice Yard

Sandra Brewster has been artist in residence at Alice Yard during February and March 2013. While in Port of Spain, she has created a new body of work, Mohammeds, which has evolved from her ongoing Smiths series. On Thursday 4 April, to mark the end of her residency, Brewster will show this new work at Alice Yard, and give a short artist’s talk. The exhibition will be open to the public from 7 to 10 pm on 4 April, and from 6 to 9 pm on 5 April.

Brewster writes:

“I’ve enjoyed playing in the Yard this last couple of months, travelling, making friends, and learning about Trinidad. Some of the results of this play will be installed throughout the space, complemented by a talk on how my work has started to travel in other directions at Alice Yard.

“Among the series I’ve worked on, the Smiths have been a recurring theme. The name Smith, a large section of a North American telephone directory, conjures up ideas of sameness and commonality and invisibility, as there are so many. Offering an element of humour, I use the name to mock the notion of a monolithic Black community — of course not all Smiths are related, or look or act the same. The Smiths are afro-headed characters that I present as paintings on slabs of wood, their bodies clothed in solid colour and their faces replaced with the Smith section of the phone directory. I continue to use them in various visual narratives and pieces that offer a questioning around concerns of identity and representation.

“Now the Smiths from Toronto have turned into Trinidadian Mohammeds. I’ve been playing with the components of the form, using them in new narratives, and engaging environments and people with 3D interpretations. I regard this experience, very much inspired by this place, as another new beginning to my practice.”


About the artist:

Sandra Brewster is a Canadian artist of Caribbean ancestry. She is a recipient of numerous grants to develop projects. Her work has been published in several journals and magazines: Of Note, The Walrus, Small Axe, Chimurenga, MIX, and NKA, among others. Recent exhibitions include 28 Days, Georgia Scherman Projects, Toronto; Serious Play, SPACE, London, UK; (Re) Visions, The Print Studio, Hamilton, Ontario; Listen Installation, Robert Langen Gallery, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario; Fortune Tellers, Five Myles Gallery, New York; and Fleeting Face, A Space Gallery, Toronto. Her practice also includes work as an arts educator/community arts facilitator, and she has coordinated numerous exhibitions involving Toronto artists.

This residency is supported by the Ontario Arts Council

Verse to Converse

Friday / March 15 / 2013 / 7pm / Alice Yard

Krisantha Sri Bhaggiyadatta

Hosted by Artist in Residence Sandra Brewster, a reading and discussion with Sri Lankan poet Krisantha Sri Bhaggiyadatta, playing on the links between the Arts and History, Sri Lanka and the Caribbean, Africa and Asia. Krisantha, who is visiting from Sri Lanka, has read in Colombo, Beijing, New York, San Francisco, London, and Toronto. He will read from his latest work, Transfixion in Twilight. He is presently compiling: A Very Personal English History of the World. His books of poetry include: Cheqpoint in Heaven (2005), Aay Wha’ Kinda Indian Arr U? (1997), The 52nd State of Amnesia (1992), The Only Minority is the Bourgeoisie (1985), and Domestic Bliss (1981).

Sandra Brewster, artist in residence

1 February to 31 March, 2013
 

Sandra Brewster, Alice Yard's current artist in residence, is a multi-media artist creating work (drawings, paintings, video and mixed media) that engages issues of race, identity, representation, and memory. Her current focus is African-Canadians born in North America and those who arrived in North America from the Caribbean during the 1960s and 70s. At times, she references old photographs and recreates elements using painting, drawing, and gel transfers, juxtaposing imagery to provide a dialogue through contrasts or likenesses. In this work she visually represents a time or a memory and provides a platform to tell stories of “back home”. In other pieces Brewster presents portraits of individuals that challenge stereotypes and perceptions. Her ongoing series Smiths questions prevalent assertions about the existence of a monolithic Black Community.

Untitled (Smiths), mixed media on wood, 48x60 in., 2011

Brewster is a recipient of numerous grants to develop projects. Her work has been published in several journals and magazines: Of Note, The Walrus, Small Axe, Chimurenga, MIX, and NKA, among others. Recent exhibitions include 28 Days, Georgia Scherman Projects, Toronto; Serious Play, SPACE, London, UK; (Re) Visions, The Print Studio, Hamilton, Ontario; Listen Installation, Robert Langen Gallery, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario; Fortune Tellers, Five Myles Gallery, New York; and Fleeting Face, A Space Gallery, Toronto. Her practice also includes work as an arts educator/community arts facilitator, and she has coordinated numerous exhibitions involving Toronto artists.

See a conversation by Sally Frater on Brewster's work here.

This residency is supported by the Ontario Arts Council

A conversation with Pinky & Emigrante

Thursday 21 February, 7 pm, at Alice Yard

Artists Luis Vasquez La Roche and Alicia Milne have been producing work together in the public space in Trinidad since 2011. Their tag, P&E, short for Pinky & Emigrante, is a playful reference to their shared interests in ideas of home and perception. While they both maintain individual artistic practices, they also collaborate in creating street installations and pastings, zines, exhibitions, and murals. They have participated in the Trinidad leg of the Urban Heartbeat mural project in the Queen’s Park Savannah (March 2012) and were specially invited to send work for an installation of their street pastings at the WOMA exhibition in Grenada (April 2012). In July 2013 they will participate in the  Open Ateliers Zuidoost Artists in Residence (OAZO AIR) programme in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

In their talk at Alice Yard, Vasquez La Roche and Milne will discuss their recent collaborative work and their experience of working in the public space. All are invited.

About the artists:

Luis Vasquez La Roche was born in 1983 in Caracas, Venezuela. He moved to Trinidad and Tobago in 2002. He later studied visual arts at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine. His works are explorations of personal experiences and his new adopted space and culture. He has participated in several group shows, such as Erotic Art Week TT (2010), Mensajes Positivos in Chile (2011), and PFC (pon una foto en la calle) in Venezuela (2012). In 2012 he had his first solo exhibition in Trinidad, titled The Search – La Busqueda.

Alicia Milne is a Trinidadian artist who enjoys working with tactile materials. She also has an interest in manipulating moving images. Her drawings, plaster, ceramic and video works have been exhibited in Trinidad, Grenada, and the United States. After a voluntary sabbatical while settling into teaching art in a local secondary school, she is currently working on a series that merges digital and drawn images on tactile surfaces.