A walk to Belmont

Sunday 2 February, 2020, 5 pm
From 80 Roberts Street, Woodbrook,
to Granderson Lab, 24 Erthig Road, Belmont

At the end of January 2020, Alice Yard will relocate from 80 Roberts Street, Woodbrook — our base for the past thirteen and a half years — to Granderson Lab, 24 Erthig Road, Belmont. Previously an adjunct space, Granderson Lab will now become the permanent home of Alice Yard.

Since September 2006, our activities have evolved in response to the physical environment at 80 Roberts Street, but we have always maintained that Alice Yard is not merely a place but a social and conceptual space, a model for collaboration, a far-ranging network. Our move to Granderson Lab offers the opportunity to test this idea, as we rethink and reimagine our way ahead in a new (but still familiar) location, and the different (but still familiar) social topography of Belmont.

On Sunday 2 February, 2020, at 5 pm, we will mark this transition with a walk from 80 Roberts Street through Port of Spain to 24 Erthig Road: a short physical journey that will serve as a simple ritual of relocation, and a collective reflection on our past, present, and future.

At Granderson Lab there will be modest refreshments and an opportunity to tour our new home, currently a work in progress. (We will provide transport back to Roberts Street for those who park there ahead of the walk.)

We invite all our friends, colleagues, and collaborators to join us on our walk to Belmont — and in our future imaginings.

Maya Ramesar: Big and Small

Thursday 16 January, 2020, from 6.30 pm
27 Pembroke Street, Port of Spain

On Thursday 16 January, 2020, for one night only, artist Maya Ramesar will present a series of paintings and digital animations in the temporary project space at 27 Pembroke Street in downtown Port of Spain.

“I approach a painting as a room,” explains the artist. “A character is put into a space where it will live forever.” In these works, non-human, subhuman, and superhuman figures abound, elements of fiction that the artist and her audience superimpose over real life. Anachronistic, incongruous, and iconic images merge to subvert conventional representations of Trinidad, as the normal and the calamitous co-exist. The discomfort, tension, and posturing of these figures are forceful rather than subtextual.

The artist writes: “Local art in the public consciousness is serene and picturesque. I was frustrated with figures that appeared contemplative, languid, or busy making merry without gaze. Local people and spaces are often treated as passive muses rather than individual characters.

“What or who gets to take up space, and what is shoved to the periphery? What is framed? Focal?”

All are invited.


Maya Ramesar is communications officer at the Trinidad and Tobago Association for the Hearing Impaired, as well as a freelance illustrator.

In collaboration with #ayardexchange and Cass’Mosha A. Centeno