ARTZPUB ONE MINUTE TV EPISODE 3 & 4

ARTZPUB ONE MINUTE TV

Artzpub Films is proud to present ARTZUB/Minute. A series of one minute video episodes covering pretty cool people doing pretty cool things in this pretty cool moment. It’s video content on the move. Enjoy.

Inward Hunger: the Story of Eric Williams by Mariel Brown

Here's a short clip from the upcoming series, Inward Hunger: the Story of Eric Williams. Be watching TV4 on Republic day (Saturday September 24th) from 1:30pm, to see all three episodes back-to-back.

Charles Campbell- Actor/Transporter

ACT 5 - final action, reception & discussion

Sunday September 18th at 6pm - Alice Yard
( 4 - 5.30 pm - actual performance investigation - Wild Flower Park, P.O.S.)

Charles Campbell is among a new generation of contemporary Caribbean artists working to explore and disrupt the region’s dominant social narratives. He has exhibited widely in North America, the Caribbean, and Europe, representing Jamaica in events such as the Havana
Biennial and the Brooklyn Museum’s Infinite Islands exhibition. His work uses images culled from the Caribbean's history of slavery and emancipation to investigate the intersection between meaning and image and open up the possibility of personal and social transformation. He holds an MA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College and currently lives and works in Canada.
His recent work has investigated and re-imagined the traditional Actor Boy character from the Jamaican Jonkonnu festival, a trickster figure and “agent of chaos and change.” Campbell writes: “Rather than remaining the character from Belisario’s print, a character from the past, I envision him as a character from one of the possible futures that was alive at the time of emancipation and a sort of embodiment of the coexistence of multiple futures.”

Looking at the Rational Utopianism of Buckminster Fuller as one of these multiple futures, Campbell has begun to create a series of three-dimensional spheres, drawing on Fuller’s geodesic domes: vehicles for the transport and circulation of people, ideas, and images, which “simultaneously excite different ways to understand something we see.” Campbell’s participation in ACT 5 is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.
Act 5 project statement here
See previous event pictures here & video
All are invited.

Nicole Awai: Almost Undone

Dates: Saturday, September 17th, 2011 – Saturday, October 29th, 2011

Location: 167 East 73rd Street, New York, NY 10021

Hours: Wednesday – Saturday, Noon – 6pm, or by appointment

Admission: Free

Opening: Friday, September 16th, 2011, 6pm – 9pm (RSVP required)

Press Contact: Anne Schruth; 212.472.2500/anne.schruth@vilcek.org

An artist finds her footing on liminal terrain

Nicole Awai unveils mixed-media installation at the Vilcek Foundation Gallery

Premiering September 17th at the Vilcek Foundation Gallery, in

New York City, is Almost Undone, a new installation by mixed-media artist Nicole Awai.

Featuring drawings from an earlier series by the Trinidadian native, entitled Specimens from

Local Ephemera, the drawings in this new exhibition will serve as visual anchors for emergent

pieces that seem to suspend, exude⎯even escape⎯their wall-bound origins, symbolizing the

transition of Ms. Awai’s work from one dimension into the next.

Local Ephemera, which began as a series of preparatory drawings for a sculpture Ms. Awai

presented at the 2003 Biennial of Ceramic in Contemporary Art in Italy, was later developed by

the artist into a stand-alone series of works. Occupying a liminal space, these drawings depict

various artifacts, both contemporary and historical, to reveal a world constantly in flux⎯the

world of in between and inside out. It’s a dynamic plane of shifting perception, but one framed

within a technical drawing format, thus lending it structure while weaving themes often found

in Ms. Awai’s other work⎯of duality, location, and cultural reprocessing.

In all her works, Ms. Awai draws upon multiple sources for inspiration⎯from popular media and

design to the history of art and a curiosity about the human migratory experience. Almost

Undone is no exception. In this new work, she incorporates materials as varied as cast and

sprayed paper, resin, plastic, nail polish, clay⎯even a telephone pole. The results are bold,

complex three-dimensional structures, which seem to pull, stretch, and tear from the wall, and

the memory of their two-dimensional predecessors.

Of Ms. Awai’s new installation, art historian Courtney J. Martin said, “Employing elements like nail varnish, and by crafting new surfaces, Nicole Awai’s works on paper and sculpture offer a fantastical, yet studied, take on the traditional mediums. This new body of work shows off her instinctual understanding of form and color, adding a thought provoking extension to her practice.”

Ms. Awai earned her Master’s Degree in Multimedia Art from the University of South Florida. She

now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, and currently serves as Critic at 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 2008 Busan Biennale in Korea,

Infinite Island: Contemporary Caribbean Art (2007), and Open House: Working in Brooklyn; the

latter two held at the Brooklyn Museum. Ms. Awai was also a featured artist in the 2005 I.P.O.

series at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

The Vilcek Foundation was established in 2000 by Jan and Marica Vilcek, immigrants from the

former Czechoslovakia. The mission of the Foundation, to honor the contributions of foreignborn

scholars and artists living in the United States, was inspired by the couple’s careers in

biomedical science and art history, respectively, as well as their personal experiences and

appreciation for the opportunities they received as newcomers to this country. The Foundation

hosts events to promote the work of immigrants, and awards annual prizes to prominent

immigrant biomedical scientists and artists who make outstanding contributions to American

society.

To learn more about the Vilcek Foundation, visit www.vilcek.org.

9 of 219 by Jamaican Artist Ebony G. Patterson in Alice Yard.

Ebony G. upfront (Rodell Warner)

July 25th, 2011. Alice Yard, Port of Spain, Trinidad.

9 of 219 . This piece had all the fixings of a good ole fashioned wake: from flambeau to candle and a procession of 9 coffins around the portion of the Woodbrook block that is home to Alice Yard Contemporary Artspace and then some. Woodbrook was already abuzz for most the day before the 7pm performance-based work by Patterson.

Flambeau and candle

Woodbrook police station was reportedly inundated with calls from concerned neighbours about the goings on at Roberts Street. These “goings on” actually prompted an investigation by a party of officers who responded to calls about “somebody dragging around a coffin on Roberts street, whole day,” and even Port of Spain’s Mayor himself paid a visit, warning us about the Yard’s lack of proper procedure in procuring permission for the performance and that the performance should not by any means take place on the “street”.

Ebony G. and the popo

6 of 9 of 219 coffins Alice Yard, The Lower Annex

Not withstanding all of the various official “visits”, by 8pm it was clear that Patterson’s project was going to happen, and the faithful gathered to bear her representations of fallen brethren: nine cosquel dancehall/bling coffins marking the number of deaths that took place during a few days of Patterson’s residency in Alice Yard. (Patterson’s aesthetic choices in the work form part of her ongoing exploration of Jamaica’s dancehall culture and its grandiose love of bling and flam couture.) Patterson is the first of a number of Caribbean artists that will be visiting the Yard over the next few months to celebrate the art space’s fifth anniversary, entitled Act 5.

Ebony G. Patterson (Jamaica/U.S.A.), Entourage, 2010. Digital print. (courtesy the artist)

As the pallbearers (both men and women, an oddity in the Caribbean where pallbearers are typically men and noted by one onlooker as empowering for women within this context) traversed the Woodbrook streets accompanied by 3 Canal. Patterson and 3 Canal collaborated to create a dirge of culled newspaper recollections/musings of Patterson’s, fused with 3 Canal’s own Pitter Patter riddum. It soon became obvious to everyone, documenters, onlookers, pallbearers et al, that this work had more shared resonance than anyone could have imagined at the beginning of the experiment.

3 of 9 of 219 coffins, Alice Yard, The Box

The Procession clip (Artzpub Videos)

The Procession in Woodbrook

Ebony G. Patterson and Christopher Cozier

Artist Luis Vasquez on crime and Caracas

Patterson, in a later talk about her work, drew similarities to our murder rate and that of Jamaica’s, prompting a lively comparison of safety and securities/ insecurities in our Caribbean environment, and our perceptions of what safety and security really mean. One Venezuelan-born artist commented on the fact that coming from a city of 5000 murders a year with a population of 5 million, to Trinidad, where there’s a murder rate of “only” 300 a year, he felt a sense of safety and security that he clearly didn’t have in Venezuela. Patterson also noted how the work and its development entered into a type of political space that she hadn’t initially foreseen.

Kelvon was a people's person and plenty people liked him because he liked to give jokes. He liked to chant and give freestyles (rap chants). Everybody in the neighbourhood saying it was something that wasn't meant for him.- (Antoinette George on the death of her son Kelvon 16)

Thank you for this...

One member of the procession thanked Patterson for the opportunity to attach a self to the often faceless murders and people reported, to get the chance to know, even if briefly, or rather, have ownership for and a bond maybe, with this representation of a person that on a regular day we may actually avoid, by ducking a newspaper or a crime reportage because we may have had enough. The ‘work’ discussions prompted more side discussions and branches to the exploratory tree than can be mentioned here. However, these are a few: males, the masculinity of crime, our acceptance or desensitization to murder due in part to violence in the media, You Tube etc, the disposal of the dead and what it means, superstitions and beliefs about funerals and their social importance, and so much more.

Some of Patterson’s work has left me speechless, just by its sheer magnificence. 9 of 219 is one of them.

Artists Ebony G., Ashraph and Darren Cheewah (pix by Rodell Warner)

9 of 219: Ebony G. Patterson’s new work at Alice Yard

There are nine coffins in Alice yard. One of them is coated in sparkly blue glitter; one of them is wrapped in gold lace and red plastic doilies, dotted here and there with diamantes. This is new work by Jamaican artist, Ebony G Patterson.

Patterson has been in Trinidad for nearly two weeks on an Alice Yard artist residency. This body of work, called 9 of 219, literally describes the number of murders that happened in Trinidad during a few days of her time here. It also continues her examination of Jamaican dancehall culture. In this case, the coffins form part of her interpretation of a “Bling Funeral”, in which, as she explains, Jamaicans from inner city communities wear dancehall fashion and bling to funerals.

We’re inviting everyone to come and see the work at Alice Yard (80 Roberts Street) on Monday, July 25th at 7pm. The night will begin with a candlelight vigil, so walk with your candles!

About Ebony G.:

Born a native of Kingston , Jamaica in 1981,Ebony G. Patterson graduated from the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in 2004, where she received an Honors Diploma in Painting and from Sam Fox College of Art and Design at the Washington University in St. Louis in 2006, with a Masters in Fine Arts in Printmaking and Drawing.

The artist has participated in several group exhibitions in Jamaica and abroad since 2001, her most recent recent exhibits include:, The National Biennial 2008 and 2010, Kingston, Jamaica, Infinite Island: Contemporary Caribbean Art, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, 2007, Curated by Tumelo Mosaka, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art Brooklyn Museum, Curator’s Eye III: Ceremony in Space, Time and Sound, National Gallery of Jamaica, Kingston, Jamaica,2008, curated by Keith Morrison, Boys of Summer, Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago, Illinois, 2008, Art on Paper 2008, Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro ,North Carolina, 2008, New Blue Emerging- First Kentucky Art Biennial, Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, Louisville, KY,2008,NEXT: The Invitational Exhibition of Emerging Art , Merchandise Mart Chicago , IL, 2008, Looky See, Summer Drawing Exhibit, Otis College of Art , Los Angeles California,2008, Rockstone and Bootheel :Contemporary West Indian Art, Real Artways Hartford, CT, The Ghetto Biennale, Grand- Rue, Port- Au –Prince, Haiti 2009, Young Talent V, National Gallery of Jamaica , Kingston , Jamaica, 2010,curated by Dr. David Boxer and Veerle Poupeye, Shot in Jamaica, Alice Yard, Port- of- Spain , Trinidad, 2010, curated by Christopher Cozier and O’Neil Lawrence and You are here/Vous êtes ici/ Usted esta aqui, The Foundation Clemente, La Francais, Martinique,2010,Gully Godz in Conversations, Monique Meloche Gallery( On the Wall Project ), Chicago, IL ,curator Tumelo Mosaka 2011

About Alice Yard:

This was once the house of Sean Leonard’s great-grandmother. Four generations of children played and imagined in this yard, and now we continue this tradition. Alice Yard is a space for creative experiment, collaboration, and improvisation.

Alice Yard is administered and curated by architect Sean Leonard, artist Christopher Cozier, writer and editor Nicholas Laughlin, and musician Sheldon Holder, with the help of a growing network of creative collaborators.

http://aliceyard.blogspot.com/