Mar­sha Pearce

Al­ice Yard, the back­yard space of a house at 80 Roberts Street, Wood­brook, cel­e­brates its sixth an­niver­sary this year as a venue for cre­ative ex­per­i­ment with­in and con­ver­sa­tion about con­tem­po­rary art in the Caribbean.

Al­ice Yard is a space to play. The prop­er­ty was once owned by Al­ice Matil­da Git­tens, the great-grand­moth­er of lo­cal ar­chi­tect Sean Leonard. Sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions of chil­dren have played in that yard. Car­ni­val bands have used the yard as a meet­ing and prepa­ra­tion point be­fore tak­ing their cos­tumes to the streets.

In Sep­tem­ber 2006, Leonard drew on the spe­cif­ic his­to­ry of this Wood­brook site as well as the broad­er tra­di­tion of yards as com­mu­nal spaces in ur­ban Trinidad to con­ceive a lo­ca­tion for var­i­ous artists to meet and play.

Yet, what does it mean to play? A team at a San Fran­cis­co-based de­sign firm called the Dub­ber­ly De­sign Of­fice de­fines play as a con­ver­sa­tion. Play starts with an act that con­tributes to a con­ver­sa­tion and in­ter­ac­tions. Play in­volves en­gage­ment and imag­i­na­tion. Play is the thrill and nat­ur­al in­tox­i­ca­tion of ex­per­i­ment­ing, try­ing new things, col­lab­o­rat­ing and re­lat­ing with each oth­er in nov­el ways. Play is about not know­ing where things will lead. Play is about hav­ing fun. Al­ice Yard em­bod­ies all of these ideas.

Ac­cord­ing to Leonard, Al­ice Yard is about "get­ting things to hap­pen that we en­joy." Quite a lot has hap­pened at Al­ice Yard in the past six years. Along with Leonard, artist and writer Christo­pher Co­zi­er and writer and ed­i­tor Nicholas Laugh­lin ad­min­is­ter Al­ice Yard's ac­tiv­i­ties. Since 2006, there has been a band room at the yard. 12, the band led by mu­si­cian Shel­don Hold­er, used to prac­tise there. From 2006 to ear­ly 2008, a se­ries of Con­ver­sa­tions in the Yard ran on Fri­day nights, events that brought to­geth­er mu­si­cians, vi­su­al artists, writ­ers and au­di­ences for in­for­mal per­for­mances and dis­cus­sions. A mod­est gallery, es­tab­lished at the lo­ca­tion in 2007, has been a space for ex­hibit­ing projects by such artists as Adam Williams, Jaime Lee Loy, Niko­lai Noel, Mario Lewis and Dave Williams.

Al­ice Yard al­so hosts artists in res­i­dence, al­low­ing cre­ative peo­ple space away from their usu­al en­vi­ron­ment and oblig­a­tions to re­search, pro­duce and present work. With as­sis­tance from the Com­mon­wealth Foun­da­tion, Al­ice Yard has sup­port­ed artist res­i­den­cies for Bright Ugochuk­wu Eke of Nige­ria and Heino Schmid of the Ba­hamas. Oth­er res­i­den­cy op­por­tu­ni­ties have been made avail­able to such artists as Sheena Rose and Mark King of Bar­ba­dos.

Al­ice Yard has al­so host­ed writ­ers in res­i­dence: po­ets Ish­ion Hutchin­son of Ja­maica and Valzhy­na Mort of Be­larus. The yard has been a venue for the 2008 An­i­mae Caribe awards for Caribbean an­i­ma­tion and the Trinidad launch of ARC Caribbean art and cul­ture mag­a­zine in 2011. Al­ice Yard has al­so part­nered with the study abroad pro­gramme of Trin­i­ty Col­lege, Hart­ford, Con­necti­cut, by host­ing and sup­port­ing ex­hi­bi­tions and per­for­mances by vis­it­ing stu­dents.

With­out per­ma­nent mem­bers of staff, Al­ice Yard de­pends on its grow­ing net­work of cre­ative col­lab­o­ra­tors who be­lieve in nur­tur­ing an in­fra­struc­ture for ex­chang­ing ideas among artists in the Caribbean re­gion and those abroad. More than a phys­i­cal place, Al­ice Yard is about the ar­chi­tec­ture of in­ter­ac­tion with peo­ple. The yard is a space char­ac­terised by re­la­tion­ships forged among the var­i­ous peo­ple who move in and through it. It is a space with a fo­cus on con­nec­tions and sus­tained di­a­logue be­tween in­di­vid­u­als.

Among those who have found them­selves in­ti­mate­ly wo­ven in­to this space of peo­ple is Trinida­di­an artist Mar­lon Grif­fith."I have al­ways been in di­a­logue with Al­ice Yard," says Grif­fith, who re­cent­ly cre­at­ed an in­stal­la­tion at Al­ice Yard's ad­junct lo­ca­tion on Erthig Road, Bel­mont. The Bel­mont site, known as Grander­son Lab, ac­com­mo­dates projects that can­not fit in the yard in Wood­brook. Grif­fith has been liv­ing and work­ing in Japan for the past three years and re­turned to Trinidad a few months ago for a brief vis­it. His trip co­in­cid­ed with Al­ice Yard's cel­e­bra­tion of its sixth an­niver­sary and he seized the op­por­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate a piece of art.

Grif­fith has shared his art­work at the yard in the past and has been in­stru­men­tal in con­cep­tu­al­is­ing such pro­grammes as Al­ice Yard's 24-hour res­i­den­cy, which in­vites an artist to cre­ate a site-spe­cif­ic work of art in the yard over the course of one day. Grif­fith talks about the bonds that are formed at Al­ice Yard and the mag­net­ism of the space: "I al­ways planned to come back to do some­thing. My first con­nec­tion with Al­ice Yard was with the Gal­va­nize project in 2006. Artist Jaime Lee Loy had an in­stal­la­tion at Al­ice Yard. Through Al­ice Yard con­nec­tions were made. My­self, Jaime and Niko­lai Noel col­lab­o­rat­ed and did an in­stal­la­tion at Bel­mont. Sean helped us with get­ting things in place and build­ing the in­stal­la­tion."

With his re­cent vis­it, Grif­fith could not re­sist the chance to play in Trinidad again. His new in­stal­la­tion is a cre­ative act that con­tributes to a con­ver­sa­tion about ideas of progress. He us­es VS Naipaul's 1962 trav­el nar­ra­tive, The Mid­dle Pas­sage as a ref­er­ence point for his art. In the book, Naipaul re­turns to Trinidad on board the Span­ish im­mi­grant ship Fran­cis­co Bobadil­la. "That book has al­ways stuck with me. The peo­ple Naipaul de­scribes on the ves­sel in an en­closed space. That is still rel­e­vant to the space we live in," says Grif­fith. The artist bor­rows the name of the ship to call his own work The Bal­lad of Fran­cis­co Bobadil­la. It is a piece that con­sid­ers Grif­fith's re­turn to Trinidad, to Bel­mont where he grew up and his dis­com­fort as he wres­tles with what has changed about the place and what has stayed the same.

He asks the ques­tion: What is Bel­mont's re­la­tion­ship to progress? To con­sid­er an­swers, he cre­ates im­ages that fo­cus on the pow­dered necks of dif­fer­ent peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty. Grif­fith is aware that the prac­tice of ap­ply­ing pow­der heav­i­ly to the neck is scorned by some-it is seen as back­ward be­hav­iour, the an­tithe­sis of progress. He makes pat­terns with the pow­der, some that hark back to the past. He us­es pat­terns from win­dow de­signs that are still present at his fam­i­ly home in Bel­mont. Some pat­terns are al­so rem­i­nis­cent of doily de­signs. "I grew up in a house where my moth­er cro­cheted. So we had the cro­cheted ta­ble cloth and the doilies," Grif­fith ex­plains.

Oth­er pat­terns in pow­der, like the re­peat­ed Nike swoosh, are sug­ges­tive of mak­ing strides, with con­sumerism and brand­ing as mark­ers of for­ward move­ment. The body be­comes a can­vas for ex­plor­ing con­cerns with place and progress. Pow­der-used in sailor mas-be­comes a pow­er­ful sym­bol in en­gag­ing with Bel­mont, which re­mains a key com­mu­ni­ty in the his­to­ry of Car­ni­val. Grif­fith's in­stal­la­tion al­so in­cor­po­rates a mas­sive gal­va­nized struc­ture that in­vites peo­ple to en­ter what feels like an un­com­fort­able space. It seems to mim­ic a ship's bow. A fog ma­chine in the struc­ture height­ens the sense of dis­ori­en­ta­tion. Grif­fith ad­dress­es the no­tion of an un­easy re­turn home. His in­stal­la­tion, with all of its lay­ers of mean­ing, is a fit­ting ex­am­ple of a test­ing out of ideas, an ex­per­i­ment­ing with ma­te­ri­als and space and the in­put of a num­ber of peo­ple work­ing be­hind the scenes to help bring the art­work and con­ver­sa­tion to life. Grif­fith's work is a man­i­fes­ta­tion and com­mem­o­ra­tion of an ex­tra­or­di­nary spir­it that Al­ice Yard has up­held for the past six years: a spir­it of play.