Alice Yard: X

Christopher Cozier, Nicholas Laughlin and Sean Leonard

A LOT can happen in ten years. Ask Christopher Cozier, Nicholas Laughlin and Sean Leonard. Ask the artists, the dancers, the mas men, the musicians, the poets, the writers, the academics, the curators, the publishers, the bloggers, the film-makers, the graphic designers, the projectionists, the lecturers, the audio technicians, the carpenters, the workmen, the civil society activists, the craftsmen, the curious strangers. 

This September, Alice Yard marks ten years and this evening it opened a year-long series of events by hosting a new installation by Blue Curry.

Blue Curry's Untitled (Alice Yard, assorted combs) 

"I am always a bit cautious when I encounter the work of Curry," says Cozier. "His work confounds and confronts, but with precise and strategic composure....I would not trust these objects - just so - no matter how visually appealing."

Indeed, what objects can we trust? Curry's work transforms banal things, isolates them from their functions, opens the mind to appreciation of their aesthetic qualities, and then puts them back together again into a new sculpture - a kind of dance without movement. In the process, he repurposes the viewer. One man's trash is another man's treasure. And one man is also another. These are found poems. 

Cozier tonight traced the origins of Alice Yard to a conversation during Galvanise.

"We thought it would be interesting to start that conversation again," he said. In coming weeks, several events are planned, including a collaboration between Cozier and Blue Curry that seeks to shift encounters with art into public spaces, dissolve the boundary between makers and viewers and reject the notion of art as commodity.

Kriston Chen's toofprints

On a personal note, I've been around Alice Yard for years and participated in two iterations of Douen Islands there. The space has never stopped being exciting. It's never stopped. The only thing that might have changed is the fact that these days, some have more greys.

'We began ten years ago with questions and possibilities. Our evolution has been organic and open-ended. As we consider our actions and ideas of the past decade, our instinct is less to celebrate and more to affirm our spirit of investigation and exchange, our ethos of generosity and independence.' 

Conceptual sketch of Alice Yard by Sean Leonard