Erotic Art Week brings us fashion shows in the streets!!!

Photo courtesy ARTZPUB

Absolutely brilliant!!! I've been out of POS for some time and have not yet had a chance to explore this year's EAW but judging from these photos, I'll be doing that over the coming week! CHECK out more photos from ARTSPUB here. DO also check out the Erotic Art Week blog.

Alex Smailes in Draconian Switch 13

FROM photographer Alex Smailes project Gangs of Morvant, featured in the latest issue of Draconian Switch here.

Now Showing

Christopher Cozier, Now Showing, (2010), silkscreen on archival paper, 27”x20”

It has the look of a puzzle, some kind of coded message. Apparently incongruous images collide above feet, some bare, some clothed. Enslaved or free?

What might be a plot in a graveyard (the artist sees it also as a car-park) stands alone, next to a large letter A. A grade? A brand? A start? '12.30' oozes red liquid. Is it after midnight or mid-day? A '12.30' show?

Above it all, three key images raise ideological questions and paint impressions of relationships. Prime among them is the tree, inspired by the one at the Forensic Sciences Centre, Port of Spain, where murdered bodies are brought almost daily, where families seek shade. Faint in the background is Clint Eastwood and company. What exactly is showing in this wild wild west?

WATCH a film about the making of this artwork, for the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival 2010, here. READ the artist's own account of the work here.

Gratuitous male nudity: Dave Williams in the buff!

Ahem. I'd rather let Richard Rawlins explain. SEE more here.

TODAY: Cropper Writers Workshop participants on Radio Toco

Point Galera, Toco. Photo courtesy the Toco Foundation

The participants of this year's Cropper's Writer Workshop will today read poetry and short fiction on Radio Toco live from 2:00 to 2:30 pm, hosted by Wendy Diaz.

Radio Toco is an independent station that broadcasts at 106.7 FM, has 90,000 listeners, and can be heard throughout northeast Trinidad, in Tobago, and by some listeners in the Eastern Caribbean. 

Reading today are:

Andre Bagoo: journalist and PLEASURE blogger whose poetry and book reviews have been published in journals such as Boston Review, The Caribbean Review of Books and Draconian Switch.

Shakirah Bourne: an award winning short story writer from Barbados who is not afraid to voice what others try to keep secret.

Shivanee N. Ramlochan: an English Literature teacher from Trinidad who advocates fairness and freedom in life, art and her fiction writing.

Colin Robinson: a Trinidadian writer and community organiser whose work engages political questions of desire, gender and citizenship.

FIND out more about the Cropper's Writer's Workshop here.

Between the pepper sauce

From the latest edition of the online journal Caribbean Review of Books, an excellent feature/interview on Karyn Olivier's ACA Foods Free Library project. READ it here.

Photos courtesy Karyn Olivier/CRB.

Insects make great furniture

Ok, so TT fashion designer Anya Ayoung Chee has a new website which you should check out here. For more information about Anya, visit here.

The Hoover Dam as functional art

Hoover Dam, which I visited on a recent US tour, was constructed between 1931 and 1936, and was dedicated on September 30, 1935 by President Franklin Roosevelt. Its construction was the result of a massive effort involving thousands of workers, and cost over a hundred lives. But today it is arguably striking example of function, meets art, meets politics.

READ more about the Hoover Dam here. FIND more posts about a recent US trip here.

Cambodian bronzes at the Sackler Gallery, DC

Maitreya is the bodhisattva (future Buddha) who may be born on Earth as soon as a few thousand years from now (just around the courner people!) The eight-armed form appears to be a Cambodian invention, but you never know... The above depiction was cast in a period (early 10th century) during which hardly any Buddhist images were commissioned and from which few bronzes survive. One of several extraordinary bronzes that were on display during a recent visit I paid to the Sackler Gallery, Washington.

READ more here. This post is one of a series on a recent visit to the United States. FIND out more here.

GALLERY: Colour and emotion at the Hirschhorn, Wash DC

Paul Sharits, Shutter Interface (1975)

Jesus Rafael Soto, Two Volumes in the Virtual (1968)

Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing #356 BB: Cube without a cube (2003)

Guido van der Werve,  Nummer Negen (#9) the day I didn't turn with the world (2007)

Ellworth Kelly,  Red Yellow Blue V (1968)

Andy Warhol, Self Portrait (1962)

Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe's Lips (1962)

Wolfgang Laib, Pollen from Hazelnut (1998-2000)

Fred Sandback Untitled Sculptural Study, Twelve-Part Vertical Construction) (1990)

READ more here.

In Dallas, a surprise gem

The nightlife was crap. If you didn't have a car, you couldn't go anywhere. Sounds familiar? Believe me, it's not. The soulless boredom of Dallas has a special quality. But if you manage to step out of your soporific stupor and find yourself near the Dallas Arts District, head straight for the Dallas Museum of Art, which is where I found myself one hot and dusty afternoon. 

On show at the time in the main hall was an incredible retrospective of the work of Belgian painter Luc Tuymans, one of my all-time favorites. There were 72 paintings, including Tuyman's portrait of former US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice: 

Luc Tuymans, The Secretary of State, 2005, oil on canvas.

Also on display, for the first time ever, was rare video film footage produced by Tuymans during the brief period when he gave up painting and focused only on film in the 1980s. The footage was fascinating, but more so because of the insight it gave into Tuymans process, which often involves processing film images and stills.

Detail from Tuyman's Die Zeit, 1988.

But apart from the temporary Tuymans show, the DMA also boasted a robust permanent collection, including several important pieces well worth the visit.

Renee Magrite's The Light of Coincidences (1933) and Jean Arp's Classical Sculpture (1966).

Naum Gabo, Constructed Head No. 2 (1916).

READ more here.

A Rem Koolhaas in Texas

Rem Koolhaas's OMA Dee and Charles Wyly Theater shines in the spanking new at the Dallas Arts District. Photos by Andre Bagoo.

It looks like a box made of bamboo. Or PVC pipes. Or steel tubes. Square gashes mark its sides. An external elevator whizzes past strange windows that leave a faded smear on the face of the building. And that's just the outside, which is all I got on a recent trip to Dallas.

This post is one of a series being posted by PLEASURE on my recent trip to the US. READ more here. WATCH a video somebody did of the Dallas Arts District here.

Cropper Writers' Workshop reading @ Alice Yard

Alice Yard Space, Woodbrook. Photo courtesy Georgia Popplewell.

This Friday, the participants of the Cropper's Writer's Workshop will read at Alice Yard, Woodbrook. Among the participants in this year's workshop are Alake Pilgrim, PLEASURE blogger Andre Bagoo, Colin Robinson and many more. FIND out more here. READ more about the Cropper Foundation here.

On Tour: Art dispatches from America

Detail from Jasper Johns' American Flag photographed at the MoMA, NY.

In the course of my international espionage work, I recently paid a visit to a few American cities. And today, just in time to commemorate American Independence Day (July 4), PLEASURE launches a series of posts on a few art spots I managed to check out, in cahoots with fellow PLEASURE blogger Jeanette Awai, while in the United States of America.

First up, a visit to a show at the Bowery, New York, featuring the work of Trinidadian photographer Gerard Gaskin. And then, photo galleries of trips to the MoMA,Guggenheim and elsewhere.

READ post on Gaskin in New York here. SEE photos from MoMA, Guggenheim here.

Gerard Gaskin photographs in New York

THE SIGN outside of the church on East 7th Street, New York,says, "House of Ninja discussion panel, 6pm". The church, called Middlechurch and in a district called the Bowery, is clearly not your run-of-the-mill evangelical congregation. I go in.

I feel like I'm a boy again and about to attend an altar-boy meeting at my local Catholic church. My fellow blogger, Jeanette, asks, "where is this exhibition supposed to be again? Let's ask someone cute." Sound advice can always be sourced from my fellow blogger Jeanette. After a few peregrinations, we stumble, as though engaging in some clandestine spiritual intrigue, into a room behind the rainbow-draped alter.

The subjects of Gerard Gaskin's photographs have an intensity that is compelling. A few of them are on display here, some of them side by side with drawings done by Milton Ninja.

Jeanette looks at stuff

After checking out the photographs, we head back to the church where the Ninja lecture is going on. Ninja--for those who do not know-- is a secretive gay martial arts sect skilled in the art of assassination. Kidding! It's an underground GLBT ballroom movement. We took in some fascinating demonstrations of the art of "voguing" (which started on the NY underground before being copied by Madonna) done by this guy:

 Then, we went for drinks. New York.