Arguably the Biennial's been at its most impressive when occupying these liminal spaces. Some of the best exhibitions of the past like City Scapes (RIP) at the Copperas Hill Post Office or at Rapid Hardware, have been places in transition between their old utility and new creating juxtapositions between the artworks and their surrounding concrete or brick-based remnants of humanity and that was certainly the case this year. Office doors in the basement of the Cotton Exchange are still intact, the windows indicating these were the workspaces of Inspector Tyador Borlu, Kommissar Reed and Komissa Ga-L-M (its possible some of the letter have gone missing from that last name).
Unlike previous Biennials of course we have a virtual recording of these spaces available for revisit. YouTuber Nostalgia Nerd recently posted a watchable essay about how these liminal spaces work in retro computer games and its noticeable that these 3d models can be navigated using the now expected key combination of W-A-S-D with the mouse allowing us to look about the space like a first-person shooter. It's not an entirely flexible experience. Although in reality the visitor can wander around the far corners of the vast space on the second floor of Lewis's, its digital counterpart keeps the user with the boundaries of artwork.
All of this appreciation of the packaging might suggest to you that their content didn't overwhelm me and you'd be right. Even allowing for eighteen months of avoiding art spaces causing a fair amount of rustiness in my appreciation, its fair to say that there wasn't much to engage me across the venues. But I should I'd add the caveat that this probably had as much to do with personal taste and expectations than the work just simply being bad, which was so much the case under recent administrations. It's also possible that some gems were missed or not given due concentration due to the whistle-stop nature of the visit.
The artists brought together at Lewis's consider the nature of humanity and none more so that Diego Bianchi whose Inflation (2021) who presents within the space and on video a series of fleshy objects representing organic matter mixed with the content of garages as well as objects of pleasure and technology, so tires and random metal, wine bottles and mobile phones. The imagery is redolent of Japanese cinema, notably Akira, Tetsuo: The Iron Man and and Tokyo Gore Police and is an utterly captivating infusion of body horror which finds its apogee in a figure completely covered in junks of concrete.
As the artist and his cohorts wobble about yet more liminal spaces on-screen encumbered by these weighty costumes, we contemplate how humanity itself has to carry these supposed innovations around, offering freedom on the one hand, but restricting us physically on the other. How many of us find ourselves accompanied with not just mobile phones, but tablets and ipods and also a spaghetti of charging cables and proprietary plugs in our backpacks forever distracted with wanting to know when an electric outlet will be available and how long we'll have to wait for the battery symbol on the screen to drift by to 100%?
The other highlight of the day was at the Bluecoat, Kathleen Ryan's three startling sculptures, Bad Cherries, Bad Lemon and Bad Peach. Ryan uses semi-precious stones and others to recreate these various rotting fruits, with the most opulent minerals saved for the heart of the decay. They're both beautiful and horrible as they imitate the colours of decomposition, the brown crazing which builds on the lemon's skin accurately represented. All three are everything I want from an artwork, a feast for the eyes but with a thematic undercurrent, in this case how wealth inequality and how its happened at the expense of the environment.
If I've any suggestions for future Biennial entries, its to engage with how spaces are used and the kinds of work on display (so no change here). With some extra planning, the second floor of Lewis's could easily have contained the contents of Lush, Dr Martin Luthor King Jr Building and the Cotton Exchange, none of it feeling particularly site specific. the latter seeming particularly remote, especially on a rainy day when you're wearing slipping shoes without any grip. I wonder how many people visited the MLK building expecting something more than a two screen video projection.
Plus there are occasions when some spaces are occupied by the presentation of documentaries. Again, this is dependent on taste, but I once again question whether a gallery space is the best venue for offering a half hour documentary about an Institute of Fine Arts or the importance of the cocoa leaf to the Murai Murai community in the Columbian Amazon. Given the size of the rooms in which these pieces are projected, are they a way of making the visitor feel as though there's more work on display than there actually is which even as I type feels like an unfair assumption and the fact this Biennial exists is a miracle but I can't help wishing there was more of it.
With the serendipitous nature of exhibition visits, I wonder how many folks will watch more than a few minutes of these documentaries before moving on and whether a creation can fulfil its aims in that time. Unlike some video art pieces, they're not very easy to dip in and out of. The Alberta Whittle film which was on display at the Open Eye can still be viewed at the Lewis's building, but on a smallish television within the bustle of distractions elsewhere in the space. Again I wonder if in future years, thanks to current technology, it wouldn't be possible to present these documentaries in an accompanying portal online so they can seen in a more comfortable setting even if a small donation is required.
After that unwarranted carping, have I enjoyed Biennial 2020(ish)? Enough to write about it, which is more than in recent years. There's a definite vibrancy which has been missing from other instalments in the past decade and the presentation has been admirable. At each venue there is a reception table with extremely helpful and engaged volunteers giving each a sense of occasion with hundreds of copies of the festival guide and shops selling merchandise (although five pounds for a shopping bag is a bit rich for me this year). So thank you for being able to make it out here in these most difficult of years and I look forward to seeing what you'll achieve in the future when all of this is over.
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