Liverpool Biennial 2021: Day Two.

Art In the last Biennial entry, I wondered if the exhibition at the Open Eye Gallery would be photographed in three dimensions and uploaded as a VR experience. Well, it has and here it is. Indeed all of the Biennial exhibitions have had this treatment including the Tate even though its largely a collection display. So for the past ten minutes I've been wandering around the Open Eye Gallery show even though it closed a fortnight ago.

It's probably more immersive experience through the Oculous Rift headset the Matterport powered VR window recommends.  The experience in browser is rather like a slight more flexible version of Google's Street View, although in slightly higher definition than they usually employ in art gallery reproductions.  Its a good of record of what was in a space rather than an attempt to recreate the exhibition.  Some elements, such as the sculpture, simply don't reproduce.

The downstairs portion of the show features the work of Zineb Sedira, whose series of large scale 2013 photographs depicting the interior of a sugar warehouse in Marsaille can be seen in higher definition on her website.  Much of the draw to these is presumably the scale, seeing the detail of the matter within the spaces and how its effected the storage facilities, which is just about possible to see on screen in the vaguest terms.  Really sorry I missed the chance to see them up close.

The other work at the Open Eye was a documentary by Alberta Whittle, the Bardian-Scottish artist who'll be representing her kingdom at the Viennia Bienniale in 2022 (assuming it goes ahead).  between a whisper and a cry brings together found footage with newly filmed material "referencing the legacy of colonial extraction as the starting point for present-day climate instability in the Caribbean".

Unfortunately, this I have completely missed.  Understandably (presumably) for rights reasons, the VR gallery doesn't contain a link to the film, just a still image with a space containing four plastic socially distanced chairs.  Co-cinematographer Matthew Arthur Williams has some intriguing stills on his website but there doesn't seem to be even a pay subscription version available even though it's also been screened in a typical auditorium setting.  I'll have to keep an eye out for it.  An open eye?

With the rest of the Biennial pretty much closing on Sunday, this afternoon I booked tickets for everything else on Wednesday (apart from FACT which will still be around in August).  Regular readers will know its years since I tried to do it almost all at once so its bound to be exhausting and a fight to fit it all in before gallery fatigue descends.  But fortunately there'll still be a version of these exhibitions online if there's anything I miss or misunderstand.