Liverpool Biennial 2021: Day Three.

Art Everything ends and in the case of the Liverpool Biennial 2021, that's next Sunday 27th June after just over a month. Most years, the Biennial's enjoyed a lengthy residency in the city, so it's been possible to visit just one or two venues per day and savour the content (for better or worse) but with that impending deadline and entirely having lost track of time, yesterday, I tried to see as much of it as possible in one day, five whole buildings. With FACT's contribution running to late August, yesterday was about working through the temporary spaces, Lewis's Building, Lush, Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Building and the Cotton Exchange (as well as the Blue Coat).

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.

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.

Liverpool Biennial 2021: Day One.

Art This morning, I visited an art gallery. The last time such a thing occurred was a good eighteen months ago, before the slow apocalypse, so the very fact of being able to stand outside Tate Liverpool in anticipation of actually going inside to look at an artwork felt like a milestone.  Just to be clear, the rest of the morning was a shambles.  After completing at the Tate, I'd planned to see the rest of what the Biennial describe as the Stomach/Waterfront Trail but both the Open Eye Gallery and the Martin Luthor King Jnr Building are closed on a Tuesday, a fact I'd completely failed to notice when checking the festival website just before booking my ticket to Tate.  The Open Eye closes on the 6th so I'm not sure if I'll see that now.  Perhaps they'll produce one of their excellent virtual reality thingys.

What was not a shambles was the re-opening of Tate Liverpool.  To keep numbers down, visitors have to pre-book a timeslot even for a free exhibition and as you enter, that's checked and an invigilator gives you some information about how to navigate the one way system in the gallery space and what to do in case of evacuation.  The whole process is incredibly reassuring; even though I'm fully vaccinated now, visits to non-usual indoor spaces are still rare and being able to go anywhere and feel safe is extra important.  A year or so of doing nothing of the sort does lead you to some behaviours and it's going to take a while to ease myself out of them.  It is getting easier, especially in shops.  I've even been to Marks and Spencers a few times.

The Tate's portion of the Biennial is ok.  Mainly drawn from the collection, the key theme is feminism and the specifically the fight against the dominant white, male, hetrosexual narratives which still hold sway in the art world and society in general.  A prime example would be Martine Syms' video installation Borrowed Lady (2016) consists of four large flat screen opposite each other on posts, each containing repeated shots of the artist making sounds and gestures, creating audio rhythms as a comment on how black and especially black, female culture has been appropriated by advertising and culture without acknowledging whilst also fetishizing the source.  Standing inside the circle, the result is confusing and difficult to experience.  Outside you're able to see how at least two screens interact with one another.

But the visually simplest piece ironically has the most to say.  Anu Poder's Tongues (1998) consists of a line of oversized but realistically crafted representations of, yes, tongues, cast in soap (accompanied by a metal dish containing another sat in resin).  The artist lived under a communist regime in a former Soviet Union which limited her freedom of speech, which has incredibly contemporary connections given recent events in Belarus.  Another unintended resonance is that tongues are one part of the anatomy strangers haven't been able to see of one another due to the need for masks, although in some cases that's no bad thing.  With a white stripe right down the middle, Lichen Planus has made my tongue look like a giant pink airport runway.  Onward.

Liverpool Biennial 2021: Press Launch.

 

Art  Just seconds ago (at time of writing) the press launch for last year's Liverpool Biennial concluded.  Necessarily delayed until this year, what with one thing and another, and the event happened over Zoom for the same reason.  Which means that unlike previous years you won't find me describing my imposter syndrome or offering an existential recitation of dealing with crowds of strangers accompanied by a sad photo of a half eaten croissant.  On the upside, this did mean I was able to watch with a freshly brewed decaffeinated coffee in hand thanks to owning a silver bean machine that will do that sort of thing.

Thankfully the event was structured as a webinar, so the only faces on screen were the speakers so I didn't have to inflict my lockdown hair and weird storage boxes on the real press people in attendance.  Unfortunately that did also mean that it lacked the opportunity to lig on who else was in the crowd.  Hopefully it wasn't just me.  That would be disappointing for all involved.  Not that for a moment this didn't actually look like this might be the case when my written question was answered first, about the existence of a printed Biennial visitor guide (yes, there is and a pdf version too), but fortunately other contributions were made straight away.

As you can see from the above screen shot, this year's instalment is titled "The Stomach and the Port" paralleling Liverpool's key historic utility with how our body functions or as the festival portal explains:

"... challenges an understanding of the individual as a defined, self-sufficient entity. The body is instead seen as a fluid organism that is continuously shaped by and shaping its environment. A plethora of artistic practices inform this edition: many of the artworks include sound, shun direct representation, de-stabilise gender categories or look at intense forms of contact. Liverpool, and its maritime history as a point of global contact and circulation, provides the perfect ecosystem to situate these enquiries."

Like some of the classic entries, Liverpool Biennial 2021 has a theme that's both interesting and open enough that it'll be up to the visitor to decide exactly how a given artist has reacted to the brief and how the artworks interact with it.  There's a much longer explanation available here.  

From what I can see glancing through the booklet (enough to comment, not enough to have spoilers), there are far more new commissions than archival works than in recent years which means the artworks should directly reference these ideas and the times in which we live (rather a curatorial attempt to make old works fit the theme), which makes me far more optimistic about this edition than I have in a long time.  The quality has been variable in the past decade but this is a whole new team reconceiving what the Biennial can and should be.

Indeed my only fear this year is logistics.  Recent Biennials have spanned up to three months but this whole thing opens on the 19th May and closes the 27th June.  One the one hand this forces me to get my finger out and try and do multiple venues on the same day, but given that most of them require a booking I'm a bit flummoxed about co-ordinating those booking to give myself enough time in each space, especially if I'm following the suggested trails, not wanting to rush to make deadlines, not wanting to have to hang around too much in-between.

But strangely I'm less bothered about safety concerns.  Having timed bookings means they're limiting visitor numbers and if the quality of presentation in previous years is a guide, rules will be followed to the letter.  Plus being fully vaccinated changes the equation a lot.  Please god the next Biennial will happen in a brave new post-pandemic world in which the only barriers are between the artworks and our ability to interpret them.  With Cityscapes.  I still miss Cityscapes.

Liverpool Biennial 2020 2021: Press Launch.

Art What with one thing or another, this year's Liverpool Biennial has been postponed until next year. The opening date of next March still feels relatively optimistic, contingent on good distribution of a vaccine and relying on volunteers enforcing COVID safe rules.  Nevertheless, it's full steam ahead and the press launch was this morning.

I forgot. 

After falling asleep in the chair post-porridge as usual (its an anxiety exhaustion thing) then going for my morning walk to get the paper and listen to last night's The Rachel Maddow Show and all the outrage about Michael Flynn's pardon it slipped what's left of my mind. 

Fortunately, since piling up to a hundred people into an education room at Tate Liverpool or the Playhouse theatre isn't really possible or ideal right now, the programme has been made available via a recorded stream (uncomfortably positioned above because Vimeo hates embeds) and a list of artists and a press release about one of the venues.

So no photographs of half eaten croissant or confusion over embargoes.  About an hour ago I clicked the watch link on the video and that's all the "on the scene" blogging colour you're going to get because that's all there is.  Dammit 2020.

After the underwhelming mishmash of 2018 (which I didn't even review on here because of the Thumper rule), the Biennial now has a whole new creative team led by director Fatos Üstek, with this year's show guest curated by Manuela Moscoso of the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City and a veteran of numerous other Biennials.

This year's title is "The Stomach and the Port" and a theme of "the body" and "notions of the body and ways of connecting with the world" which is a return to the non-specific open tent approach of some of the best of the Biennials in which it is up to the spectator to speculate on how the works are connected to one another.

As ever, I'm trying to keep myself relatively spoiler free although Jenna Sutela's work sounds as though it's going to be very impressive, with its reference to a specific type of mold.  If it's anything like her PLANTSEX installation as featured in this Serpentine video, I only hope there's some decent chairs and an adequate toilet, because I'll be in front of it for hours.

The introductory page has a list of venues, all the old favourites including some which essentially opted out of 2018 or have previously only been inhabited by the Independents strand:

The Biennial programme is presented in locations across Liverpool, including public spaces, historic sites and the city’s leading art venues: Bluecoat, Liverpool Central Library, Cotton Exchange Building, Exchange Flags, FACT, National Museums Liverpool, Open Eye Gallery, St George's Hall, Tate Liverpool and Victoria Gallery & Museum. New for 2021, Liverpool Biennial’s reach will also expand to the city’s historic Lewis’s Building.

Yes! In a return to previous Biennial adventures in semi-derelict edifices, part of this year's show will be on two floors of the Lewis's building with an impressive sixteen artist's work which suggests this will be a massive space.  

Other than that, there isn't much else about how this will be structured, where Bloomberg New Contemporaries will reside, that sort of thing.  Looks like City States is now gone for good but its last hoorah at Copperas Hill was a worthy conclusion and I should probably move on.

I'm incredibly optimistic about this new installment.  It feels more accessible somehow and a return to some old principles.  We'll see.  I just hope that in these blighted times this new body is able to show itself in all of its glory.