Liverpool Biennial 2010: Hacking your enjoyment.

Art The Guardian's published an "insider's guide to the arts", a kind of cultural life hacker. There are a couple of items which are certainly pertinent to getting the most out of the Biennial:

What's the best way to enjoy an exhibition?

Rain is always useful; it's the perfect weather for introspection. And mid-afternoon, midweek – when it's always nice and quiet.

Jennifer Higgie, co-editor, Frieze magazine

I'd add that it's still a good idea to have some music with you for those times when deep quiet or silence is impossible and you want to block out distractions. Loud classical seems to be best, some exultant Bach or one of the Beethoven symphonies. The problem with rock music is your brain starts making connections that aren't there.

Liverpool Biennial 2010: Gareth Kemp and Nick Sykes at Bold Street Coffee.

Art On the days I've been "doing the Biennial", after much initial humming and harring (due to the usual malfunction in my decision engine), lunch has been taken at the Bold Street Coffee shop, an (as far as I can tell) independent cafe which was built on the rubble of the old Coffee Union.

Having only been open a few months, it still has an eager quality of wanting to please. There's a fascinating production diary here which underscores the many choices the owner had to make in relation to how the coffee would be made and how the fixtures effect the kind of mood that he's trying to create.

I do like the relaxed atmosphere of the place, young yet mature, like the suburban French cafes that appear in the films of the French New Wave (with no smoking). On my first visit, a Jean Seberg lookalike asked me to watch her belongings while she went to the toilet. Aaah romance!

The food is tasty, the ham and mustard sandwich a particular favourite.  I haven't risked the coffee yet, since as we know caffeine and art don't really mix with me.  I don't want a repeat of my shaky lollop through the Whitworth Art Gallery.  What I can say that it's the kind of place that carries copies of Monocle as idle reading material.

It's also a venue for the Independents Biennial and a rather good selection of paintings from Nick Sykes and Gareth Kemp which are well worth seeing if you're in the mood for something a bit existential.  Sykes attempts to create bleak urban spaces, but blurring the shapes to the point of abstraction.

Kemp, who I know from saying hello to at private views and because we worked under the same roof once, has spent several years painting snowy wastelands inspired by a selection of old family photographs employing an unusual approach to composition in an attempt to unsettle the viewer.

Like so many of the works at this Biennial, what both of seem to be attempting is to communicate the more abstract aspects of their memory to the viewer, Kemp obviously more literally than Sykes.  This certainly isn't the kind of identikit prints that coffee shops usually cover their walls with.  Good.

Liverpool Biennial 2010: Hector Zamora at Mann Island.

Art Like many of the new public realm items listed in the Biennial guide, Hector Zamora's Synclastic/Anticlastic isn't accompanied by a specific explanation of the piece but rather a general overview of the artist's previous work. We're told by curator Lorenzo Fusi that Zamora carries out "extensive research into the socio-political topographies, as well as playing on the inhabitants' collective memories, myths and desires".

The artist deliberately occupies sites that are off the beaten track, presumably in an attempt to introduce the city's population to areas they might not necessarily have given much mind to. In Bogata, he filled the entire floor of an old building with bananas (one of the main exports of the city), then left them to rot, the decomposition process allowing nature in all its shades to reclaim this man made space. Which must have ponged a bit too.

In introducing us to Mann Island, Zamora has elected to recreate nature using man-made materials. Between the construction site for the new Open Eye Gallery and an office block, beneath a glass canopy, the artist has positioned dozens of concrete "shell structures" of varying shapes. Walking beneath them, I wondered exactly what they might be, these concrete kites whose title infers are mathematically unstable.

Then I glanced at the Mersey and realised: they're concrete sea gulls in various stages of flight, swooping, gliding, falling, an entire flock of them. The shadowy photos in the catalogue barely do them justice when seen in this landscape, against the sky when we look up, or the Wirral across the water in another direction, Liverpool's architectural heritage in another.  I wonder if there's also cheeky a reference to the liver birds which also perch high above them.

There's a paradox inherent in the positioning of the piece, perhaps an example of the playful irony Fusi also refers to in his introduction. The installation has been made on a building site, presumably so that the concrete of the wings can mirror the shades of the pillars holding up the buildings on either side. We're on a main road too, and so the area is flushed with noise, drilling and traffic. Security guards and workmen pace around in fluorescent safety tabards shouting into mobile phones.

Yet the shapes, which also resemble Japanese origami cranes demand meditation, demand silence, even demand concentration and it was very tempting to simply lay down on the floor and simply sit and look at them, imagine that they're not two hundred birds, but one bird frozen in time on two hundred occasions like a three dimensional Muybridge photograph. Luckily I had some Bach with me which was the next best thing.

Elsewhere The Biennial takes a mini-break as I review this week's The Sarah Jane Adventures. I can see why professionals tend to specialise. After all these weeks trying to tease out the metaphoric significance of a single colour (or whatever), it was quite a shock to suddenly find myself trying to say something interesting about the Whoniverse again. Inevitably I went for some jokes and innuendo. Oh well.

The Nightmare Man.

TV Bye then Luke.

Nm As you discovered, heading off to university is a scary business, especially since you’re barely old enough to know that checked hipster scarves are problematical at best. It’s all about change, though I’m the last person to give you any advice other than if a heavenly looking French girl invites you into her room on the second night, you go no matter what K9 says, you go. Honestly. You do not say, “Well I’m feeling very tired” or “That’s not something we do…” or whatever else might emanate from your lips bypassing your alien brain. Otherwise you’ll spend the next three years imagining what would have happened. Not that such a thing ever happened to me. Obviously.

To break out of the metafilter, largely because I can’t work out how to sustain it for the next however many paragraphs (I'll try to be brief), it’s quite brave of The Sarah Jane Adventures to introduce the concept of university to its young audience. True, many of them will have older siblings who’ve already driven the yellow beetle down the driveway and it’s treated like an extension of school (we’re not even told what he’ll be studying in “Oxford” though if it’s maths he should have gone to Manchester) but nevertheless it’s a reminder that our heroes aren’t getting any younger and that they’re now of teen drama age. What happens with Clyde and Rani finish their A-Levels?

Writing out Luke was one of the The Nightmare Man’s three main functions. I don’t know the ins and outs of Tommy Knight’s departure, though the in-camera appearance for Maria's photo might hint that like Yasmin Paige it’s for educational reasons. But the loss of the character and K9 does have something of the destruction of the sonic in The Visitation about it; even taking into account that this is a kids show, the convenience of having a Doctor-lite super-genius on hand to “solve” the central mystery in each story as earlier identified by JNT does mean that too often the dramatic tension ebbs away.

The second function was of course to scare us witless. As our avatar in the dreamscape, Tommy very effectively communicated his fear, not just of nightmares, but of having nightmares for the first time, lacking the emotional props that most of us have to deal with them. The sight of him, lost in the void, his head shifting backwards and forwards was a horrible image, piercing our child-like anxieties about being totally alone, and if we’re young enough, without our parent’s care, home sick. Sorry, bare with me, I’m having another fresher’s flashback. Oh, that phone call.

That probably would have done the job even without Julian Bleech’s stunning turn as the villain; if Toby Jones’s similarly hewn Dream Lord was all about psychological terror, TNM’s power was in his elastic body, the Milliband-like boggling panda eyes and the voice, which like his previous emergences as Davros and in the even earlier The Ghostmaker, had the capacity to nip into your soul and poke about a bit. Even if budgetry concerns seemed to halt his passage into the other residences on Bannerman Road, Bleach demonstrated (just as the late Heath Ledger and countless other Jokers did before him), the scariest villains can be easily achieved with some face paint and utter unselfconsciousness.

The final function was to reconfirm what makes the show work. Despite the various mentions of the timelord here to foreshadow his appearance in the next couple of weeks, with the main show now in other hands, and Torchwood in production stateside, SJA could be viewed as something of an orphan, a continuation of the Russell T Davies years. But really what we find are the same elements: the willingness to experiment with storytelling structure, the sense of fun not least the rather wonderful exchange between Mr Smith and K9, the budding screwball chemistry between Clyde and Rani and Liz Sladen still bursting with energy even after all these years (the older dream-like version of her also demonstrating the actress's often untapped comic range).

Now we await the return of Jo and the appearance of the Doctor and the first full script by RTD in ten months (Can you believe The End of Time was only in January? Doesn’t it feel like ten years ago?) and it’s mark of this story’s quality that didn’t simply feel like treading water. What we had here was an above average script from Joseph Lidster with some genuinely funny moments, clever direction from Joss Agnew and if the climax seemed to drag a bit, the methodology for final demolition of The Nightmare Man not quite clear, its philosophy, that friends who stick together can do anything, are brilliant, is generally a good thing. Until the second week when you realise that not everyone in the student hall is your friend.

Sorry, there it is again.

Liverpool Biennial 2010: Album at Wolstenholme Creative Space.

Art During one of my previous obsessions, reviewing Woody Allen’s Shadows and Fog, I talked about visiting the city centre in the middle of the night, when the only company were the street lights – this was before twenty-four licensing when the average Liverpool pedestrianised area was deserted, desolate and quiet. I likened it to Carlo Di Palma cinematography, but something I failed to mention was the orange glow that rendered across the pavements and walls, giving everything a slightly artificial quality, like a film sound stage.

It’s that orange glow which Rachel Louise Brown captures perfectly in The Boarding School, her contribution to the group show Album at Wolstenholme Creative Space. She spent a year creating work at this educational establishment inhabited by Japanese students whose parents are business people in London. In the accompanying information, Brown explains that she’d walk about the grounds at night and “experienced the psychological effects of fear and the unknown”. She's fascinated by the way analogue photography can “absorb, abstract and portray the psychology of artificiality”.

There’s a shot of the Manor House, the glow of an unseen light thrown across the building; some trees silhouetted to the point of abstraction and perhaps most surprisingly three portraits of the students themselves, in end of year poses, smiling enigmatically but surprisingly lacking in sinister intent as though heading to a midnight feast. The overall impression is magical, of capturing a memory or emotion and like the best photography drawing the viewer into the world of the photographer, be with her as she tramples about the grounds not sure what she might find.

Threaded through these works, and similarly magical, are Emma Critchley’s underwater photos which share many of the same visual qualities but delve even deeper into the photographic process. In One Breath, what we’re presented with are a group of very dark images with the ethereal faces of participant only just perceptible on the surfaces, undetermined shapes of what may be cheeks and mouths, eyes and ears. They were taken under water at night, each exposure the length of a single breath from the sitter which accounts for the just imperceptible element of movement.

There is actual movement in her video piece opposite, Shared Breath. On a tiny tv screen, two similarly ghostly figures are embraced in a kiss, again underwater, bubble slipping out for the edges of their mouths. Critchley says she’s exploring “how breath embodies the fragile balance between life and death” and its not until some time into the video which runs for what feels like eons that you realise that either of these participants could theoretically drown, that this is literally a kiss of life (taking into account safety procedures which must have been in place obviously). It’s thrilling.

On the ground floor, behind a curtain, and requiring activation from the invigilator because of the racket it makes in operation is Vicki Thornton 16mm film piece which wins my admiration not just for its unembarrassed referencing of early Luis Buñuel / Salvador Dali collaborations and I think, visually Douglas Sirk or is it Aki Kaurismäki (which may or may not be conscious) but also her use of the word “interstitial” in the accompanying notes (one of my top ten). This is underground cinema de jure and there’s something about presenting it in film that gives it a substance that sometimes pieces produced using a digital camera for budgetary reasons lack.

For much of the film, a girl, who we might assume is the artist, sits in a domestic room at a dining table filled with a mirror. She’s blonde, with rouge red lipstick and she’s beautiful. We’re then presented with a series of shots of the room and the girl and the table from a variety of angles, interspersed with a series of intertitles which mimic a film script and talk of landscape and sound beyond the diagetic space of the film, picturesque tableaus that can’t be fulfilled by the available set, as well as contradictory descriptions of action within the room in relation to the mirror.

An initial reaction is that the artist is recreating the effect of silent cinema, the intercutting between action and title cards. Except that W.G. Griffiths elaborated on the action we could already see, often describing the action of the succeeding scene. But Thornton in talking about what isn't visible goes beyond that forcing our imagination to fill in these lesions and they’re also written in a style which takes advantage of modern cinema editing and lighting language mentioning cuts and focus and pans forever undercutting our assumptions.

As Bunuel said, “Somewhere between chance and mystery lies imagination, the only thing that protects our freedom, despite the fact that people keep trying to reduce it or kill it off altogether,” which isn't too far away from Thornton's intent when she says she’s interested in the “notions of interstitial space, or rather the spaces that may exist between moments in time; between lightness and darkness; colour and the monochrome; sound and silence or visibility and invisibility”.

As my brain split in two, my physical state wasn't that dissimilar to when watching Chris Nolan’s Inception, albeit for a much shorter duration, rationalising the surrealism of the images with the conventionality of the text, or should that be rationalising the surrealism of the text and the conventionality of the images? Once again in this Biennial I'm very conscious of overstating my enthusiasm for any artwork but this is one of the pieces which my mind keeps returning to not sure if its remembering something I saw, or instead imagined. It's memorable for all the right reasons, not least that it can't be easily put into words. If only I'd remembered to write down the title.

Until 17th October.

Liverpool Biennial 2010: Kaarina Kaikkonen’s Hanging On to Each Other at FACT.

Art Kaarina Kaikkonen’s Hanging On to Each Other is immense, strung across the ceiling of the atrium of FACT, filling your field of vision right up the stairs to the main bar. A web strung from wall to wall covered in garments, shirts, blouses, tees, jackets, hung as though the result of a washing day of infinite length, ironically since for reasons which will be elaborated on in a moment, this is literally the great unwashed.

We first met on the morning of the press day and as invited groups were shown about the gallery I simply let them pass by as I stood gaping in wonder and munched on a complementary croissant and coffee, probably in much the same way as Audrey Hepburn at the opening of Breakfast At Tiffanys, though obviously without the fabulous couture because I’m a bloke and also because I couldn’t carry off the pearls.

Like so many of the pieces at the Biennial this time, Kaikkonen is interested in memory and more specifically the memory held with these garments, which in their worn state contain a record of their former owner, “a common experience of domestic life” according to the catalogue text. Hanging On to Each Other is also biographical, alluding to her own parents with the inclusion of her deceased father’s jacket and her mum’s shoes.

These clothes were donated by the local community; its not explicit in any of the text, but on preview night the volunteer who helped construct the piece told me they weren’t washed before hanging so that they would retain their collective experience. I rather like the idea that a group of strangers have contributed to an art piece in this way, perhaps later visiting FACT and seeing such a memorable part of their life just hanging there.

Kaikkonen is the sort of installation artist I particularly love, the sort that effectively recreates the same work in different space, the dimensions and special requirements of the space – Anthony Gormley’s Field a particular favourite. But the use of found objects in this case also adds a layer of social commentary since it captures the fashions of a time. Or more clearly a past time since who would give away clothes if they’re still in season?

Until 28th November.

Liverpool Biennial 2010: The Caravan Gallery.

Art Parked in The Bluecoat’s courtyard during the first few days of the Biennial, The Caravan Gallery is the method that artists Jan Williams and Chris Teasdale have for displaying their record of the urban 21st century, the changing times from the point of view of us ordinary citizens. It’s tiny interior which still retains many of the fixtures of the vehicles original purposes, contains dozens and dozens of photographs, taken from across Britain, with the exhibition modified to fit the location were the caravan is parked that week.

Williams and Teasdale purposefully ignore the usual landmarks, the sites that are already the subject of a thousand tourist shots, instead documenting to some extent the urban decay but mostly the parts of the community and landscape usually forgotten as property developers and urban renewal set about their task; everyone remembers the shop on Smithdown Road advertising “sun beds” and “piano lessons” but who thought to photograph it for posterity? They did.

For this local, the experience is was rather like entering the interior of my own brain, my memories projected against the walls. They have shots of South Parade in Speke before most of it was torn down to make way for the new park, the old one now inhabited by a Morrisons, leisure centre and library. Depressing images of the International Garden Festival site pre-development. And newer elements, shoppers in Whitechapel with dozens of Primark bags.

It’s impossible not enthuse, with pointing, and “oh it’s…”. From what Jan Williams said, that’s the reaction of every visitor and they spend their days listening to people's anecdotes which at some point they’re going to begin recorded so that they have an aural archive too. This isn’t just an art piece, its an important record of our social history, especially since, as she urged me to write in the visitors book, our town centre are losing their individual identity in the wake of the chain stores.

The caravan has well moved on now, currently in Portsmouth according to the Facebook page. But the photo gallery on their website offers a taste of what you may have missed, the bingo halls and Polo tower.   Google Street View may still offer a world were the likes of Woolworths is still open, but they’ll update eventually and that’s when The Caravan Gallery comes into its own, recording our homes for posterity.

Carol Barnes's breakfast.

TV With Channel 4 returning to something resembling a breakfast television programme (albeit essentially mimicking a nine year old flicking from 4Music to More4 for three hours) I sought out evidence of the original and best early morning show Channel 4 Daily. It was segmented like a grapefruit. Here's the original trailer:



If ITV replaced Daybreak with that they'd be branded innovators. Make sure you watch out for:

(1) Dermot Murnaghan in the Alan Partridge role on the business desk.

(2) "This spot will be occupied by specially commissioned paintings. A different one each week ..."

(3) The "comedy" sketch between Carol V and Twice-Nightly.

(4) Kickback, which is Thought for the Day with angry people.

(5) The New Fantastic Four discussion the contents of Carol Barnes's breakfast.

Liverpool Biennial 2010: Phase Five at 24-26 Seel Street.

Art Part of the SQUAT strand of the Biennial, a collaboration between arts groups on either side of the Atlantic (New York’s No Longer Empty and the UK’s The Art Organisation), Phase Five in habits this almost too outrageously symbolic example of the recent recession, a bank which was in the process of being converted into a nightclub until the owners went out of business.

Like some of the best festival venues, it’s myriad rooms are filled with unexpected surprises. The thematic connection is sound, though none of the pieces are purely sound art, at least not in the same way as Susan Philipz (who is nominated for a Turner Prize this year) or Eimer Birkbeck (whose work I enjoyed at The Lost Soul and Stranger Service Station in School Lane in May) were all of the information is being relayed via speakers.

All of these works have a strong visual element, either because they’re video art or by employing some kind of object. The former can be seen best in Joe Diebes’s Scherzo which films a virtuoso as they produce some utterly ear splitting sounds from their instrument with such speed and dexterity that the artist had to film their performance in fragments, editing them together to show the convergence between man and machine. Not easily watched for long stretches but unmissable nonetheless.

I’m unafraid to say I hated, hated, hated Giuseppe Stampo’s Play: five black speakers in the shape of coffins play the Star Spangled Banner after the visitor has put a coin the slot. It’s obvious, thematically squiffy and tonally uneven since the first reaction on hearing the music is to giggle which doesn’t quite square the artist’s sobering hope that the coffins represent the countries which played “an important role in the collapse of the world economy” (according to the catalogue).

A verbal virtuosity is in order for Jani Ruscica’s Beatbox in which New York beatboxers Kid Lucky and Shockwave and spoken word artist Vocab (oh yes) with time to communicate their wares, which interpret and imitate the sounds of their surrounds because as Vocab says (inadvertently paraphrasing classic noir The Naked City somewhat) “every street corner has the ability to tell a thousand stories”, the urban environment becoming a stage.

Projecting onto a giant screen on the top floor of the building (perhaps in the space where this genre of music would have been playing anyway had this building become a club) the most impressive section is when the luminous Vocab (real name d'Janau Morales) addresses us directly with her poetry surprising us with her verbal dexterity. I’ve checked about online to see what happened next, but all I can find is this contemporaneous video of her in competition:



Amazing.

Also amazing: whilst I was at the record shop, the volunteer said that I must make sure I didn’t omit the basement of Phase Five, noting that I should stay until the end because otherwise “it doesn’t really make sense”. He was right on both counts. Ray Lee’s Murmur is unmissable but curiously so. Descending the stairs, a motion detector activates the installation, a series of stands within what looks like an archaeological excavation site, each holding a long rotating stick with tiny speakers at each end, the first of which begins to resonate a dull rhythmic hum.

The murmur.

The accompanying information board says that Lee is interested in “the way that science and philosophy represent the universe” and the orthodoxies that emerge and submerge depending on current trends. How that translates here is in the sonic dipping in and out of the various murmurs as each of the stands comes on and off line, creating kind of modernist polyphony. It’s difficult, requires patience but the final result is breathtaking.

Until 27th November.

Updated later: After another more thorough search I have found some newer footage of Vocab -- she appeared in competition in June. Three more videos under the link:

Liverpool Biennial 2010: Tracy Lewis at Gostins Arcade.

Art One day I’ll write about the Biennial exhibitions unseen, the moments when I’ve visited a venue too early in the day, too late and in some cases so late that the exhibition has ended. Gostins was an occasion when my need to see liverpoolgallery.com's exhibition didn’t quite match their schedule and so when I climbed the steps to the main shopping area were the gallery space is, the doors were closed, the lights not on. But there was more than enough in the surrounding corridors, not least some mesmerising collages by Tracy Lewis.

They’re a mix of fabric and dried flowers creating circular reliefs, dyes employed in such a way that they become removed from nature -- she's interested in creating a kind of artificial longevity. One of the objects (untitled as far as I could see) is how I’d imagine a rose bed would be if a tiny H-bomb were to dropped in it, the felled materials all rendered a burnt brown or yellowed in the heat spread in parallel around the circumference. Another, Sea Food Salad, is a wheel of mussel shells, seaweed, roses and silk in concentric circles.

Gazing at these craftworks, I found myself lazily imagining Lewis’s thought processes, why she would choose this combination of materials, and how she placed them in these particular patterns. Somehow, even in the visually busy, postered walls of Gostins, the world fell away. I may even have said out loud, “But these are just … wow …”, though admittedly that’s something I’ve said rather a lot during this Biennial in both the official and indie strands.

Lewis also has another strand of slightly more traditional decorative art objects, more practical, more commercial no doubt. Along a short corridor is a mirror framed with drift wood and decorated with tried flowers again, but also buttons and dolls and sea shells which is utterly adorable. Her website is full of images and it’s obvious that Lewis is very, very industrious. Don't miss the frame of tea cups. Her studio is available for viewing, by appointment, during the period of the Biennial, and I’m very, very tempted.

Until 16th October 2010.

Liverpool Biennial 2010: Kirsty E Smith and Olwen Holland's Blink Unblink at The International Gallery.

Art Not feeling that well and wanting to come straight home after work yesterday afternoon (felt like a man cold but probably tiredness and a touch of hay-fever) I hadn’t planned to stay out for the private view at the International Gallery last night. I’d planned to pop in earlier to say hello, to thank Kirsty E Smith and Olwen Holland for their invite, look at the exhibition and slope home. I had planned that this would happen at about four o’clock and that I would be stepping through my front door for five, slumped in front of the television tutting along with Sue Barker at the lack of organisation in at the Commonwealth Games venues in Dehli by six, followed by the usual disappointed drift towards bedtime.

Four hours later, nearing the end of the private view, I was still there. Kirsty and Olwen were so friendly, so passionate about their work, that once we began chatting hours disappeared. It’s not often that I’ve had the chance to talk to artists in such detail; usually it’s a case of saying something diplomatic if we’re thrown together at a private view or in the space, but I think I learnt more about the trade in this short time than I ever have, from purpose to logistics. So in a blur of conversation, four turned to six, and the private view I wasn’t going to be at with the influx of their friends and family, then six turned to half eight and time to come home.

Olwen Holland has been an artist for ten years and is interested in spaces, the interiors of buildings, rooms, creating three dimensional experiences from two dimensional representations. She’s influenced by the likes of Vermeer and de Hooch, 17th century interior paintings and the subtle lighting they employed to similar effect. This Liverpool exhibit, Aftermaths, is a series of six photographs of the inside of a house, offering an indication of some kind of domestic crisis: a pile of broken crockery in front of a fire in a living room, soiled magazines in a hallway, sea weed in a bath, vines growing in a stairwell (which are serendipitously mirrored by an actual vine growing in the stairwell).

The usual idea is that we tend to remember the good experiences, the good stuff and not dwell on the bad stuff. But actually in our heart of hearts it’s the bad experiences which probably contribute more to the who we are. Like these photographs we often think of them in an abstract way, especially as time goes on, the aftermath, the, as appears in another shot, chandelier that lies broken on the floor. The photographs are like representations of these bad memories and we’re being drawn into them -- physically in one case. A set of wooden steps in the gallery space reappear in the photograph above leading up to a tattered dress hanging in a window (which also fits in with Olwen’s idea of the third dimension).

By a complete contrast, though not necessarily thematically since all the work is an attempt reconnect with memory, are Kirsty E Smith’s sculptures. Rather like the Tony Cragg pieces, they’re almost impossible to describe accurately. You really have to see them. Tall Legs is an upholstered white box, fitted atop a set of table legs which when you put your hand in offers a very sensual experience due to the mohair lining (she likens it to the orgasmatron from Woody Allen’s Sleeper) and they’re all like that, objects that are both familiar and totally unfamiliar at the same time and we spend half that time trying to work out how they were constructed.

My favourite, is Hyacinth, a kind of foot stool built about a biscuit tin with pink cushioned legs and interior with feathers sprouting from the lid. But what catches the eye is that this is an old biscuit tin with a needlepoint patterns printed on the top and sides which include aphorisms which exemplifies the two elements which seem most important to Kirsty. That they’re constructed with the utmost quality control, no half measures and that the story of their production is almost as important as the object. She attended a cabinet making course just so that she’d know how to construct Rachel, a small wooden cabinet on springs then spent many hours making sure that the brass rail on the curtain that attached to the top fit her exacting dimensions.

Those four paragraphs are a barely adequate synopsis of everything we talked about, though I suspect I did rather a lot droning/interrupting. This was just a thoroughly enjoyable evening, the kind of evening I should have more often involving conversations about the logistics of collecting seaweed, black and white films set in the Outer Hebrides and I’m properly challenged about what I’m doing with my life by near strangers. It’s true; so rarely am I asked what I do, a question which these days doesn’t always mean “where do you work?”, I don’t have or didn’t have a clear answer or at least one that doesn’t require various qualifications or even the odd non sequitur (I don’t, I’m a mess, really). So between munching twiglets and and knocking back grape juice, I probably learnt a lot about myself too.

Blink Unblink continues at The International Gallery until 23rd October and is open Tuesday to Saturday 2pm - 7pm.

Liverpool Biennial 2010: Raymond Pettibon at the 107 Wood Street Garage.

Art Somehow I've now contrived to miss Raymond Pettibon's video piece Sunday Night and Saturday Morning three times.

The first was on press day, at around lunch time. Not really knowing what I was looking for, I walked the length of Wood Street before stumbling on one of the wolf signs, which sadly was pointing in the wrong direction and led me up some stairs into what turned out to be the back end of a restaurant, almost bumping into a waitress who was just setting up for the day.

"Hello." She said nonchalantly as though it was usual for people to almost bump into her in this way through the service entrance.

"Oh hello." I said, "I was look for something Biennial related."

She regarded me blankly.

"The Biennial. Liverpool Biennial?"

She shook her head. I produced my catalogue and prodded the cover probably more emphatically than was required.

"This is a restaurant." She said simply.

She was right. It was a restaurant. Not a garage.

I made my apologies and left and told the Biennial staff at the visitors centre about the sign which they promised to check.

The second was at the close of a very long day visiting Biennial venues, the day of Liverpool Cathedral. I was very pleased to have finally found the place given my at best amateur approach to a sense of direction, but less so when I realised just how much I'd lost track of time, that it was closing and there wouldn't be time to watch the hour long film what with the palpable sense of people wanting to go home.

The third was today, when I headed up the gravel footpath with plenty of time and well fed, focused, keen. I sat in one of the directors style chairs in the space daubed with pictures of animals, only for a loud drilling noise to appear from somewhere. The volunteer explained that the "venue" had been closed for health and safety reasons, the racket presumably the work being carried out so that garage will stay standing until November. Not able to hear the film, I left. Again.

Thank goodness the Biennial is so long. Still plenty of time. Edging ever closer.

Liverpool Biennial 2010: Jason Jones's Between Presence and Absence in John Lewis at Liverpool One.

Art The new John Lewis is departmentally confusing. It's not always obvious which sale person works within which product area, or for that matter where on product area ends and another begins. So when I approached some staff members asking about Jason Jones's exhibition, which is advertised as being in the furniture department neither had a clue what I was talking about. Then, as they took me to the actual furniture department, it became apparent I had, at first, been standing in soft furnishings.

My confusion was also due to expecting a fairly typical exhibition space on the shop floor when, as the manager then went on to explain (because it's not clear from the information leaflets dotted about the shop) that Jason Jason's works are in small picture frames and arranged carefully about the surfaces of tables and sideboards and bookcases within the department, almost imperceptibly because they're largely indistinguishable from the interior design highlights John Lewis has in stock.

That's not meant as a backhanded criticism, because in the explanation, Jones implies that in displaying the images, inkjet prints on Hahnemuhle paper, within this setting he was keen to remove the pictures from the preconceived notions that might be imposed on them by appearing in an art gallery space (Jones is currently the curator/manager of the Cornerstone Gallery so will have experienced this first hand) and that he wanted them to be discovered by people who might not necessarily have been expecting to greet an artwork in this context.

Between Presence and Absence, then, is a series of untitled images of furniture from a range of periods (though in the post-modern age, design periods are dropped one on top of the other of course) isolated in various spaces always with the impression that man (or woman) was here and may return. With their muted colours and disarray they're not unlike the shots of a city in the aftermath of disaster, man made or otherwise. What is the meaning of a chair if it's not going to utilised?

After viewing as many as I could find, I asked the sales assistants if any of their regular customers had tried to buy them. After eventually convincing them that I wasn't asking if I could buy them (the condusion, perhaps, because they've not used to having something this tangible in the department that doesn't have a barcode) they told me no, not that they knew of, none have turned up at the till. Just this once there isn't a direct correlation between art and commerce.

About Well, this was bound to happen some time. A review of this blog and luckily, a nice review. Thank you Leon and Jamie.

Liverpool Biennial 2010: Ted Riederer's Never Records at Binary Cell.

Art Much as I love Spotify, and I do love Spotify, more than some humans, it’s ruined the experience of visiting record shops. Along with Amazon, iTunes or whatever flavour of downloaded mp3 takes your fancy, the ability to instantaneously access almost all music at a usually reasonable price or monthly subscription or both has nullified the verisimilitude of the trip to HMV simply because there doesn’t seem to be a reason to wait. I’m listening to the soundtrack to the film Cracks as I type (spotify link), something which is unlikely to be even available on the shelves at the local shop (not that I’ll be listening much longer, it’s very repetitive being essentially spot music).

But it’s not just the purchasing of music. I’m old enough to remember being able to preview music within the shop before purchase and my parents generation could visit a record shop and rent a booth in order to listen to music (some of which survive at The Beatles Story). That’s the experience that Ted Riederer is attempting to recreate within this newly refurbished space on Seel Street which will become a new music and culture venue (or multimedia hub) once the Biennial has completed. Never Records is an old style music shop of the kind which still just about exists in some areas - see Vinyl Exchange in Manchester (which yes I do still frequent on principle).

There are essentially two main threads to the installation that go to the heart of what the record buying experience used to be. One block of wooden racks has dozens of commercial LPs from the 80s and 90s with large sections of their cover blanked out apart from a single word, and by flicking through them we’re able to access a range of aphorisms and poetry, replicating the act of searching for music. But this is also what the artist calls a “not for profit” shop. Riederer invited a range of local musicians to visit and record their stuff for no fee and a single copy of that work has been placed within the racks which the visitor is encouraged to listen to with a little help from the resident invigilator.



After minutes spent trying to make decision (we’ve talked before about the evils of choice) I selected this recording by Sami and Stef Rose with its intriguing secret German bonus track which the volunteer placed on a deck on the counter at which sat. We stood listening to the record together, an acoustic bit of nu-folk which he thought was close to Belle and Sebastian but with later reflection is a bit poppier. The secret German bonus track was some prose powerhouse that neither of us could translate. Afterwards the record was put back into the racks ready for the next person.

A couple of weeks ago on his BBC Radio Five Live show, Mark Kermode noted that the problem with the proliferation of film and the production line nature of presentation in multiplexes means that the original process of showing a film in which the cinema was almost performing the work to its audience by projecting it has been lost. On this occasion, the act of putting on the record in these circumstances felt like it was being performed, with the two of us as audience members which makes it just as valid an experience as seeing some kind of unrepeatable live performance (unless we ask to hear it again).

I imagine for any kids who visit Never Records, the experience will be about as historically relevant as the Ironbridge Gorge Museum, Western Approaches or the Jorvik Viking Centre (though hopefully just as interesting). But as an artwork, and a reminder of our cultural heritage, and an experience, Never Records is very special indeed. Though of course I made a mental note to check the web later to see if any of Sami and Stef Rose's other music is available online and of course they have a myspace page and the songs I listened to are on YouTube, which spoils things a tiny bit. But not too much since they're rather good.

Liverpool Biennial 2010: An Encounter with Culley at Leo Casino.

Art

"Hello."
"Hello. (cautiously) Are you a member?"
"No. I'm hear to see the exhibition."
"I'm sorry I don't know what you're talking about, sir."
"Oh. Um, it's in the leaflet. Let me find the leaflet."

I fumble about in my bag. It's the end of a long day trawling through the Biennial and I have many, many leaflets. No sign. I look again and find it hidden in the pages of my BBC Music Magazine special on The Great Composers.

I turn to the relevant side and give the red Independents leaflet to the receptionist-come-security guard. He scrutinises the entry at the bottom of the page.

"Oh, Derek Culley." I notice a pile of business cards on the counter.
"Yes."
"Right sir." He turns and opens a visitor book. "Can I ask you to sign this? And I also need to advise you of the fire assembly point, which is ..." He points to the end of the building as he explains.

I write my name in the visitor book. After my name, under all of the other entries which say "member" I put "visitor". I pause. What reason to give for visiting? "Art" I write quickly.

He thanks me. He tells me the paintings are upstairs, at which point I notice staircase, a tall windy affair that wouldn't have looked out of place on Titanic. I ask him about toilets. They're upstairs too.

Upstairs turns out to be the main casino room. Roulette and dice tables. I feel out of place, uneasy, especially in my jeans and black jumper with the sleeves that are too long for my arms. Danny Ocean always wore a suit. After taking a look at the gorgeous view of the Mersey from the massive window which fills one side of the building I seek out the paintings which are strewn on the cushioned surfaces of each of the other walls.

Derek Culley paints in an abstract style and in contrast with the setting his brush strokes and choice of colours are very deliberate, not by random chance. Most of the canvases are in bright fluorescent colours, though my favourite is a moodier piece in which a swirls of yellow bush stokes mask the shape of a tree trunk against a black background. It reminds me of a still from one of the 70s New York animations that Rolf could show as a special alternative to Warner Brothers on his cartoon club or as a buffer on Take Hart.

Before too long I feel like I'm outstaying my welcome; I'm not a member, after all. So I head down the stairs and through the lobby again then exit onto the Dock Road, stopping only to pick up a business card from the counter on the way out.

Liverpool Biennial 2010: Amanda Griffiths' Taming Smoke at the Lady Chapel in Liverpool Cathedral

Art With so much to see, and so little time to write, I'm inevitably going be talking about exhibitions which have been and gone. Sorry. Amanda Griffiths' Taming Smoke ran from 4th to 29th September at the back of the Lady Chapel, on window ledges and what must be candle ledges and tables most at about torso height. Unlike the Tony Cragg sculptures in the well with their contrasting materials, these smoke fired ceramics were entirely in-keeping with the setting, the grey surfaces coinciding beautifully with the sandstone walls.

The choice of venue wasn't random. In the information leaflets left in a basket with the display, Griffiths described how her great grandfather, a Welsh stone mason, worked on the building at the turn of the twentieth century, dying sadly of a chest related illness at the age of thirty-six. She hoped that "the placement and containment of my work (would) reflect the atmosphere evoked by the venue of this exhibition". It certainly did that, and it was impossible not approach it without some kind of reverence.

Griffiths's interest is in creating variety from uniformity. She manufactures a series of standard shapes -- tubes, cones, vases filled with slots, small round platters or "fipples" and balls with only the pigmentation generated through wax and dying techniques to differentiate them. Then, playing with this pottery meccano set, the artist goes about arranging them to produce each new object with highly descriptive titles like Enamel Pots, Pierced Rings, Titled Rings or Lifted Ring (the leaflet included an inventory of the sections).

She says she's influenced by La Corbusier amongst others and that's most obvious in the arrangement of the parts; Connecting Pots in which three pots stand parallel to one another, a fipples slotted between is reminiscent some of the architect/designer's later house schemes, perhaps Notre Dame du Haut at Ronchamp. She mentions Andy Goldsworthy too; his approach to produce temporary installations in locations for which the only subsequent record is a photograph. Griffiths photographs her work at beaches and in sea scapes

But the first thought that entered my head was how alien they were, like musical instruments or cooking utensils from some offworld culture the use of which our xenoanthropologists might take decades to unscramble. Balanced Segment, a half moon tube shape kept from falling over by wooden stick through a hole at its summit could even be both, the alien presumably having two mouths, one for each end. It's almost like nothing you've ever seen before.

Liverpool Biennial 2010: Kris Martin at The Black-E

Art With some of my favourite works in the Biennial, like the Laura Belem and like the Do Ho Suh, like The Marxism Room, half of their worth, what makes them so exciting, is the surprise, the unexpected, of reality momentarily shifting about the viewer to take in this incongruous object, as though some element of a Douglas Adams novel has been turned on or off, The Infinite Improbability Drive (on) or the Someone Else's Problem field (off).

Which is why with even greater vigour then even my regional art gallery visits, I'm attempting as best I can not to know too much about each of the art works and venues in the Biennial before I'm standing right in front of them or stepped through the relevant doorways. The only preconditioning I'll allow myself is what's on where and when.

I knew there was something at The Black-E, something spectacular. Last time I visited it was still called The Blackie, and as I approach the venue, so ignorant am I of what I'll find, I try to enter through what may now be the back entrance. So convinced am I that this would be the way in, despite all evidence to the contrary, I took a picture of it ready for this resulting blog entry. Here is the picture I took of it for this resulting blog entry:



The entrance, you'll be unsurprised to hear, was locked.

I glance again at my catalogue to make sure that I haven't misunderstood and no, I haven't misunderstood, this is an official Liverpool Biennial 2010: "Touched" venue.

I step back down the ramp and onto the street and begin working my way around the walls of the building as closely as I can before realising that the doors at the front, which have otherwise been closed whenever else I've passed by The Black-E before (most recently to show my visiting friend Annette the Banksey on the derelict building nearby) are gaping wide open:



I gingerly (well gingerly for me) make my way up the steps.

Inside sits a Biennial volunteer in an empty, round stone room ringed by stairs onto a balcony, with some doors at the back. An A4 temporary sign points towards the toilets.

I glance about hoping for some clue as to what I'll be seeing.

"Biennial?" I ask. I've asked a similar question before at other similarly unlikely venues. It's that kind of festival.
"Yes." He agrees.
"Where's the um ..." The use of the non-word "um" obviously a substitute for anyone of a number of synonyms for art.
"Look up."

I look up and I'm startled to find the tip of a giant sword pointing directly at me.

Suddenly knowing possibly subconsciously how Jason felt when faced with Colossus, I jump backwards. Unlike Jason, who threw a spear at it, I laugh. Loudly. A lot.

"It's a sword." I say rather obviously.

Kris Martin's Mandi XV is a massive up-scaled medieval cruciform sword and this is the first time that it has been hung in quite this way. It weighs about a ton and a half and the domed ceiling of the building has had to be reinforced to take the weight, the weapon held in place by steel wire. It doesn't move, though I wonder later what happens in high winds, if it's too heavy to wobble.

In theory I was in no danger, then. But if you step up on to the balcony to take a closer look at the blade, see your haunted face reflected in it, it's impossible not to feel as though it has the capacity to judge, that if someone it really doesn't like blunders unknowingly underneath like I did, all the safety precautions in the world won't stop it from fulfilling its symbolic, Damoclesian duty.

The reviewer at All My Colours speaks at greater length about its metaphoric properties. That the thread that holds it is a reminder of the potential threat of terrorism or global destruction we're under. That because it's in a public place, the sound of Liverpool breaking in through the doors as our eyes drift upwards towards the hilt, it suggests that everything we do is a risk, even "crossing the road or driving a car".

The title "Mandi" is from a colloquial Italian terms meaning "goodbye" which developed from the clauses mano (hand) and dio (god). An earlier work in the series, Mandi III, is a blank train arrivals and departures board that turns endlessly, presenting neither. Now I know why I feel ever so slightly melancholic when the electronic board breaks down at Merseyrail stations. It's usually always good to know where you're going, and that you'll go safely.

sell out

Ballet Or rather the music of Star Wars through the magic of dance:



Honestly George, fuck 3d. Give us a reinterpretation of the entire saga as ballet/opera combo. Bryn Terfel as Qui-Gon Jinn and older Obi-Wann (everyone would have to double up), Renee Fleming as Shmi and Mon Mothma, Anna Netrebko as Padmi and Leia, with the dancers recreating the space battles. Jonathan Miller directs, Julie Taymor does the costumes. It would sell out for decades [via].