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| November 2008 »
Many thanks to readers who sent me good wishes while I was ill, feeling a bit better this evening. Felt so rotten last night I watched 'Jack Frost', a harmless no-brainer of a movie, most of the action involves gangs of obnoxious but cute-looking mid-american kids having snowball fights. Wow! I actually cried during the sad bits though and I couldn't really spare the tissues. The Biennial has finished so I asked some eminent art critics to list some of their favourite bits of this internationally acclaimed event but most of them hadn't bothered to come and see it, they're still trying to find the Independents area on their London A-Z or they had flown in but just to have a quick look at a couple of the so-called highlights. So we'll have to make do with the views of 7 not so eminent bloggers with whom I'm acquainted...  | Sleepy:
I enjoyed the 'Streets of Desire' project hosted by the Jump Ship Rat gallery in the Independents strand which included a lot of work by Columbian artists as well as Mary Fitzpatrick's photos of post gulf war Kuwait, Megan Fosters paintings and the old Futurist Cinema installation. |
 | Happy:
How happy I was, missus, to get this pen from The Pooch people at their Cabin Pressure performance. How tickled I was by several live performances at the Bluecoat and by the Transvoyeur people not forgetting Mothman's wrestling heroics. What a wonderful day it was too, when I saw Daisey Delaney's windmills around the city streets and Dorrie Halliday's Urban Angels flying above the grey rooftops. |
 | Hoody:
Arena was where it was all happenin for me, man. Three exhibitions: ROW, Graduates04 and )Bracket THIS(. All good stuff. Also got into serious mode with the SPLICE live debates, I even joined in one of them so I could get my blogger hoody on film (what happens to those films btw?) and watched most of the final one on the web at home. |
 | Dolly:
Of course, I liked the more eccentric stuff. The Novas building, Hortus Botany with its cellar full of strange sounds and the pictures of the snowman with a candle on his head. The Smallpox window in Lewis's, the Artists in Williamsons Tunnels, Hello Sailor and museumMAN with another dark, damp cellar. |
 | Sicky:
Although there were a fair number of paintings in the John Moores exhib. I disliked, there were far more that I really loved. I thought the first prize winner was dull, Graham Crowley's 'Morning' was my favourite. Also, in the Walker, was the Ritual Bodies interventionist art which I liked. |
 | Funky:
The Curator Game at the Tate was hip and the 'Swirl' infinite ballroom was cool too. I got these far-out 3D specs at a gig in Parr St showcasing Juno's artwork for bands such as the Zutons. Nice. Also lots of jazzy canvasses at the Loop gallery. Too much |
 | Boozey:
Where's all this free drink I was promised? Hic!. |
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ic Liverpool - Biennial that brought world (and strife) to Liverpool ends Ten weeks on and they're still trying to convince us that Yoko's work was 'controversial'. Also quotes Paul Domela as saying 'This was even more successful than 2004'. Thats clever. Come on Post & Echo give us a proper, serious review instead of repeating the same old stuff about the generosity of the Moores family etc.
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Dear Biennial, I am writing to ask that Ian be excused from all blogging activities this weekend. I know that this is a busy time as the Biennial comes to a close but he has a heavy cold and high temperature. He's very upset as he will also miss most or all of the onedotzero films at FACT which he's been looking forward to for months. Hopefully the SPLICE live webcast event will be working this afternoon and he can watch it from his sickbed here at blogger central. He also wanted to see the Wolf Man at 44 Duke St. Perhaps someone out there in the blogiverse will see it and send us a review. I think the fever is getting worse, he keeps singing about an apple on a bladeYours in bloggerhood, The BlogMeister
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 Went to the closing party last night, had a good time met several people I'd only known by name or email before. Had a lot to drink and now I have a bad cold which is going to spoil this final weekend a bit but at least I made it through the previous 10 weeks unscathed. Here's the Biennial Boss (Chief Exec) Lewis Biggs thanking everybody involved before taking over at the turntables, he forgot to thank himself, so Thank You Lewis. And here are some red-eyed revellers  
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A couple of non-Biennial things I've seen recently.
 On Sunday I went to the Beatrix Potter exhibition at Liverpool Museum. It wasn't easy to get in because they were setting up the stages for the big Christmas light switch on that evening. I love these child-friendly things they have here, even though my back aches from having to stoop down to knee height to have a close look at all the artwork. There's lots of interactive stuff for the kids but its not all fluffy bunny rabbits, there's over 40 original paintings and drawings, landscapes, forest scenes, plant studies etc. and they're 100 years old now.  I've also been to the latest exhibition at ArtSpeq in Quiggins, its called 'Peep Show' and is curated by Red Dot Exhibitions. There's work by about 20 North West artists including Colin Serjent (photographs), Sue Milburn (oils and painted cards) and Jo Derbyshire (oils and acrylics). Its a bit cramped for space here and I'm not keen on the display of broken egg shells on the floor, in my experience they could get a bit smelly! At various times until it finishes on Dec 18th, Barbara Jones should be here. You may recall she exhibited fabrics and wallpaper in Lewis's window early on in the Biennial. What made them unusual was that the design was based on the Smallpox and Anthrax bacteria as seen under a microscope. Now she has paper squares with the same design and is making birds (Cranes) with them. I'd been re-learning my Origami skills so I was able to make one too, she's aiming to make 24 hours worth.
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...there's a Cathedral. But also, there's University buildings, I went to JMU Gallery at no 68 as the Art Rosenbaum exhibition was due to have been replaced by something else last week. But Art's art was still there! So I don't know what's happened but I did listen to John J Campbell's 'Walk' which is a 10 min. audio piece, the headphones are on the wall just outside the gallery. I'd missed it last time. Its a series of 600 one-second audio snapshots recorded round the city, I only listened to about 30 of them. So then I walked to the other end of Hope St. to the Uni Centre for Continuing Education (or Lifelong Learning or whatever they're calling it this week! I remember when it was called Extension Studies) which to be precise is 126 Mt Pleasant. In the Library there is a show called 'TEXTS' by the poet Jim Bennett. I had trouble finding things at first but the Library Assistant, Margaret, was very helpful. There are 3 wooden panels with poems or ideas for poems or doodles etc. pasted to them. There's also a model of a volcano with the text of a poem spiraling up it, you have to rotate the volcano a few times to follow it. I enjoyed that. One of the boards is covered with printouts of some of Jim's onehundreddaily pieces which is an exercise he starts with each day writing exactly one hundred words. You can see these on his blog at http://onehundreddaily.blogspot.com/
Then in the evening I went to the final talk at Loop as promised. It was another good one this time given by Julie Jones who has exhibited a lot locally and is now based at Arena Studios. Looking back it seems I forgot to mention that I went to Jason Thompson's talk last Friday too but it was a hectic night I couldn't stay to the end. His is the picture that's hinged, I mentioned it weeks ago
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Terry Duffy's work at the Loop Gallery is called 'RS Thomas Triptych'. I hadn't really noticed the title and had completely forgotten who RS Thomas was even though I have 'Penguin Modern Poets 1' which contains nearly 30 of his poems. So I'm glad I went to Terry's talk tonight as I learned not only about how he created the painting but also about the poet and why the artist was fascinated by him to such an extent he felt compelled to create an abstract representation of him. Fascinating. I've blown the dust off the poetry book and am re-reading the verses now, god they're awful, no wonder I'd forgotten them. Bloody good painting though. Tomorrow there's the final talk from Julie Jones, if I make it I'll have been to all 6 talks which is good for me as I haven't been to many others recently. Just 1 at FACT and a couple of the SPLICE live debates, Monday evenings will be quite dull from now on.
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 The 'Bracket THIS(' joint show between Mercy and the Fiction poets at Arena is still going strong. I called in today to have another look at the artwork and take some pictures. As you can see every sq. cm is being used. There's a 'pub day' all day Sunday (which probably means from mid-day until late evening) and more live shows on Wednesday & Friday and a closing party on the 28th. So a lively final week ahead.
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 There's a sale on at the Biennial Centre in Wood St. Some of the CDs and T shirts from the Torolab cart are going for £5. I snapped up a CD of South American electronica which is excellent.
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Blackburne House, Main Hall until Nov 29th. Often as I go round galleries, especially the Tate & Walker there are groups of students, often sitting on the floor, drawing sketches of the art, the gallery or the local scenes. I always thought it would be nice to see the finished products and yesterday I did. I'd been confused by both the title and the description of this. I thought it was a live drawing class which was only taking place on Wednesdays. I suppose it was originally but this is an exhibition of the results of the 2nd Year Illustration students' drawings which record exhibits and events of the Biennial. These aren't just sketches though, there's watercolours, acrylics, prints, even needlework and they're all well presented and available for sale. To visit you need to check that the hall is open to the public, call 709 4356. This Saturday might be a good time to visit as the Liverpool Vegan Festival will be there, I'll be popping in for another look at the artwork whilst munching on a beansprout sandwich or similar.
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At the County Sessions House until 19th. This is by the Yellow House youth arts project run by George & Gosia McKane and to be honest I was dreading it, if you set out to make an awful film you could hardly think of a better combination. Its performed and filmed by teenagers, its their interpretation of The Divine Comedy with Dante's longing for Beatrice thrown into the mix, its unscripted, unrehearsed, they have no funding and its about 90 minutes long. But, as you've probably guessed, I really quite enjoyed it. It didn't start off too well, George McKane warns us beforehand that its a brave and demanding film and sure enough the first scenes are hard going, slow and dark in monochrome and poor sound because of the echoing rooms. But that's because we were in 'hell', once we surface into the brightness of the Walker gallery things move faster. Dante has a look at some of the artworks and asks for advice from a few guest poets/artists such as Levi Tafari, Bisharka Sharka and George. Its clever the way the meeting of Dante and the lovely Beatrice is acted out in front of Henry Holiday's painting of the scene.
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Sachiko Abe at the BluecoatThis is a bit spooky, Sachiko is sitting on the floor in an area of the Concert hall surrounded by long white curtains and she's cutting A4 pieces of white paper into very thin strips. You have to peer through a gap in the curtains to watch, she never stops or even looks up. You feel like you're intruding but its quite hypnotic. If you think this sounds a bit mental you'd be right. At least, according to the artist's statement she started doing this when she was confined to a mental hospital, concentrating on the precise cutting is a way of keeping her mind under control. She's been cutting paper for 9 years and can be doing it for 10 hours a day. Its one of those things you just have to see but she's only there till Saturday. (10.30-17.00)
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..to report today. The evening gig at Arena from the Hive electronic music guys was good last night. I'll be back there on Wednesday night to see my favourite ' Fiction' poets. I went to the Bluecoat this afternoon but the Sachiko Abe performance starts tomorrow in the Concert hall not today, so I'll have to call again. Another good talk at the Loop gallery this evening, this time by Christine O'Reilly Wilson and there's more on Friday and next Monday & Tuesday! I hope to see the 'Dante & Beatrice' film by Yellow House sometime this week. I mentioned there were a couple of weird performances at the Hello Sailor viewing the other week, Gaynor Sweeney has kindly sent me a couple of pictures she took with a mobile phone. Here's one of Adam showing his disappointment at the result of the US elections which had just been announced. 
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This afternoon I went to the talk at FACT given by Marsha Meskimmon responding to the works by Jill Magid and Yang Fudong as well as the effect of Biennials on the cities that host them. Marsha is an academic so used lots of big words, 'Corporeal' seemed to be her word of the day, but I think I followed it :), she used slides (old technology!) to illustrate the talk. On Thursday I joined in the SPLICE live webcast debate at the Door in Hanover St. discussing Art and the Community, the importance of the Biennial and Capital of Culture etc. I'll have to be careful, I'm starting to take it all too seriously. Ritual Bodies - againLast night I went back to the Walker for the evening catalogue launch and performances by the Ritual Bodies group of artists. The singing gallery guard led us round and sang about the works, Philip Davenport recited his Heart Shape Pornography poem and there was a performance involving a lot of chewing gum. I still have the songs stuck in my head.
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Amazing! There's one bit of the Biennial I visit almost every day and yet I don't think I've ever mentioned it!  I call in to the Centre in Wood St. to see if there's anything new on the notice board or leaflets on the shelves. I feel sorry for all the staff that work there, they're friendly and helpful even when I ask for details of some obscure thing that's not documented anywhere! But they have to share their space with some of the most boring artwork in the whole Biennial. They're videos (of course) and the one by Santiago Sierra is of someone (actually 12 people working shifts) playing the bugle in Battery park for 24 hours. The only thing worse than hearing this non-stop all day would be having to watch it as well! There's another large screen video by Ursula Biemann tells the story of an asylum seeker and juxtaposes global container transport with human migration, I feel sleepy just writing about it. More interesting is the large design for a campaign about teenage pregnancy by Andreja Kuluncic, I ignored it for weeks because I thought it was a real advert and I don't see adverts.
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I think the previous post was my longest yet and it wasn't even about a Biennial event. There's not much of the B left now but there's still lots of other stuff happening so I'm preparing to launch a new weblog as part of my artinliverpool website. This will probably be a 'team blog' so that some artists, curators, art students maybe could contribute, I may be asking for volunteers soon. Meanwhile I just need to create the database, install the software and design the pages etc.
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Another show which isn't part of the Liverpool Biennial but I have to mention it and I know I say this almost every day but 'this exhibition is fun', unfortunately it finishes on Thursday evening. There are four interactive works from graduates of the JMU International Centre for Digital Content (ICDC). I'm a bit of a geek so these things appeal to me and I hope serious artists don't object to me reducing their work to a 'this is fun' statement, I do appreciate the serious side too. I also hope they don't mind me taking the piss out of artists statements or brochure blurb. e.g. 'Paul Ashton focuses upon experiences that aim to provide participants with the opportunity to become the producers, performers and consumers of sound and noise' - Its actually a voice-activated slot car track called 'Soundxtric'. There are 2 helmets with microphones and the louder you say 'vroom, vroom' or whatever the faster the cars travel.
'Echolalia' by Diana Lorenzo Saxby is 'an interactive installation based on images, sound and expressive typography designed to produce connections between the machine and the user' i.e. IBM Via Voice with pictures. I was particularly interested in this because my late wife used a voice recognition system years ago which was great because she was able to carry on working even when she could no longer use the keyboard. But you had to spend hours, initially, to train the system to recognise your voice and speech patterns and it could be infuriating when background noise like a door banging produced garbage. Whenever she sneezed (she also had hay-fever!) it would come up with a word like 'Christmas'. So for this work Via Voice will have been 'trained' by Diana presumably and she has a spanish accent so when visitors speak into the mic. you get some interesting results.
'Visible City' by Chris Nelson is a sort of pivoting table top with a screen built into it showing a virtual sphere in a blurred landscape. As you manipulate the screen the sphere moves around the landscape which should slowly become more detailed. 
The 3 above are all in the Box, tucked under the stairs in the foyer area is Adam Cooke's work where you can use the cursor control on his mobile phone to move the arrow cursor on the screen and hear different pre-recorded sounds, some recorded within FACT. I came away from that feeling a bit un-hip because my mobile doesn't have a cursor control button!
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Ok, the exhibition is really titled 'Ah but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now...' but thats too long for a blog title, Dylan fans will recognise it from his My Back Pages song. This is at the Liverpool Academy of Arts in Seel St, I went to the private viewing last night after the Loop talk (thanks for the lift Julie).  I don't think this is part of the Biennial but never mind, we can pretend. Its a show by two of the talented Sinclair family - Mother/Daughter Carolyn / Jazamin and Karen Henley and is a diverse mix of painting styles, photographs, charcoal drawings and sculptures. This gallery is a bit odd, its on the first floor and has a stage at one end, you have to go up on stage to see some of the works close up. Some of Karen's sculptures look like they're performing up there.
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I'm enjoying these Monday evening talks at the Loop Gallery. Last night it was the turn of Craig Atkinson a young painter from Liverpool, his 'Walled Garden' painting is almost all white and has nothing to do with walls or gardens but has a lot of texture and is built up from several layers. I was surprised how interesting a half-hour talk about one white picture could be.
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I left the 'Bracket THIS' viewing early on Friday and walked across to the Walker, dodging spent fireworks on the way. What goes up, comes down and some of those still smouldering rocket remains are painful when they land a direct hit on my unprotected bonce. Anyway, the Walker's open till 21.00 on Fridays now and they were having a 'Singles Night' but that's not why I was there, honest, I wanted to see the release of the final batch of Dorrie's Urban Angel balloons but there was no sign of them and I went away cursing these disorganised artists. But it turned out they'd been sent round the back of the building and I'd missed them by just a few minutes. One of the Angels has just been found in Kent, do have a look at the messages people have sent in, they're really nice. at the Kif is the 3rd exhibition by 'The Long Journey Home' group of local artists and I went to the viewing there after leaving the Walker. There are over 20 artists involved so, again, the walls are crammed with pictures too many to mention. Not sure about the exhibition title, perhaps the art is 'something quite precocious' ?
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There's been a distinct lack of bloginess at Jackson Heights lately but now its catch-up time.
This new show at Arena only opened on Friday and I've been 3 times already. Its a collaboration between 'Mercy' and 'Fiction (quality poetics)' and is 'a showcase of the overwhelming force of artistic talent that exists in Liverpool's cafes, bars, smoke-dens and studios'
The small gallery space is crammed with artworks of all kinds and there are evening performances by musicians and/or poets on Sunday/Wednesdays/Fridays until the 28th.
The Biennial, for me, was starting to fade away but this has livened things up again, so thanks for that guys.
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The 'Cabin Pressure' show by thePooch which was due to take place at the Cabin Club tonight (sun 7th) has been 'delayed until futher notice'. Never mind, I'm going to the Arena Gallery instead, Tom Brookes' Band are playing.
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Photography by Alexandra Wolkowicz At the Unity Theatre The photographs are on the first floor in the bar and corridor area, there's some leaflets at reception giving details. They were commissioned as part of a project partnership between Liverpool Sure Start Plus and Healthy Arts at Hope St Ltd. The aim was to produce a series of images that challenged stereotypical images of pregnant teenagers and young parents. I don't know if they do that, they all look smart, cute and happy but they are in a photographers studio in front of a blank background smiling for the camera.
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The private view at 32 Seel St last night was fun. Apart from the excellent artwork which I've already mentioned (remember the singing irons) there was wine, music, the inevitable wierd performances and lots of nice people. 'Doll Man' (Gary Sollars) was there of course and I now have a doll man mask to add to my collection of Biennial memorabilia. I should wear it all the time, it hides the wrinkles
Its a DragNot Biennial but is linked to Hello Sailor as part of Homotopia is this exhibition at the Mathew St gallery. There are large colour photos by Dave Evans and Marni of people in drag - loads of thick make-up and wigs. This gallery normally specialises in Beatles pictures but has other groups as well so at the end of a row of drag queens there's a picture of Queen which could easily be part of the drag exhib, I wonder if that was deliberate.
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- Still no sign of Wang Chu Yu at the Bluecoat this morning.
- Going to 'Hello Sailor' private viewing at 32 Seel St. 18.00 tonight
- Thursday evening 'Sonic Waves' at Bluecoat but I'll be enjoying the poetry at Fiction@FACT
- Friday evening 'Bracket THIS' private viewing at Arena 19.00-21.00 but also 'Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious' viewing at Kif 19.30 onwards and also late night at the Walker where Dorrie will be releasing the final batch of Urban Angels balloons at 20.30.
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I went to the Bluecoat to see what artist in residence Wang Chu Yu was up to but couldn't find him and neither could any of the staff, he's gone awol. A search party has been dispatched with a promise to keep me informed. So, meanwhile, I went to John Moores University School of Art at 68 Hope St. Had to report to reception to be 'buzzed through' into the gallery. Here is a solo exhibition by Visiting Fellow Art Rosenbaum and a multi-talented fellow he is too. He's a Professor of Fine Arts at Georgia University, a painter, muralist, illustrator and performer of traditional American Folk music, cutting CDs of banjo/vocals.  Its good to have a break from all the conceptual and abstract art to see a room full of figurative stuff, nearly all in charcoal and/or black & red conte, quite a few portraits. Only one of his oils - the self-portrait shown above but there's a couple of display cases with small prints of his colourful large oils, would have been nice to see them for real. Finishes on 12th Nov - closed at weekends.
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Spent a pleasant hour at the Loop Gallery in Princes Dock this evening listening to Arthur Roberts talking about how he created his painting which is one of the TEN being exhibited here. The small audience gathered in front of the picture while he spoke and answered questions for about half an hour. He'd brought along his preliminary drawings for us to see and even some of his brushes and paintjars. Very interesting and a good opportunity to look at the other works again. I think its Craig Atkinson talking next Monday, check out the loop website if you're interested.
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'Resonance' - Philharmonic Hall Foyer 1-5 & 8th Nov 10.00-17.30. This was created by students from Sutton High College with Amanda Coogan and Patricia MacKinnon-Day. There's a short film on a screen above the stairs featuring, mainly, a cello with fireworks shooting out of it, the cello comes of worst. Its set to classical music similar to the Beethoven headbanger piece which was also led by Amanda Coogan. There are also works sculpted from paper in the display cabinets by the box office and hanging from the walls and a TV screen showing a film of how it was all realised. The statement talks about 'making the impossible possible', I'm not so sure about that but I'm sure it was good experience and fun for those involved. 
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