Review of Transvoyeur Artists Agata Alcaniz and George Lund Part of Salon Exhibition, Curated by Grizedale, A Foundation, Blade Factory, Greenland Street, Liverpool, England, 01-15 November 2006.

Reviewed by Gaynor Evelyn Sweeney and Tony Knox, Date of Review 16 November 2006.

Grizedale Arts, were invited by the A Foundation to take up residency during the Independents Liverpool Biennial 2006. The have produced a series of exhibitions and art initiatives of exceptional curiosity on the concepts of art and space, society, culture and commodity. As part of this, a final stage was extended to Liverpool based artists to submit and participate in a Grizedale exhibition, titled Salon Exhibition.

The Salon exhibition was eclectic collection of diverse art and curated not in the preconceived style of pristine white walls and the usual curatorial precepts of spatiality aesthetics, each with it own locale and leading theoretically and visually into the the next. Here is an miscellaneous and chaotic collection of art, each placed in seemingly no specific order, but the interest is the actual testing of boundaries by this fusion and expanse of art. This is in effect a fusion, hybridisation of art in England, from Grizedale and Liverpool. Albeit the disorder, what we enter is a journey, somewhat disjointed, but enticed and guided through the space and itself the viewer to enquire and explore this layout.

There were some interesting pieces, recognisable by established Liverpool and Merseyside practitioners, such as Amanda Oliphant, Becca Bachouse, Claire Chambers, Birgit R Deubner and many more. All exceptional artists in their practice.

I noticed the art intriguing of Agata Alcaniz and George Lund. Alcaniz had a digital video piece, which related to series of environmental performances she has explored over the past few years. Lund exhibited a piece titled ‘Transvoyeur’. A recognition of his involvement with the Transvoyeur Arts Group. The painting itself is set on his earlier research of urban culture of Liverpool and New York and formulated in his naïve style of painting. Both artists have formerly exhibited their art in the Transvoyeur Liverpool and New York exhibition at the View Two Gallery, Mathew Street, Liverpool, England, which will then tour to New York in Spring 2007.

The formula of Grizedale’s curatorial and creative precepts imbue as sense of the organic in manifesting the constructs and ideologies in post modern society and culture. I am curious to know there next stage in development, as the ethos seems to be one reciprocal to the space they reside and forms an intrinsic relationship between them and were they migrate.