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…
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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 |
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Boozey:
Where’s all this free drink I was promised? Hic!. |
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.
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 blade
Yours in bloggerhood,
The BlogMeister
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
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.
…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
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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