Liverpool Chamber of Commerce is keen to maintain the Capital of Culture momentum and recognise Liverpool’s business community’s long tradition of arts patronage with the launch of the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce Arts Award.

At the launch of the award at the city centre’s independent Dot Art Gallery, Liz Lacy, a key member of the Chamber’s Arts & Culture Committee said:
“The award is designed to encourage and reward patronage of the arts in Liverpool, recognising Merseyside companies who invest in artistic endeavours.
“We aim to encourage business to commission original artwork and continue Liverpool’s tradition of patronage of outstanding public artwork beyond European Capital of Culture Year.”

The Chamber has secured some of the most respected authorities in the city’s arts scene as judges for the prestigious event, Christopher Grunenberg, the director of the Tate, Lewis Biggs, director of the Liverpool Biennial and Rayahn King, Fine Art Curator, National Museums Liverpool and Gwen Oakden from Arts & Business will asses the artworks.

The award for the most innovative piece of commissioned artwork will be presented at Liverpool Chamber’s annual dinner on the 20th November 2008 at the BT Liverpool Convention Centre.
It will be presented to the Liverpool business judged to have commissioned the most impressive work of public sculpture in Liverpool since 2003 and has been made possible thanks to the kind sponsorship of former Chamber Chairman and Trustee of the Royal Academy, John Entwistle.

To enter or for more information contact Pamela Holstein at Liverpool Chamber of Commerce 0151 227 1234 x2217 or at pamela.holstein@liverpoolchamber.org.uk.

You can make a nomination using the form downloadable here

North West projects for the Cultural Olympiad

Culture Northwest is delighted to present Neon Attractors - the North West’s first project to be granted the London 2012 Inspire mark as part of the Cultural Olympiad. The North West is leading the way with culture by achieving this national standard of innovation and excellence.

Neon Attractors was specially curated by Culture Northwest for the Cultural Olympiad and combines two light installations: Rabbit_Liverpool Biennial in Toxteth and ThickSpace_FRED near Coniston. The project connects the North and South of the region and establishes a presence for the communities living in outer neighbourhood areas of the North West.

Rabbit_Liverpool Biennial was created from a line drawing by Calvin - a pupil from St Vincent de Paul Primary School in Liverpool as part of Ron Haselden’s ‘Animal’ project. The drawing has been transformed into a coloured neon light artwork measuring six meters in height by seven and a half meters wide and is located on the north façade of St James Church in Toxteth, Liverpool.

ThickSpace_FRED is a large fibre optic cube which the public can enter into by international artists Laura Belevica, Aaron J Robin and Feng Gouchaun. The installation will be suspended from trees in National Trust woodland near Coniston, Cumbria and will be accessible by footpaths.

The two installations which combine to form Neon Attractors can be seen as part of Open Weekend - the official start of the Cultural Olympiad in the UK on 26-28 September 2008. They will also feature as part of other cultural events occurring throughout the region: Rabbit_Liverpool Biennial will feature as part of a series of neon light installations throughout Liverpool named ‘Winter Lights’ as part of the 2008 Liverpool Biennial and ThickSpace_FRED will be a central feature of the Coniston Walking Festival in the Lake District, Cumbria - a new style walking festival combining physical and cultural activity.

NWDA

Showcase of UCLAN degree shows 2008
photos and text Tony Knox

This is to showcase some of the highlights the UCLAN 2008 Degree shows based in Preston, as the new academic year is upon us, here are some of the artists to look out for in 2008.

(Top Right) John Appleby digital drawing of animals were one of my favourites of the show,
(Top Left) one to look out for Birkenhead’s Katie Hanratty she is currently one of the collaborates on the Mothman Comic book launched Liverpool Biennial 2008.
(Right) Painter Darren Beatty demonstrates why painting is very much in vogue
(Middle) Stuart Hodgson video of himself as Alvin Stardust performed a set in a local public house under the title Simultaneous Transitions.
(Middle left) Debbie Greenway Award winning illustrator next to her artwork.
Paula Brough Heinzman features the Danish underground as a backdrop for her film,
(Middle) Amy Thackeray portraits
(Far Left) Amy Connolly stills and Video from several abandoned mental asylums in the uk the stills where stunning.
(Bottom left) Wayne Hill : robot panting machine,
(Bottom right) Lucy Finnigan installation of a walk though wardrobe that leads into the a lady bedroom that echoes of a child, who doesn’t want to grow up, inspired by CS Lewis the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

www.tonyknox.org.uk

New Blood at The International and MEME, Slater St. 5 to 14 September 2008

A most enjoyable show of works by mostly recent graduates of North West art schools.
Organised by the energetic Lindsey Tetlow whose work we remember from the Hope Uni degree show just a few months ago. She was helped by Bethany Shiner, also from Hope Uni and of course The Art Organisation who manage these two buildings.

There's a good selection of work by the 15 artists. I especially like Mat Duff's surreal photographs and Tracy E. Watt's honest paintings on drawings of women. In the back room of MEME Elli Logan's 'Stricken Lives' is an interesting installation and video in response to the drowning of the village of Mardale to create the Haweswater reservoir in the 1930's.

Full list of artists:
Adam Bresnen
Liverpool John Moores University, 2008
Laura Isabelle Cook
Liverpool Hope University, 2008
Aristi Costopoulou
University of Bolton, 2008
Joe Cowell
University of Cumbria, 2008
Jenny Davis
Graduated from Liverpool John Moores University, 2004
Mat Duff
University of Bolton, 2008
Rob Flynn
Liverpool John Moores University, 2008
Richard Foster
Liverpool Hope University, 2008
Sue Lemasurier
Liverpool John Moores University, 2009
Elli Logan
St. Martin's College Lancaster (University of Cumbria) 2008
Aimee Parker
Liverpool John Moores University, 2008
Bethany Shiner
Liverpool Hope University, 2008
Andy Sutton
Liverpool John Moores University, 2008
Lindsey Tetlow
Liverpool Hope University, 2008
Tracy E. Watt
University of Hull, 2002 Master of Arts in Painting

The International Gallery
Closed Monday
Tuesday - Friday 12pm - 6pm
Saturdays 11am - 6pm
Sundays 2pm - 6pm

From a massive spider to a tiny bird.

Great to see the 'Roman Standard' back outside the Oratory near Liverpool Cathedral.
You may remember the small sculpture by Tracey Emin was stolen a while ago, we were the first to notice and report its absence to the authorities.
A few days later it was returned and has now been reattached to its pole. Looks to me to be at a slightly different angle but never mind, I missed it.

Blimey! That's bigger than the one in my bathroom the other day. I don't mind spiders, at least, not the normal household ones we get around here but its not exactly cuddly is it.

People were queuing up to stroke the Sultans Elephant and sit on the Princess's palm when it was in London a couple of years ago. Not sure we'll get the same reaction here.

Ah but Liverpool's an 'edgy city' and we're desperately in need of an antidote to the soppy, cute superlambananas, so we have a giant spider that will crawl (or do spiders walk?) all around the city centre this weekend.

At the end of all these outdoor event items I have to say something like 'I hope the weather stays fine'. It hasn't worked so far, maybe this time...

http://www.lamachine.co.uk/

The Hope Street Project is an innovative art installation, which will link the Liverpool's two iconic Cathedrals during September and November 2008.

The project uses two lasers - one visible during hours of darkness and the second an invisible beam carrying voices and sounds between the two Cathedrals. Voices travel as light down Hope Street. The voices also vibrate the strings of a guitar creating a chordal and harmonic backdrop to the delicate tapestry of voices.

The overall sound created will offer a gentle and discreet ambience for reflection and contemplation. Visitors to the Cathedrals will be able to hear the sounds created by the installation in both Cathedrals at the designated times below.

Laser Switch On 25/9/08 - 27/11/08
Launch 28/10/08 6.00 - 7.30pm

Public Openings at both Cathedrals to hear installation and contribute phrases:
29/10/08 2.00 - 3.00pm
4/11/08 2.00 - 3.00pm
6/11/08 2.00 - 3.00pm
8/11/08 5.00 - 6.00pm
12/11/08 2.00 - 3.00pm
14/11/08 2.00 - 3.00pm
15/11/08 5.00 - 6.00pm
20/11/08 2.00 - 3.00pm
22/11/08 5.00 - 6.00pm
26/11/08 2.00 - 3.00pm

Concert:
27/11/08 7.30 - 8.30pm (Simultaneous performance in both Cathedrals)

Would you like to add your voice to the project?

We are currently collecting the voices of the people of Liverpool to transmit between the two Cathedrals as light down Hope Street.

We would like to invite you to add your voice to our project.

We would like you tell us:

What do you hope for in life?

Your response can be:-

A word
A phrase
A sentence
A few sentences
or a short poem

You can add your voice to the project in several ways:

E-mail: hopestreetproject@gmail.com
Message via MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/hopestreetproject
Phone message: TBA

Or you can drop into either Cathedral at designated times to record your voice. Details can be found at the following sources:

http://www.liverpoolcathedral.org.uk/

http://www.liverpoolmetrocathedral.org.uk/

http://www.myspace.com/hopestreetproject

http://hopestreetproject.blogspot.com/

Liverpool artwork of the week 33. 'Nathan's Animal' by Anthony Jadunath at Novas CUC 29 August - 5 October 2008

Just one example of over 130 paintings by Anthony Jadunath in his 'View from the Outside' exhibition. An excellent show, I really enjoyed it. Very affordable too, the works are selling well.
Anthony uses a hot poker (pyro) to burn the outlines into the wood before paintings and varnishing, most works have quite intricate borders too.

Anthony Jadunath was born in Trinidad in 1945, his father died whilst serving in the Navy, he arrived with his mother on English shores aged nine. Abused by his stepfather, Jadunath’s behaviour became destructive culminating in stints in several institutions.

Feeling at rock bottom at the tender age of fifteen, Jadunath took an overdose and as a result was confined to a psychiatric hospital. This was when he started to see art as a release, and because of his progress it was recommended that Jadunath returned home where he continued to make artwork. At the age of 22 he took part in his first exhibition at Fairfield Halls, Croydon, South London.

He became more involved in the arts working with children by helping them to paint at the Barbican Centre and at the People's Gallery. With a small grant from Croydon Council he was able to take an etching course at Croydon Art School where his talent was seen and ultimately shown to Victor Musgrave, the founder of London’s Outsider Archive. As a result of this act of fate over twenty works of his were housed in the Outsider Archive collection.

In 2002 Jadunath was admitted into hospital with a gangrenous toe, but without his foreknowledge, his leg was amputated and he found himself confined to a wheelchair. In 2007 Jadunath got gangrene in his other leg and again, the limb had to be amputated. Although now severely disabled Jadunath continues to work hard, and his small apartment is filled full of his emotive works.

Novas are now working very closely with Jadunath and are taking a keen interest in his work by giving him the freedom he needs to express himself to a world that has often dealt him rough justice.

Novas CUC

The excitement mounts...

The winner of the Bluecoat Display Centre's first National Sculpture Prize, sponsored by Malthouse & Co Chartered Accountants, will be announced on Friday 5th September 2008.

Be there at 6pm in Bluecoat Display Centre 2, 54 Hanover Street, Liverpool, L1 4AF, to hear the winner of the £1000 cash prize and the Peoples Choice award.

The 6 artists shortlisted for the prize are:
Claire Burbridge, Olivia Ferrier, Peter Lewis, Naomi Matthews, Seamus Moran and Rebecca Wilson

This will be the last exhibition in the Hanover Street space, which will close at the end of September. Bluecoat Display Centre would like to thank everyone for their support over the last two years.

www.bluecoatdisplaycentre.com

We returned to the Bluecoat courtyard as it was getting dark to see the mini forest lit up. Its a lovely sight and relaxing too as there are benches and loudspeakers broadcasting the sounds of birds and water.
Pleased to hear that its stay has been extended to September 14th too, so if you're around town in the evening this an ideal place to stop and rest for a while. Its open to 10pm (6pm on Mondays)

Green Spot is an interactive environmental installation, a place where you can escape the urban hustle and bustle and spend time in the sanctuary of a mini forest.

And that's not all. If you want to know more about what trees can do or if you just want to relax in the surroundings, visit Green Spot in the courtyard of the Bluecoat

http://www.greenspot08.org/
www.thebluecoat.org.uk

I finally managed to see the Klimt exhibition at Tate Liverpool or as they rather poetically describe it, Gustav Klimt: Painting, Design & Modern Life in Vienna 1900 (a title I’ll be returning to shortly). I’d been putting it off despite rave reviews -- this has been the gallery’s most successful show, with according to the attendant in the cloak room, fifteen-hundred people a day going through its doors. I hate busy exhibition and museums because you notoriously end up seeing all human life but not the art, yet with this closing in a couple of weeks I knew I had to just grit my teeth. In the end, the show wasn’t too busy, mostly because visitors might have stayed away since Tate Liverpool doesn’t traditionally open on a Monday. Still there were a fair few people trudging across the exhibition’s darkly carpeted floors but for the most part they behaved themselves and I found, at least for the time I was there, a good atmosphere.

Tate Liverpool’s flagship Capital of Culture exhibition might not be the best Klimt exhibition you’ll ever see, simply because that will never exist. His theoretically most famous painting, The Kiss, something which would naturally be the crowning finale of this kind of retrospective, is too expensive and fragile these days to be moved from its usual home of the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere in Vienna (not to mention that museum’s reluctance to loan out its most famous tourist attraction). So despite being the first exhibition to concentrate on the painter in our nation’s history, it’s necessarily incomplete and I wonder how many visitors will have been aware of the reasons (and I’m sure I heard someone in the gift shop, the only place The Kiss is on display, wondering why that painting wasn’t in what they’d seen before).

With that in mind, Tate have repositioned the focus of the show to not simply present a history of a single painter's technique but also the context within which he was working, the music, architecture, fashion and attitude of Vienna circa 1900. In reality that means lots of furniture and models of buildings, dresses and photography. It’s fascinating stuff; the ambition of the Viennese Secession movement of which Klimt was a part was to create a kind of ‘whole art form’ in which no single media had precedent and all blended into one another, from the painting that hung in the house, through to the cutlery to the house itself. Wagner was the musical proponent -- in producing The Ring, he didn’t simply want to compose the score but also design the sets and costume and direct the actors.

Within the exhibition we find a desk in the shape of box with a section that pulls out to become a chair; cutlery which mirrors the detailing of the walls of the house in which they’re used, a tea set with handles that allow for coffee and milk to be poured comfortably and efficiently at the same time. It’s the reason that many of Klimt’s canvases are square, both portraits and landscapes, it’s because they fit better within the overall interior design of a room. I’m reminded of the scene in Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters when painter Max Von Sydow’s agent brings along some potential clients who want to buy his work. They want it by the yard so that it can fit best within the scheme, an idea Von Sydow’s none to pleased about because it insults his artistic integrity. Klimt on the other hand, understood market forces and created his work to fulfil them, at least initially.

This, then is not an exhibition to visit if you’re looking for wall to wall paintings by a particular artist, or for that matter to see an unbroken sequence of his work so that you can see how aspects of his style changed and developed. If there’s something I still came away not really understanding, it’s how he shifted from the earlier more pre-Raphaelitian courtly style through to the bolder, erotic images which he's perhaps most famous for. Clearly a decision was made by the curatorial team based on what was thought to be available which is fine but given the name on the poster I simply would have liked a clearer through line (though given that I was very tired when I finally dragged myself through the doors and could well have simply missed it amongst the labels and information boards).

There’s an earlier painting, Fable, which looks like the work of a completely different artist -- sight unseen you might guess it was by Collier or one of the British late Victorians. His heart clearly wasn’t in it, but there’s something of leap from that to the Beethoven Frieze with its imagery that crosses a randy Charles Rennie Mackintosh with Maurice Sendak's picture book, Where the Wild Things Are. That’s probably why I like his work so -- other painters often keep the same style but then apply it to different subjects. Klimt kept much the same subject but changed the way he represented it. One constant is hair. He seemed to be obsessed with it. In his early paintings he diligently worked to make sure every strand appeared convincingly, in later paintings the shapes became more abstract but the tresses flowed.

About the only proper connection I can make is that as time went on, Klimt became something of a lathario and the eroticism of the imagery certainly increased in tandem with the number of models which hung around his studio. The finale of the exhibition is series of drawings of ladies in a variety of positions giving themselves and each other pleasure. Despite only being simple line drawings, they were enough to have the painter branded as the pornographer of Vienna (even though the majority only came to light after his death). Other works, such as The Three Ages, alone might mark him as something of a misogynist with their wiry representations and Judith II/Salome (reputed to have ordered the beheading of John The Baptist). But I don’t think anything could be further from the truth, he was an interesting chap but I think he was just interested in showing women, good, or bad, or very, very bad indeed.

What ultimately pulls the exhibition together is the audio guide. A couple of pounds hire provides you with an iPod Touch loaded with a tour, this tour in fact available to download from the Tate website. Often these guides don’t work, either because you have to lug around a cd player dangling around your neck or one of those tall black wands which often crackle and can’t be heard over the din of the other visitors. The Klimt guide almost puts the visitor inside an Andrew Graham Dixon documentary, mixing audio-only explanations of the exhibits with related photographs (showing some of the paintings in their original context), music and video interviews with curators at the gallery of origin or family owners. The text is finely balanced too, intelligent without being sonorous, knowledgeable as well as humorous.

I did like the design of the exhibition too. The walls have been painted submarine grey which has the effect of making the colours within the paintings even more luminous. An earlier work, Two Girls with Oleander, with its golden back drop looked like the artist was achieving in a paint what he’d later do in genuine metal. The whites of Portrait of Marie Henneberg’s dress and Salome’s skin pop out too. If nothing else I’ve come away with a renewed appreciation of just how luminous a painter Klimt was; like medieval artists he understood that it was possible to be subtle even with the boldest of colours and that in the darkened rooms and hallways were some of his paintings would ultimately hang, it’s those qualities which would make them unforgettable.

Along with the nudity and scary eyes.

Excellent! Somewhere to just relax with a drink or two and watch a bit of free entertainment or join in an activity or whatever after a day at the office.
It may take a while but I think eventually the Bluecoat may be the place to be after work.
So they've called it Hubbub and have organised various things to keep us amused on Wednesday to Saturday evenings 18-20.00

We went to the first event which included the excellent Bootworks Theatre Collective and their their one person auditorium, 'The Black Box'. (There's still time to see them at Metal's Edge Hill pavilion this evening, Friday, 18-20.00)

Drop in after work or before your night out, and you could happen upon quizzes, comedy, acoustic music, book groups, performances, poetry readings, artist film presentations, craft workshops, live art... You name it.

The idea is that Hubbub will take on a life of its own, and do its own thing. If you fancy getting involved you can contact the Hubbub coordinator Sam Beecham on 0151 702 5324, sam.b@thebluecoat.org.uk.

Meanwhile in the front courtyard there's a small temporary forest! Trees planted in cardboard boxes. That big metal thing is not a tree, its solar panels to power the lights which illuminate the trees at night. The amount of light depends on how much sun the panels have soaked up during the day so I wouldn't expect much in this British summer.

This installation goes on 3rd September 2008 to make for for Biennial related stuff, including the much loved caravan gallery, hurrah!

Hubbub at the Bluecoat

LIVERPOOL BIENNIAL 2008
20 September – 30 November 2008


WANTED: SKYLADDERS
Call for public involvement as Liverpool Biennial commissions Yoko Ono.

Yoko Ono’s work frequently consists of an invitation to participate in an act of the imagination. For MADE UP, Liverpool Biennial’s 2008 International exhibition, she invites visitors to donate stepladders to her project Liverpool Skyladders. Exhibited in the ruins of St. Luke’s Church, over the course of the Biennial a forest of stepladders will grow inside.

Yoko Ono invites the public to donate a stepladder for inclusion in a new work for Liverpool Biennial’s MADE UP exhibition. Over the ten weeks of the Biennial, with the public’s help, a forest of ladders will grow inside St. Luke’s Church. Liverpool Skyladders invites us all to find space for dreams and the imagination under the open skies.

(Sky)ladders, big and small, metal and wooden, new and old, can be delivered to St. Luke’s Church on
Monday 15 to Wednesday 17 September, between 11am and 5pm
Thursday 18 to Sunday 21 September, between 10am and 6pm

Following the Biennial, the artwork will be donated to charity.

For further information or to promise a (sky)ladder please contact: skyladders@biennial.com

Lewis Biggs Chief Executive of Liverpool Biennial said, "Liverpool Biennial's commissions outside the gallery are a powerful way of involving the widest public, and have become one of the international exhibition's best-loved features. This year's bumper crop for MADE UP will be not only surprising and enjoyable, but will inspire further thought about how art can impact on the developing cityscape."

A key figure in both the Fluxus and Conceptual Art movements of the 1960s and 1970s, Yoko Ono continues to work across a broad range of disciplines and media, including music, performance and installation. Her work frequently consists of an invitation to participate in an act of the imagination, whether in her instructional pieces such as Fly (2006) – a series of billboards and t-shirts simply printed with the message ‘Fly’; or more participatory pieces such as Wish Tree (1996) where visitors are invited to hang their wishes on a tree. In Ceiling Painting (1966), perhaps one of the best known of Ono’s early pieces, a text and a magnifying glass were suspended form the ceiling of the Indica gallery in London. Visitors who climbed the ladder to read the text were rewarded with the discovery that the text said ‘Yes’. The affirmative quality which characterised this early work, remains central to Ono’s current practice, demonstrated in her continued belief that through collective participation an act of the imagination can become a reality. Ono was commissioned for 2004 Biennial with her work My Mummy Was Beautiful.

www.biennial.com

Late at Tate Liverpool: Night of Bling
Thursday 28 August 2008, 18.00–21.00

Roll up for an evening of entertainment and enchantment. Follow a glittering tour of Gustav Klimt: Painting, Design and Modern Life in Vienna 1900 led by Tobias Natter (renowned author and co-curator of the exhibition), focusing on Klimt's golden period. Sit in on an interdisciplinary salon on art and architecture with experts Professors Peter Vergo, Pamela Robertson and Alan Crawford on the connections and comparisons between the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain and America and the Wiener Werkstätte in Austria.

View the shimmering Klimt bio-pic starring John Malkovich and indulge in some fin de siècle scintillating songs in the form of multi award-winning Irish/ French chanteuse Camille O’Sullivan, who sings the dramatic songs of Jacques Brel, Tom Waits and Nick Cave. O'Sullivan recently played at Glastonbury and sold out at the Sydney Opera House and the Queen's Hall in Edinburgh. Throughout the evening, DJ Gavin Kendrick warms up for the final performance with 'unbounded sounds from antiquity to infinity' and Liverpool Samba School animate the building with elaborate Klimt inspired costumes, music and dancing accompanied by the sounds of DJ Conrad.

Admission to Late at Tate is free. Charges apply to salons, tours and talks.