Putting together an exclusive range of art/photography for a company who supply bespoke artwork to hotels/restaurants, bars, offices and apartments is a dream job for any art lover, which has taken me on a national tour through a weird and wonderful world of exhibitions, studios, fairs, colleges, artist networks and anywhere else where I might discover ‘up and coming’ artistic talent.

This has not been without its surreal moments. At a prestigious London private viewing to which I took my new boss, one artist arrived in a shopping trolley, in which he was travelling to Glasgow, using a broom as a paddle. We never managed to find out what he used for brakes for those downward slopes . . .

Studio visits are always a fascinating experience, and artists who have chosen not to, or can’t afford to rent a studio, are incredibly resourceful when it comes to finding a place to paint. I have visited artists in derelict buildings, garages, garden sheds, even an old aircraft hanger, and am often surprised that creativity and innovation can thrive in some of the most depressing places imaginable, where the smell of damp and mould intermingles unpleasantly with turps, and pigeon droppings with paint.

I also observe that many artists are now using the ‘found objects’ in their work, and I remember from my own art college days that we were more likely to look in a skip for materials to use than go to Windsor and Newton. Toilet roll, carrier bags and even old mattresses have replaced canvas and paper, and household emulsion has become a popular media with painters instead of oil and acrylic. I am told this is a challenge to conventional use of materials, but I can’t help wondering if these artists are simply hard up?

Touring last years degree shows was also full of surprises, and I was staggered to find how a consistently high proportion of art graduates had chosen to express themselves ‘conceptually’, and how few had opted for more conventional disciplines. Self-harm, old age, drug addiction, dereliction and other ‘social concerns’ were recurrent themes across the nation’s art departments. I am told this is a challenge to conventional use of subject matter, or are our young artists simply self-absorbed and depressed? Needless to say, I didn’t find much for hotel bedroom walls here.

Read more on the degree shows: Indigo Goes to Art School

Yet amidst the current climate of experimentation and conceptualism, I have met painters, digital artists and photographers who still recognise the value and importance of technique and skill, and there is a wealth of artistic talent out there seeking to find expression and exposure, to both the public and potential buyers.

By Kaye Kent MA

Off to Smithdown Rd again, that's twice this week I've left the city centre, gosh! But its always nice to visit this friendly cafe with its LIssue gallery. The latest exhibition has paintings by Peter Barker, photographs by Joan Evans and Mike Badgers small sculptures.
Mike is famous for his fascinating sculptures of cars, ships, planes etc. made from recycled bits of metal. He was also a founder member of the La's, I didn't know that until I visited his website where you can see examples of his work.
In the back room there are Joan's photographs of Liverpool and New York. I thought the NY ones had a timeless quality, the bustling streets and tall apartment blocks with those ubiquitous external fire-escapes.
The main area of the cafe has Peter's paintings, all oil on canvas. There are some geometric shapes like the one pictured here which is called 'Where's the Point', some others are similar to the landscapes of the surrealists inhabited by strange looking people and objects. Also a couple look a bit sci-fi with a glowing moon hanging over a dark atmospheric landscape. 'Coffeemoon' which is hanging above the archway is a good example of this. All the works are for sale at reasonable prices.

There's a lengthy interview and review of the Singh Twins 'Past Modern' exhibition at the Walker in the Daily Post.

Regular readers will have noticed that Stuart Ian Burns has been posting to the blog for a while now. Stuart has been blogging far longer than I have. His feelinglistless blog is always a good read and he's well respected in the online community. (He may even be highly regarded in the offline community too but I wouldn't know). He recently started a collaborative blog called heardsaid to which I ocassionally post and was recently pick-of-the-day on the Guardian News Blog

Now Kaye Kent has joined us and her first post should appear soon. Kaye works as an art consultant for a local company has previously worked for Sothebys and the Mall Galleries and studied art to MA level. So I'm sure Kaye will be providing us with more professional articles and criticisms than my rather amateur efforts.

There's always a danger when you provide entertainment at a private viewing that it can overshadow the actual exhibition. I won't say that happened here on Thursday night but I do wish I knew how the card magician Joe Fawley managed to change the two cards I had in my hand into Aces, amazing.
The Cornerstone gallery at Hope University Everton Campus is an interesting building but as you can see from the picture its a gallery in both senses of the word - a balcony above a hall. Which I find distracting, step too far back and you fall down the stairs.
Sean is currently the Static Gallery Graduate Resident, and has been recommended for the British Art Show. I saw a couple of these works at Arena gallery during the biennial. They're not pieces that you just stand and look at, some are documentary evidence of happenings or interventions in institutional systems.
It would spoil the fun if I explained the whole thing but there's a clever idea involving posting 52 playing cards to various galleries around the world and there's a piece recording the stages of receiving and eventual payment of a parking ticket. You are invited to follow instructions for making a paper plane (most of them glided smoothly down into the hallway) or use a phone to call one of a number of public phone boxes and chat to whatever passerby answers.
But most important of all, how did Magic Joe find my three of diamonds?

I've just returned from seeing Aleks Krotoski's talk at the FACT regarding social interactions within virtual worlds and their implications within the real world. It's a fascinating topic and was thoroughly explored in a talk which carefully balanced itself between introduction for newbies and explanation for the more knowledgable.

I haven't actually played within any of these virtual worlds. Never actually being a very good gamer, and with my dial-up connection I spend more of my time online reading and writing. I tend to have quite an addictive/compulsive personality though, so assuming I could get to grips with a game in a meaningful way, hours and days of my life would disappar.

It's interesting to compare the gaming experience or use of the internet with mine, and how even within my limits I still have a sort of online social life and at times it can be as intense as that felt by those who 'live' within a games environment and possibly moreso because I don't have the face of a character or avatar to hide behind and neither does anyone else. Generally (within a weblog for example) what you see in what you get. Generally.

This is one of those entertainment forms which is yet to reach the popular mainstream in the UK, but is massively popular in other parts of the world. In Korea, for example, which has the strongest broadband infrastructure in the world, people spend more time playing these games than they do watching television to the extent that broadcasters are hemoraging and there are rumours that when Rupert Murdock tries to enter the country's media, it'll be in the in form on an online world and not as a television channel.

The event was absolutely the sort of the thing the FACT centre does very well. The space, The Box, is perfect with its couches and screen (although how it works as a cinema is a discussion for another time). It was busy tonight as well, a sell out, but I'm sure if it had been in a larger venue that would have been packed also. But the intimate atmosphere was condusive to the ensuing discussion after the talk during which we found out the audience included lawyers, game designers and gamers, so it was a tragedy when the timeslot and the need I think to show a film brought everything to an abrupt end. We could have chatted on for hours.

Mary Adshead 1904-1995 at Liverpool University Art Gallery until April 29th.
Mary Adshead was famous for her murals but you won't see many here of course because they're on walls at places such as Churches, Colwyn Bay Pier Pavilion, Lewis's restaurant in Leicester and Selfridges top floor restaurant and a few have been destroyed by fire, bombs or builders.. There is one on the ground floor here though called 'Tropical Fantasy'. The rest of the exhibition is on the top floor as usual and there are at least some photographs, sketches etc. of the other murals. In fact, there's a lot of stuff in glass cabinets - letters, books and even stamps! From 1949 to 1963 she was a most successful designer of British stamps, one of the letters is from her, complaining about the changes that were made much to her annoyance.
They call her style 'amusing' and some of the paintings such as 'The Cruise' are reminiscent of Stanley Spencer. I like them.

I went out to Smithdown Rd today, the South end of the road seems to be relatively thriving these days. I wanted to check out what was happening in the LIssue gallery which is in the Urban Coffee Lounge. The 'Incredible Indelible' exhibition finished recently so no surprise to find Lis Edgar there busily hanging pictures for the next show which starts on Saturday 29th, private view on Friday 7-9pm but I don't have full details yet. In April there'll be an exhibition by photographer Ben Zuhlcke, after that things change as there'll be a series of shows curated by art students. Should be interesting.

Then just over the road I took my first look at the new South Bohemian gallery which opened in December. Its quite a large double-fronted shop space which seems to extend a long way back and its full of art of various styles and standards. There's some good stuff by professional artists alongside some not-so-good amateur stuff but everything is reasonably priced and affordable and things seem to be turning round quite well.

The proprietors of both these places, Rosie at Urban Coffee and Peter at Bohemian are keen to involve the local community as much as they can. There's craft workshops at Urban and painting classes at Bohemian. I'm sure I'll be writing about them again soon.

If you're interested in buying art you may find this tongue-in-cheek one-page guide useful. I like the bit about visiting every museum in the world and obsessively attending gallery exhibitions.
Erik's Super-easy Guide to Buying Art

I went to the Walker yesterday afternoon to have a look at 'Past Modern' a retrospective from 1987 to now by Amrit and Rabindra Singh. I was surprised how busy it was, its usually very quiet at the Walker but I'm not often there on Saturdays I suppose. I was also impressed at the size of the exhibition, the twins' work is so intricate and detailed I couldn't imagine them turning out so many pieces.
They use traditional methods of Indian minature painting, bright poster colours and gouache but depict contemporary themes and situations. Probably their most famous (or notorious) painting is of the Beckhams portrayed as the new Royal family, complete with throne and crowns. There are a lot of celebrities in the pictures, for instance, a series called 'Rethinking Rossetti' has the likes of Madonna, Mother Teresa and Princess Diana imitating Rossetti's pictures of red-headed beauties.
There's quite detailed commentaries alongside each painting, there needs to be to explain at least some of the symbolism, far too much for my taste. So we have Muhammed Ali with a bow firing pens at a flag whilst standing on top of the world which is resting on a boxing ring which is balanced on the back of a camel that's standing on an island (and that's only part of it).
There's some serious paintings about the 1984 storming of the Golden Temple by the Indian army and depictions of Bush & Blair have been added to the earlier ones of Thatcher & Reagan. I like the one of Thatcher as The Grim Reaper. Well worth a visit. There's also a lovely new book of their works for sale as well as the usual cards etc.

I went to the viewing of Wentworth's show last night. He doesn't want to call it a retrospective but it is really. The Daily Post's Philip Key has already written a lengthy review and interview so I won't repeat it all.

I particularly like the 'False Ceiling' which is a room with hundreds of books suspended from the ceiling to just above (my) head height. I think it works best when there aren't many people in the room and you have a clear view of the whole thing and can see the shadows cast on the walls. I also like the series of photgraphs of strange accidental artworks that you can see on the streets (if you're observant enough) called 'Making Do and Getting By'.

I'm looking for an explanation of 'Roland Barthes Desk' which is a desk with a lot of different nails stuck in it. Don't know much about Barthes so I searched and found some links..
'Roland Barthes presented the postmodernist tradition with many useful specie of nomenclature by which to describe what is occuring semioticly within discourse'
Oh, I see.
I'm always surprised to see so many hundreds of people packing into the Tate previews, other galleries are lucky to attract more than 20 people - mostly the same die-hards like me. Especially as there's no free drinks and the weather was foul, I got thoroughly soaked walking there, I have an irrational fear of handing my possessions over to a cloakroom so my dripping coat left a trail all round the gallery.
I believe the artist was there and I spotted Sarah Lucas, a former student of his who has her own show coming up at this venue later in the year.
Its a good exhibition but I'm sure the £4(3) entrance fee for non-members will put a lot of people off, shame.

No need to travel to London. You can tour Tate Britain online now. Its good fun and there's loads of information. They don't have images of all the artworks though.

Thanks to Billy for alerting me to this Link There's a display of Yoko Ono's work from the 1960s to the present day showing in Oslo, Norway. I'm sure you all remember the images from her 'My Mummy Was Beautiful' work which adorned the city streets during the Biennial. I enjoyed the whole thing immensely but I'm sure some will be horrified to see that they will now be displayed on billboards in Oslo.
Oh no! Will hoards of prudish parents stop taking their children into town? Will Norwegian religious zealots have to walk around with their eyes closed? Will the same half dozen angry citizens write continuously to the Oslo Echo demanding the resignation of local councillors?
Seriously though, it would be interesting to know what the reaction is over there.

The Bluecoat Arts Centre in School Lane closes for major restoration work on January 31st. It is scheduled to re-open in mid 2006. Only the Craft & Design Display Centre will be staying open via the entrance from College Lane.
The current 'Watch This Space' exhibition ends on Jan 29th.
The Bookshop and Artshop have already moved to the Gostins buliding in Hanover St.
The Editions shop will be moving to Cook St at the end of the month.
Fans of the Cafe will have to find another venue and the Artists are having to find alternative studio space.
Here's some blurb from the webpage..

The NWDA has pledged £2.5 million towards the restoration of Bluecoat, a Grade 1 listed building and the oldest building in the city centre. Funding will assist in the refurbishment and re-organisation of existing space as well as the creation of a new wing, including the provision of managed workspace for creative industries, arts studios, an art gallery and performance space.

The project aims to reposition Bluecoat as an architectural landmark in the city, in response to Liverpool¹s 800th anniversary in 2007, Capital of Culture in 2008 and the area¹s new designation as a World Heritage Site.

Its a shame the city has to manage without such a large arts resource for 18 months but the place certainly needs updating. I always worry about the state of the wiring and plumbing in there! Hope its all worth it.

Another preview from The Daily Post: An exhibition at the University of Liverpool's Art Gallery collecting the work of mural painter Mary Adshead begins on January 21st. "They are a reflection of their times telling stories of humour and exuberance collected for a rare appearance in a public gallery."

At Liverpool University Senate House until April 1st. 'Poetraits' is the first major project by the young portrait artist, Graham Kershaw. It was produced over the first half of 2003 and launched in July of that year in conjunction with the Ledbury Poetry Festival. Graham was the Resident Portrait Artist at Shell House in Ledbury at the time and the show has been touring ever since.

There are 12 portraits and each poet has written a poem specially to go with the portrait. All the poems are framed and displayed alongside the picture, so you get two things for the price of one. I had problems reading some of the hand-written poems but some are typed up including a nice Haiku by Jo Shapcott. All the portraits are in the same style, oil on canvas, with minimal finishing, the white canvas still showing round the edges. I like them, though poor Clare Pollard looks very anaemic!
There's more details and a full list of the poets on the artists website.

Link - to review in today's Guardian of the Marina Zurkow and Eddo Stern show at FACT which ends on Jan 30th. I must go and take another (longer) look before then.

Last night I went to a private view in Runcorn. Yes, Runcorn! So its not quite 'art in liverpool' but it was a show by a group of about a dozen artists known collectively as 'Markmakers' some of whom are based here. I should get out of the city more often, Runcorn is less than 20 minutes away from Lime St, I'm not familiar with the place so I was glad that I bumped into Arthur Roberts (his exhibition's still on at the Loop gallery) on the train so at least we could get lost together.

We got there early so we found a pub and had a drink. All the pubs here are called Railway or Bridge and are stuck in a 1970s time warp, decor, carpets, beer, food (only got peanuts) and music - all date from 30 years ago. The Brindley Arts Centre, on the other hand, is a splendid modern place. A bit like a small version of The Lowry with a Theatre, Gallery, Bar and Cafe overlooking the Bridgewater Canal.

The exhibition is called 'All in a Days Work'. The idea is that the artists spent 24 hours on their piece, 24 hours in total, not all at once. As usual with group shows there was an eclectic mix of paintings, sculptures, drawing, photography, textiles etc. All very interesting, I particularly wanted to see Barbara Jones's origami 'Peace Cranes' which you can see pictured here. She started making these during the Biennial and was still making them last night! People were welcome to join in, one of the ones hanging up was one that I made earlier so I'm very pleased with myself.
The exhibition finishes on Feb. 20th.

Mark Wallinger to give artist talk at Tate Liverpool "His paintings, videos, sculptures and photographs utilise irony, anxiety and humour to reveal the complex social structures and relationships in which daily life unfolds." It's a pity I'm going to miss this -- I'm seeing the actress Juliette Lewis and band playing at The Barfly venue that night -- which is something equally unmissable really.

(I think I'll be going to the talk - Ed.)

In Port Sunlight. A pithy article by Peter Campbell of The London Review of Books which succinctly covers much the same ground as five documentary of a few months ago, although with more emphasis on Leverhulme's motivations: "The professional instincts of a brilliant marketer of soap are more likely to colour his interest in art than those of, say, a steel tycoon. Lever had a sense of what people want, and our wants are rarely as practical as a bald description suggests. We want clean clothes, but within that simple desire lie images of crisp starching, of linen whiter than white. Advertising suggests imagined outcomes. Lever’s description of a rose-wreathed cottage stands to the housing he had built as the little girl in her white frock does to the daily wash."

The Daily Post previews Graham Kershaw's Poetraits exhibition which opens this Friday in the Exhibition Hall at the University of Liverpool's Senate House in Abercromby Square. It's a collection of portraits of twelve UK poets including our own Roger McGough. "They were asked to compose poems in response. These could relate directly to the experience of being painted, the response to the portraits or self portraits in themselves. The hand-written impressions are exhibited next to each poets' portrait.." The show continues until April 1st.

Next Tuesday evening at 7.15pm, five continue what seems like a one channel campaign to promote Liverpool arts on television with the first episode of a two part documentary, Pevsner's Cities with Gavin Stamp. As the blurb in this week's Radio Times describes: "Art historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner was responsible for the monumental series of books, The Buildings of England comprising of some 46 volumes, between 1951 and 1974 . Professor Gavin Stamp revisits some of the places chronicled by Pevsner, starting with the city of Liverpool." 'Our' guide was recently updated by an old friend of mine, Joseph Sharples [amazon]. It's an incredible book and I'm hoping this programme will be using it for background . Considering the richness of the city's architecture this should be something special.

Link More people are getting into trouble for mentioning their employer in their blogs. I think I'll have to boycott Waterstones (after I've spent the gift token I got for xmas)

One of the best shows during the 2004 Liverpool Biennial was ')Bracket THIS(' at the Arena Gallery. It was a great mix of art, poetry, music and performances. I called in several times. The ShowMercy website now has a review and many photographs of the events. You'll notice in this picture that the model is wearing a very nice scarf. This is the one (the scarf, not the model) that I subsequently bought at the Arena Art Auction in December.

...to next week. After the yuletide lull things are starting to happen again.

Jan 17th - Blackburne House, new exhibitions in the Cafe/Bar area
Jan 18th - Unity Theatre, exhibition by Michael Pace-Sigge
Jan 19th - FACT, Darkly Comic event '1980s Liverpool Animation'
Jan 21st - Tate, Richard Wentworth sculpture. (Members Private View on 20th)
Jan 22nd - Walker, The Singh Twins 'Past Modern' retrospective.
artinliverpool.com for more details

Cory Arcangel who created the 'Infinite Fill Zone' and 'I shot Andy Warhol' installations at FACT during the Biennial is constantly coming up with more weird ideas. The latest is dooogle which looks like google but whatever you search for you get 15,300 results for Doogie Howser (an old TV show). Crazy.

A report in today's Guardian: Moma moan: Residents angry at prying art-lovers
"Residents of a swanky New York street are in uproar after finding themselves unwitting exhibits at the recently rebuilt Museum of Modern Art.
In a case of life imitating art, the renovated museum, with a clear glass floor-to-ceiling wall looking out onto West 54th Street, gives its 10,000 daily visitors a bird's eye look into the upmarket apartments across the road"

I suppose people get bored and stare out the windows while they're queueing to look at the next picture.

Yesterday I reported that FACT had recorded its 500,000th visitor since opening in Feb 2003 and I was wondering how they calculated that figure. So I asked the ever-helpful Joan Burnett (Visitor Services Manager) and here is her response..

"We use the figures generated by the infra red beam door counter on the front door – this is not fool proof as we also have a back door! It means we are probably underestimating the number of visitors through the Centre.

It would be impossible for any gallery to say exactly how many individual people come through the door – perhaps to say we’ve had 500,000 visits would be more accurate. This is pretty much the way all galleries calculate attendance and I think the most fair. Theatres can look at their ticket receipts, which is not something a gallery can do. Each time they visit, people may be using the Centre for different purposes whether it be cinema or the café or the galleries.

We have such a range of attendance – we have a very small percentage who use the Centre every day, and then a much larger constituency who come at least once a month and we still have a high percentage of first timers which is great. We know from research that we still have a long way to go before everyone in Liverpool even knows we’re here, so there’s room for growth and we certainly won’t be complacent. "

Joan goes on to say..

"I have worked in a range of arts venues both in Liverpool and elsewhere, and my own, very personal view, is that Liverpool has always had a very healthy arts attendance and a lively, engaged audience that are very quick to hold arts organisations to account – quite rightly.
For us at FACT the message is also about breaking down the resistance to new media art – bridging the gap between people’s willingness to watch TV almost reflexively and the formalisation of that process by putting screen works in galleries – we’ll get there!"

Thanks Joan.

Last time I visited The Philharmonic Pub on Hardman Street, as well as marvelling at that toilet I spent ages looking at giant poster on the wall filled with line drawings of most of the pubs and inns in the Liverpool area. It's an amazing sight and educational too as each is accompanied by a small comment pointing out distingushing features. The Daily Post reports that the artist Bernie Carroll has moved on to create a Liverpool Capital of Culture poster with pictures of great and not so-great Liverpool landmarks and again each has a short expo. So Liverpool Playhouse becomes a "theatre steeped in history that created bold and creative interpretations of great plays" and the Grafton Rooms has a picture of Nora Batty alongside, describing it as a location for a "Grab-a-Granny". Something to appeal to people from the city and just visiting.

Apparently FACT had its 500,000th visitor recently which is great, I'm a member and love the place. I reckon I've probably called in about 1,000 times since it opened in Feb 2003 so I'm wondering, does that count as 1,000 visitors or just 1?
It can't be the latter surely. Unless they have some super surveillance equipment that identifies everyone that goes through the door and knows whether they've been there before. Its not a website, I don't have my IP address stuck on my forehead. And is it every visitor to the building? The staff, expecially the security guard go in and out of the doors several times a day. Or is it visits to the exhibitions, cinemas, bar and cafe? Whatever, I don't see how it can be any more than an 'educated' guesstimate. Why don't I just ask them?

Poor old Eleanor Rigby. Moved to a new sight at the back of BHS and no deccies on her crimbo tree. It is Jan 6th though so it may have been a wonder to behold previously.

Link to Guardian Obit.
I don't think I'd heard of her before and has no link to Liverpool but sounds like an interesting character who is described simply as 'friend of the arts' which is something to aspire to in my opinion.

I saw in the New Year at a party in a Greek Taverna in Hardman St. There were Greek themed murals on the walls and other artwork of a Greek flavour dotted around. It occured to me that I may be the only person who actually looks at this stuff. I was in a restaurant a few weeks ago and while the rest of the party were studying the menus I was wondering around, leaning across diners to get a close look at the rather good abstract canvases. I couldn't make out who the artist was. I am reminded of Julie Jones' story of how thrilled she was to receive a commission from a local architect for a large painting for a new restaurant. She imagined it would hanging in one of the trendy places in Liverpool City Centre. It turned out to be for Wetherspoons in Wallasey. Ah well, better than nothing, I suppose.
Next time you're in a bar/restaurant please take a minute to see whats on the walls, there really is some interesting stuff out there.