You certainly get a warm welcome at METAL, as you enter from the station platform you’ll see the kitchen with its Aga cooker and kettle is ready to make you a hot drink. I love the really neat cut-out signs on the yellow metal walls – a theme that continues throughout the newly refurbished buildings. The architects, Shedkm, have done an excellent job of making the space usable as an arts venue.
The launch exhibition at METAL is curated by AL and AL who have been in residence there for a couple of years during which time they have had shows at FACT and CUC where they won the Liverpool Art Prize this year.
I interviewed AL and AL along with Jenny Porter the project manager there, they explained more about the exhibition and the place. You can listen to the interview on our podcast website at defnetmedia.
There are several artists involved in this show (17 I think), many of them local artists but also international and familiar names such as Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray. The exhibition is spread across the building, using the ground floor, second floor, the old accumulator tower and don’t miss Imogen Stidworthy’s video piece hidden away behind the stairs.
XXX: Get Off at Edge Hill
at METAL, Edge Hill Station
23 October – 5 December 2009
Taking as their starting point the well-known scouse phrase ‘Get Off at Edge Hill’ METAL’s artists in residence AL and AL have curated a site specific group exhibition that explores sexual and industrial metaphors in painting, sculpture and film.
XXX: GET OFF AT EDGE HILL is the first exhibition to be staged at the newly renovated station buildings at Edge Hill, the site of the world’s oldest passenger station. The exhibition explores themes of industrialisation, the sexual metaphor and the scouse dialect in this unique railway setting. The scouse sexual pun “Get off at Edge Hill”, meaning coitus interruptus (Edge Hill being the penultimate stop before the final train terminus at Lime Street), has inspired the exhibition that brings together local and international artists whose work relates to sex, industry, and the machine.
