Chosen as the 2008 European Capital of
Culture, Liverpool has a long-standing history in creative pursuits and has
always celebrated the inspired, the weird and the wonderful, and never more so
than this year (and every other year) with the 2012 “Liverpool Biennial”. The biennial is the largest international
contemporary arts festival in the UK attracting over 600,000 visitors. It is
generously spread over 10 weeks (not that this guarantees you’ll see
everything!) and can be seen in many venues across the city until 25 November
2012. Having worked with the biennial in 2010 and also 2012 consulting on
unique merchandise design, we went along to see what all the fuss was about.
The pieces that most caught my eye were in
the “Bloomberg New Contemporaries”
gallery in the Copperas Hill building near Lime Street Station (an incidentally
just around the corner from our studio!). A former Royal Mail sorting
office houses the artworks within. “City States”, one
of the two exhibitions revealed inside, is committed to exploring the role that
“the city” plays in the concept of identities. Cities represented include Oslo,
Lisbon, Gdansk, Wellington and Vilnius. Vilnius’ provided the most striking
display; an enormous black inflated pillow crammed floor to celling in the car
park. It looms above you with malice and extorted feelings of total unrest, it
really makes you want to dive forward into its billowing form, such a shame
that the creators didn’t think to create sealed “walk in sections” creating a
womb like, blacked out maze of cushioned walls. 
The art school showcase “New Contemporaries” had an impressive piece by the Argentinian Jorge Macchi. Once in the room you find yourself as if below water, not with any elaborate structures but with deceptively simple exploitation of the optical effect of perceived bending of objects when placed in water. Macchi recreated the effect of refraction by arranging larger than life, precisely bent poles against a two-tone background where visitors can amble in and out of the poles.
When inside the room there is a real feeling of being watched, its as if half of the structures are leaning away from you as an “unwelcome guest” and the other half are having a good lean over to see what you are up to…
A brilliant and expandable idea comes in the form of this wall print of a well known, dramatic Memphis shelving unit. With the current trend for vinyl wall decoration this could well be the rebirth of interior print! As a creator I am really pleased that the artist decided to include the wooden construction that they used to produce the print in the exhibition to give the viewers some insight into the process, simply put together using just MDF and syrofoam (and probably several “pressers” to make the print” it was a very cool example of how to make an impact with very little.
As a product designer and a lateral thinker, always trying to push the question
‘why?’ and ‘why not?’ I was intrigued to find a Victorian chair reconditioned
in lime greens and upholstered with a spiked fabric seat. The chair sits housed in its own little
surreal room covered in blue and white paper ‘tiles’ of geometric faces and
mountain and triangles, all looking very similar at a glance. This stand-alone
structure was also tiled to the exterior, very simply with just paper prints
and “sticky back plastic” a bit of a DIY job but it had a really dramatic and
engaging effect, this contrast on each side solidified the experience as a
whole.
Exhibited outside St Georges Hall away from the main galleries and in the
heart of the city, Jose Angle Vincench created a series of mobile home trailers,
whose transparent doors reminded me of how little privacy a person in exile
has, even in the in the tiny space of their own that they may have. The
haphazard way the piece is parked seems to imitates the trundling, seemingly
aimlessness of day to day pushing along, putting space between the home land
and self.
This is just a snapshot of the inspiring, weird and wonderful talent
Liverpool Biennial has for us to see this year. There are many more exhibits
and projects which can be seen here: http://liverpoolbiennial.co.uk/whatson/calendar/
This post is intended to inspire you to book that train, plane or donkey
ride and come to Liverpool this month. This year’s selection will inspire,
surprise and hoof you right out of your comfort zone at times. And if its not
occasionally doing that, then art wouldn’t really be doing its job now would
it?
