Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
Site, Liverpool
21 March – 21 April>
Reviewed by: Lucie Davies
Given that Liverpool’s windy outcrop Albert Dock is home to an arm of the hallowed Tate empire, it’s perhaps surprising that brand new gallery Site decided to open up shop here. Yet, dare we say so soon, the fledging gallery’s plucky choice seems to have paid off.
A partnership between Liverpool Biennial and John Moore’s University (the first of its kind outside of the festival’s normal operating hours), the project is managed by the university, who’ve invited local artist collectives and galleries to curate exhibitions. After February’s ‘Castles In The Sky’, comes ‘The Wrong Place’ – a three-strand offering by Toxteth gallery collective The Royal Standard, which promises the ambitious task of bringing together the work of local artists, that of their more established international peers, and events curated by Liverpool’s artistic community.
The first strand, ‘Pocket’, attempts to create a scrapbook of Liverpool’s artistic community, through donated samples of work or objects, which, it stipulates, must be small enough to fit inside a trouser or jacket pocket. The results are intriguing, ranging from a delicately rendered paper pocket watch to an A3 book of poetry (perhaps stretching the brief a touch). Beside these numbered, bagged artefacts are each artist’s personal comments, providing funny, thoughtful and occasionally self-conscious insight into their practice. Of course the real joy of ‘Pocket’ is that it will continue to swell as more and more artists donate.
In contrast to these Borrowers-sized offerings, works by international artists Minou Norouzi, Low Profile and Liverpool’s Leo Fitzmaurice, under the banner of ‘Suitcase’, would probably struggle to squeeze into a travel case. Some clever curation means it’s the local artist, Fitzmaurice, whose playful Commercial Packaging piece provides the centre-piece with neat lines of cardboard boxes – their supermarket ‘value’ brand logos carefully cut out but instantly identifiable nonetheless. But it’s Norouzi’s attempts at transferring an idea of LA into a corner of Merseyside which is perhaps most successful. Depicting the city’s actors at their day jobs reciting a favourite quote from a film, her compelling Imago video installation reveals human loneliness, desire and longing in LA; something which seems especially remarkable out on a limb at the edge of the Mersey.
Writer detail:
Lucie Davies
Venue detail:
Liverpool John Moores University
68 Hope Street, Liverpool L1 9EB
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