Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
Various venues, Liverpool
Reviewed by: David Mackintosh
For artists in the uk, living outside of London, a good and simple strategy for career development is to ignore our capital and forge links overseas. A fast track to realising this could be to find out what town or city yours is twinned with, and go there via the city council and a cultural exchange.
Liverpool is twinned with a number of cities, New York being the most recent addition. However it is the twinning with Cologne in Germany – reaching its fiftieth anniversary in the year 2002 – that is the inspiration behind 'Eight Days a Week', a season of exhibitions and events as part of an ongoing cultural exchange between the two cities. The first part, having taken place in Cologne in 1998, initiated lasting collaborative projects between contemporary artists from England and Germany.
One of many high points of the programme was the unique collaboration between Liverpool painter Pete Clarke and Georg Gartz, an artist from Cologne. Their installation of paintings at the Huyton Gallery was the latest of a number of projects the two have worked on since 1998. Their approach, taking it in turns to paint on the same canvas; silently agreeing or disagreeing with each other, is a masterclass in Anglo/German diplomacy.
Basement is an occasional project space hidden away beneath a row of Georgian houses in an increasingly rejuvenated area near the Anglican cathedral. The bare brick labyrinthine location is suited to site-specific projects, and the artists who were on show – three resident and two from Cologne – competed against the dominance of the space. Christiane Brams built delicate tracing paper cubes over the windows intensifying and objectifying what little light filters through them. Sian Hughes also used light, a row of torches hung outside the room that housed her installation, for the viewer to navigate around.
There was much to see in 'Eight Days a Week', venues included the Bluecoat Gallery, The Unity Theatre and Static among others. An accompanying newspaper, available in all venues and cafe bars, guided you around the cultural hot spots of this changing city.
Writer detail:
DAVID MACKINTOSH
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