A Sweet Time at Tate Liverpool

[rhythmaning]

I stuck this on my Posterous bolg on Thursday, but thinking about it, I felt it belonged here. So I'm cross-posting... [I can't really work out what to use Posterous for. If I didn't have LJ, Posterous would make sense, but I do... I have a Posterous account because a project I was collaborating on had a Posterous site, and I need to log in!]

I spend a couple of hours at Tate Liverpool today. It is over a decade since I last visited.

It is a great gallery: a wonderful building, and a very good size - there's a lot there, but you can cover it all in an hour and a half or so.

There were two exhibitions on: Touched, part of the Liverpool Biennial, and displays from the permanent collections - three different views, each curated by a different artist - Carol Ann Duffy, Wayne Hemingway, and Michael Craig Martin.

I wasn't too impressed by the quality of the art in Touched - but it really made me think, which I guess means it worked, at least on some level. I didn't like the art, but instead I liked the ideas. Is the art the artefact or the idea?

There were two pieces - both installations - that grabbed my attention. One, by Eva Kot'atkova (I hope I got that right!) was all about stories we tell: it was called "Stories from the Living Room". Everywhere I go, stories and the ongoing narrative seem to dominate. Yesterday I ran a workshop for a client to establish the story for an individual customer - that was their language, not mine. Narrative seems to be the driving idea - the narrative, even - for our time.

The other piece I liked was by Jamie Isentein. "Empire of Fire" featured lighted candles, safety equipment, and the set of Jean-Paul Sartre's stage play "No Exit". And Ms Isenstein's hand. It was full of humour, but really disturbing - positively spooky.

The curated displays from the permanent collection were full of school visits. Loud, but not unruly - they were very well behaved. Carl Andre's "144 Magnesium Squares" was surrounded by kids. Most pieces were protected by signs prohibiting use touching or markers to make us keep our distance; not the Andre. But no one went too close: it was surrounded by kids keeping their distance. This was strange. I asked one of the many Tate staff if one could walk on it, and he said yes - he was amused by the way no one dared step onto the metallic squares. So I did - to the horror of the schoolkids. Suddenly I, rather than the art, took their attention. It felt like I was participating in the art.

The permanent collection has pieces from many of my favourite artists - Richard Long (two pieces on display - a word-piece and a slate circle), Anthony Gormley, lots of Picasso, Donald Judd. It was wonderful walking around looking at these works. Magic.

Comments

[matgb]

Set Posterous to crosspost here and use it as a better email client? I'm seen more'n one friend do this on occasions, seems to work well for them.

Keep meaning to visit some of the other Tates. Went to both Modern and Britain several times while in London (Tate Late was always fun), but never went to the Cornish one nor have yet been to the Liverpool one, bit daft as I've been to both towns several times.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

I'm never too sure about getting things to cross-post. It makes sense if the audience is self-segmented - like people who read Dreamwidth or LJ, or Twitter or FB - but generally if cross-posting is appropriate, it calls into question why the two accounts are separate in the first place. Other than having Posterous because I needed it for a specific project, I really haven't worked out what it gives me that LJ doesn't - and it lacks a fair bit, I think: the audience seems quite different. I have been told that the ability to email posts is a positive, and the way it handles people posting simultaneously are better than WP (for, for instance, live-blogging), but none of these things seem relevant to me.

As you probably realised, I really liked Tate Liverpool! Everything was free, too, which narked me as a member (I was looking to get more use out of my card!) but was great for the people of Liverpool. (Some exhibitions charge, but not last week.) I was surprised how busy it was on a cold Thursday lunchtime! It was a really good size - Tate Modern can be a bit too much if you try to see it all.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

Also, there are some work-type things from Posterous that I wouldn't want to post here!