Taus Makhacheva and Tigran Geletsyan at Blackburne House as part of Liverpool Biennial

"Blackburne House, located in Liverpool’s vibrant Georgian Quarter, was the home of the first girl’s school in the country. The beautiful Grade II listed building is now a home for women’s education with services including a health spa, nursery and bistro. Blackburne house also hosts conferences and events, ensuring a space in the city for events that champion the voices of local women.



Taus Makhacheva has created a ruin-like sculptural installation that serves as a spa, in collaboration with artist Alexander Kutovoi. The installation incorporates ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) techniques and video. A new range of beauty products has been developed with Tigran Geletsyan from 22|11 Cosmetics for spa treatments. Throughout the Biennial, visitors are invited to book a facial treatment, which will be conducted by a performer and take approximately 30 minutes. In this passive state, the visitor becomes a sculptural subject. During the treatment, stories about artworks that have disappeared throughout the history of art will be told. The work reflects on our contemporary condition, dominated by screens and membranes, anxiety and loss of intimacy."

Visitors are able to be in the space to watch the facial treatments taking place. I arrived shortly after someone had left, so saw the performer clearing up. There were a couple of sculptures that contained a video screen. The audio was that which is spoken by the performer as they give the facial treatment, and so even though there was no treatment taking place during my visit, I was still able to be guided through the stories.

It was only afterwards, when I was talking to the performer, that I realised that this was the case. I had not been aware that the voice on the video was from the performer's perspective. I had also presumed that the person giving the treatment was a trained professional, and my thoughts about the work altered when I found out that performers were being used (there were 2 performers that shared the workload throughout the festival). I felt uneasy about someone 'pretending' to be a therapist.

Land Sand Strand by Suki Seokyeong Kang at Bluecoat as part of Liverpool Biennial

'Conceived as a visual translation of the Korean musical notation ‘Jeongganbo’, Land Sand Strand is a new multi-part installation by Suki Seokyeong Kang. The work transforms the exhibition space into a grid. 

Building on the concept of the hwamunseok – a traditional Korean woven mat, interpreted as the minimum space provided for each individual in society – it is activated by performers and the audience. 

The choreography, inspired by the Spring Oriole Dance and traditionally performed on the hwamunseok, is shared with visitors. 

The movements on the mat serve as the blueprint for the wider installation consisting of painting, sculpture and video.'

I found Suki Seokyeong Kang's installation at Bluecoat a visual delight. 

I took pleasure from the formal qualities in the work; the subtle use of colours and the combination of traditional Korean materials along with painting, sculpture and video. 

I appreciated the way that the video transformed my understanding of the work presented in the gallery space; static elements are activated through movement and sound.

'Suki Seokyeong Kang (b. 1977, Seoul, South Korea) lives and works in Seoul. Kang deploys various media including installation and video to seek a synesthetic expansion of painting. 





Through movement and rhythm, she creates an environment that guides the direction of her painting, which she uses like a visual musical score. 

Her practice is situated between the abstract and figurative, the organic and geometric, creating a visual language of balance and harmony.'

Grace, Charles and the Sunflower by Paulina Olowska at Invisible Wind Factory as part of Liverpool Biennial

I find that part of the fun of going to Biennials is that there are usually a number of artworks situated in places one has never been. It is a great way to discover new parts of a city and to meet different communities. Much of the 2018 Liverpool Biennial takes place in established creative institutions in the heart of the city. It was as I was flicking through the pages of the Biennial programme that I came across an unfamiliar venue, namely Invisible Wind Factory. The colourful image immediately caught my eye and I decided to hunt it down.
As I consulted the Bienniale guide, I realised that the Invisible Wind Factory was off the map. Thankfully, aided by googlemaps and my sense of direction, I meandered my way through industrial estates, past a medley of dated and run-down pubs and found myself at a rather curious red-brick building that was closed! 

It had been quite a trek, especially in the heat of the afternoon, so was a little annoyed that I couldn't go inside to see the art. But then I re-read the blurb in the brochure to find out that the artwork at this venue is an outdoor mural. I found it difficult to see properly as it was quite high up on the building. I was disappointed by the full mural and thought that the detail image in the brochure glorified the actual artwork. It felt like a let down, but I'm eager to find out what goes on in the building.

'Grace, Charles and the Sunflower is a new mosaic by Paulina Olowska that references the socialist belief that through the creation of a public work one can influence and present optimistic visions of a better world. The artist’s idea is based on a Polish mosaic from the 1960s situated on the side of a public school in the village of Raba Zdroj, where Olowska lives. Despite its history, the mosaic remains unprotected and unmaintained: this kind of popular, public, post-soviet art is no longer favoured by the Polish government and there is a strong possibility that it will be demolished in the future. By presenting a similar mosaic in Liverpool, Olowska champions the value of these works and suggests that they should be protected as part of the country’s national heritage.'
For any visitors to the Biennial wanting to check out the artwork for themselves, please note that this work by Paulina Olowska is currently undergoing repair following adverse weather conditions. The central panel will be reinstated as soon as possible. Check the Liverpool Biennial website for updates.

http://www.biennial.com/2018/exhibition/locations/invisible-wind-factory

The Serving Library as part of Liverpool Biennial 2018

Founded in New York in 2011 by Stuart Bailey, Angie Keefer and David Reinfurt, and based in Liverpool since 2016, The Serving Library is a non-profit organisation that variously serves as a publishing platform, a seminar room, a collection of framed objects, and an event space. It is run by Francesca Bertolotti-Bailey, Stuart Bertolotti-Bailey and David Reinfurt.

The enterprise is rooted in a journal published biannually as Dot Dot Dot (2000-10) and Bulletins of The Serving Library (2011-17), and now annually as The Serving Library Annual. It is released simultaneously online (for free) and in print (for a fee) every autumn. Each new batch is assembled around a loose theme for an international audience of designers, artists, writers, and researchers. Previous themes include Time, Pedagogy, Typography, Psychedelia, Germany, Fashion, Numbers, Mediums, Sports, Redux, Color, Perspective, and Public Fiction.

This year Liverpool Biennial 2018 invited The Serving Library to organise a series of free public talks to run concurrent to the exhibitions and related projects elsewhere in the city. The talks are hosted at Exhibition Research Lab, part of the John Lennon School of Art and Design at Liverpool John Moores University, where The Serving Library has resided since 2017. Liverpool Biennial 2018 is based on a question derived from a poem by German poet Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) that was later set to music by Austrian composer Franz Schubert (1797–1828): “Beautiful world, where are you?” The speakers, which include, economists, sociologists, media theorists, architects and painters, were asked to variously address or refract this question.




Unfortunately the day of my visit did not coincide with one of the public talks, but I was able to peruse the collection of framed objects, each the source of an illustration that has appeared on the pages of the journal. The collection includes items as diverse as record sleeves, watercolors, woodcuts, polaroids, drawings, screen-prints, airbrush paintings, a car number plate, and a ouija board. These objects are essentially a toolbox for teaching as they are used as prompts to stimulate discussion.

For more information about The Serving Library please visit

http://www.servinglibrary.org/

These Silences Are All the Words by Madiha Aijaz at Open Eye Gallery as part of Liverpool Biennial 2018

These Silences Are All the Words is a film installation and series of photographs exploring the public libraries of Karachi, Pakistan, against the backdrop of the city’s changing landscape.



Focusing on librarians who have been working for years in traditional institutions such as Bedil Library, Aijaz tells the stories of an aging intelligentsia.

The backlit photographs show scenes from an assortment of libraries as well as the librarians who work there. One is reminded of the need for visitors to the library in order for the historical knowledge to be passed on.

The lighting in the photographs is exquisite. The dark environments are usually illuminated by beams of light from a window or a highlight from a reading lamp. The long exposure time needed to capture the image relates to the stillness in the image and suggests a slow pace and contemplative atmosphere commonly associated with being in a library.

Hack the Root by Mae-ling Lokko at RIBA North as part of Liverpool Biennial 2018

Mae-ling Lokko's practice centres on the upcycling of agro-waste and biopolymer materials into 'high' performance building material systems. 

For her exhibition at RIBA North she has built an architectural structure in the gallery that is grown from agrowaste-fed mycelium (mushroom) panels.

Within the gallery, a large-scale grow chamber has been erected in which the modular biomaterial building panels are growing. Lokko involved a number of community groups and school children in workshops, giving them the opportunity to create the building panels that have been used to build the architectural structure.



As well as being able to see the growing of the building panels along with the fully formed growing panels, an accompanying film explores the prototyping of these unique tiles. The film also acts as a way to help viewers understand the project’s proposition for generative upcycling economies.

Annie Pootoogook at Tate Liverpool as part of Liverpool Biennial

Fifteen drawings by Annie Pootoogook are exhibited in a single room at Tate Liverpool. They act as a diary of the artists' life; illustrating the everyday events of her modern Inuit life in the small community of Kinngait. These events include hunting, eating, watching television and camping.

As I walked round the gallery from left to right, I was taken by the honesty and immediacy of her style of drawing. I noticed that the views differ to the outdoor scenes that are more commonly associated with Inuit art. 



As I progressed round the room, the tone of the images shifted and the viewer is offered an insight into moments of domestic violence within the domestic environment.

The Intermediates by Haegue Yang at Tate Liverpool

'For Liverpool Biennial 2018, Haegue Yang has created an immersive environment for her sculpture series The Intermediates (2015-ongoing) in Tate Liverpool’s Wolfson Gallery. Made from artificial woven straw, The Intermediates allude to both traditional arts and crafts techniques and modern industrial production methods. Representing figures and sites from folk tales and ancient traditions, they question definitions of ‘paganism’. Yang’s environment for these works includes recordings of wildlife taken from the British Library’s sound collection, a wallpaper juxtaposing pagan traditions and modern history, and suspended ribbons that evoke folk traditions such as maypole dancing. Her multisensory, hybrid environments suggest fleeting connotations of time, place, figures and experiences that connect ‘folk’ traditions and contemporary culture.'



I thoroughly enjoyed being immersed in Yang's work. It was a delight for all senses, and the kind of exhibition that one could return to on numerous occasions and each time find something new. I appreciate the combination of media and the difference in intensities and paces of making and viewing. For instance, some aspects are rather immediate, and one gets an initial overwhelming feeling by being bombarded with such an array of colour, texture and forms. However, there are items that have been made with painstaking detail and require careful attention.