Liverpool D&AD stylee.

Forgive me for a little bit of late post, the last week and a half has just been so busy.  Preparing for reviews and my trip to New York.  Last friday (23rd) a group of us made another return journey to Liverpool.  We have ventured there a lot lately, but there is just so much to see in terms of galleries and museums... I still haven't managed to squeeze in everything.

First stop:

TATE Liverpool

Starting at the top and working our way down:

Joyous Machines co-curates the work of Jean Tinguely and Michael Landy, documenting the relationship between the two and the ways in which Tinguely's mechanical installations inspired Landy's development and work.  Both examine constructive and destructive elements, especially within the context of mass consumerism.  The poignant social comments added a unique perspective to a quite radical and subversive collection.  I had never seen art brought to life so physically - even the delicate static pieces appeared to dance with their shadows on the wall, casting a beautiful depth.  Tinguely's dense and angular geometric abstract paintings were set in rhythmic motion for 1 minute in every 15, I thought this was a really amazing way of interacting and positioning the viewer, if for no other reason than aesthetics and to communicate and mirror the sequential movement of machines.  Everything in this exhibition was so highly considered, it was quite impressive.  Tinguely also alluded to art history showing a vast critical realm with his paraodys of modernist art.  As i expressed in my post about Bridget Riley exhibition - I love raw and unformed sketchbook/ mapping pieces.  Tinguely's sketches of function and movement were delicately framed and I loved these inked pieces.  There is just such a natural element to them, so much more pleasing to me than the final works.  I would have loved to have been able to take pictures to document these.

 All this inspiration and I haven't even begun to talk about Landy.  His work really inspired my creative thinking for silence and so I think I will blog separately about him when I update my project on here.  Breakdown 2001 changed the direction of my work totally.  This was a very worth while trip indeed.

Down a floor and in to the DLA Piper Series: This Is Sculpture.

Select your headphones, pull back the heavy curtain and head for the aptly lit dance-floor, surrounded of course by sculptures.  This was a contemporary exhibition attempting a revolutionary look at modernist objects and installations.  I thought this was really innovative.  But nothing provided the wow factor for me.

And on the ground floor was 'The Seagram Murals' by Mark Rothko.  This work commanded your awe.  The sheer size of it and the way in which it was atmospherically presented just made the simple pieces impressive.  I read that Rothko asked for the walls to be painted grey specifically to transform the room to function emotively.  That and the lighting enhanced the nine paintings dramatically, enhanced by the compact nature of the space.

There was lots of artists in the TATE collection that displayed some really interesting and socially vocal pieces, my notebook got quite full!  There were many permanent pieces that I have seen on my previous visits so a lot of it I had already seen and written about in year one and two.  It's always nice to see Cindy Sherman's 'Bus Riders' and I came across new work by Francis Alys which I really liked.  There is so much, that I couldn't possibly write about it all.

And so we moved on.

Second stop:

Bluecoat

This museum was Bethan's find!

The work here was quite diverse, and I didn't quite understand if it was just a collection or an exhibition.  The work here was quite modern so it was nice to see fresh stuff, though a little traditional.  A few pieces by Jorge Martinez Garcia (2007) caught my eye.  I think they are quite intriguing etchings.  

Triptico-Los Comisarios

2007

Estela Maya

2007

Monotype on acrylic

En La Cantina

2007

(Below)  A little room with a silent movie playing.  There was something quite profound about the lack of sound and quality of image, confined to a small dark space and a single chair for a lone viewer.  Silence - Silence - Silence.  It appears everywhere since I was given this brief.