29 July 2008
15 public realm commissions announced for Liverpool
Biennial
Celebrating the tenth anniversary of its foundation by James
Moores as well as Liverpool’s year as
European Capital of Culture, the forthcoming edition of Liverpool
Biennial will be even more impressive in
scale and ambition than its predecessors, with a significantly
expanded programme of temporary artists’
projects in the public realm including 3 large scale commissions by
leading international architects.
MADE UP is the title of the 2008 Biennial International exhibition,
an exploration of the ecology of the
artistic imagination. A reaction to the pervasive documentary focus
of much contemporary art, the
exhibition highlights the emotional charge within the artistic
imagination and our fascination with and need for ‘making things
up’. Within a programme of over 30 new commissions, 15 impressive
commissions for public spaces throughout the city extends MADE UP
beyond the gallery, carving out spaces for dreams
and the imagination amidst the everyday, whether in imaginary
models made manifest as real examples,
or playful re-workings of the real.
Consultant artist on Herzog de Meuron’s “Bird’s Nest” stadium, Ai
Weiwei once again looks to nature for
inspiration for his MADE UP project, Web of Light. The artist will
weave a spider’s web across the entirety
of the prominent city centre square, Exchange Flags. Constructed
using steel cables and LED lighting
arranged to replicate a giant web, at its heart Web of Light
supports a crystal chandelier in the form of a
spider. Situated behind the city’s town hall, this highly ambitious
project makes space for dreams and the
imagination at the political and financial heart of the city.
Dedicated to the ‘practice of lively space’, for MADE UP Atelier
Bow Wow will create an open air theatre
at the heart of the city centre. Sited on an empty plot whose
hoarding is currently used by flyposters to
advertise the city’s local music scene, Atelier Bow Wow’s theatre
will transform the site itself into a venue
for music and performance. Rockscape takes its inspiration from the
sandstone (as much as the music)
which forms the bedrock of the city, and marries rocky topography
with the classical form of the ancient
greek theatre, to create a stepped structure extruding from the
contours of the irregularly shaped site. In the absence of
scheduled performances, the city itself will take centre stage, as
visitors are invited to sit in the theatre and enjoy commanding
views of the surrounding area.
Manfredi Beninati’s installations transport us to fictitious
worlds, redolent of half forgotten memories. For
MADE UP, he reveals behind the façade of an apparently abandoned
building, a secretly inhabited
apartment.
Launching on 20.08.2008 in honour of Liverpool’s Capital of Culture
Year, Diller Scofidio + Renfro
playfully reinvent the tradition of the public park in this new
commission for Liverpool Biennial. Arbores
Laetae (Joyful Trees) transforms a brownfield site situated on a
key arterial route into the city centre, into a beautiful wooded
space for contemplation. Covered with vibrant hornbeam trees
formally planted in a grid pattern, at the heart of this ‘natural’
grove, 3 trees will slowly rotate. In place of the familiar
movement of shade according to the rotation of the earth around the
sun, here shade migrates at an artificial speed, transforming the
familiar patterns of the natural world into artificial creations.
Arbores Laetae invites us to marvel at nature at its most
unnatural.
Leandro Erlich’s installations challenge our perception of reality,
inviting us to immerse ourselves in multisensory experiences or
participate in complex fictional narratives. For MADE UP, Leandro
Erlich
marries the familiar domestic architecture of an apartment with a
real time carousel. Carousel or the task
of being in the right place at the right time encourages us to
revisit the apparent constancy of the
everyday, and feel and reflect upon movement, time and space.
Alison Jackson explores the slippage between fantasy and reality in
the contemporary obsession with
celebrity culture. Well known for her photographs apparently
capturing moments in the private lives of
celebrities, her work playfully critiques our readiness to believe,
as much as the paparazzi industry which
continues to fuel our appetite for celebrity stories. Visitors to
the Biennial should expect to encounter
several celebrity art lovers in the city for MADE UP!
Jesper Just’s films mix a rich visual aesthetic with dark humour to
create highly ambiguous narratives
exploring human emotion and the social construction of gender. His
new film for MADE UP, Romantic
Delusions, a co-commission with first Danish Quadrennial for
contemporary art, U-Turn, is shot in
Bucharest and Constantza and explores how the conventions of
personal relationships are mirrored at the
level of the social and political. In Romantic Delusions, the
tensions emerging in the idealised political
vision of a blissfully united newly expanded Europe, are explored
through the story of a problematic
personal relationship.
Otto Karvonen will distribute humorous and playful instructions
around the city, in a series of signs which
cross breed personal observation with the formal language of street
signage. Based on interviews with
Liverpool residents, Karvonen’s signs are designed to capture
different urban realities and interpretations, emphasising the
multitude of perspectives from which a city can be viewed.
Yayoi Kusama creates a new infinity mirror room for MADE UP.
Accessed by only one person at a time,
Gleaming Lights of the Souls will embody ‘…an almost hallucinatory
approach to reality’.
Working in film, installation, and sculpture, Gabriel Lester’s work
explores and exploits the strategies and
sleights of hand that cause us to suspend our disbelief. In a new
film, Lester reflects on the human desire
to transcend earthbound existence and reach an alternate plane. The
Last Smoking Flight playfully
situates clouds of tobacco amidst the clouds to explore humanity’s
stubborn denial of the reality of life.
Annette Messager’s highly theatrical installations occupy a space
somewhere between the fairytale and
the grotesque, provoking both amusement and horror, pleasure and
fear. Employing a diverse array of
materials, including fabric, found objects and disembowelled
stuffed toys, in recent years her work has
incorporated movement to explore the contradictions inherent in the
self – good and bad, sacred and
profane, life and death. For MADE UP, she creates a new site
specific installation in the former ABC
cinema.
Yoko Ono’s work frequently consists of an invitation to participate
in an act of the imagination. For MADE
UP, she invites visitors to donate stepladders to her project
Liverpool Skyladders. Exhibited in the ruins of
St. Luke’s Church, over the course of the Biennial a forest of
stepladders will grow inside.
Tomas Saraceno will present the latest module in an ongoing series
of architectural prototypes for a city
built in the air. In the context of climate change, as well as the
increasing demands placed on the earth’s
resources by a growing population, Saraceno’s ‘biospheres’ offer a
solution, both practical and magical,
to man’s problems. Inspired by the utopian architecture of
Buckminster Fuller, Tomas Saraceno’s
transparent biospheres belong at once to the world of science and
the world of art.
Sarah Sze creates intricate landscapes from everyday materials
(tacks, cotton buds, ladders, desk lamps)
arranged in a succession of ever more precarious dependencies.
Highly organic, her installations are like
elaborate ecosytems, colonising the space they inhabit, seducing
and detaining us with their complexity.
For MADE UP, Sze creates a new installation within a stairwell in
the Bluecoat - a whirlwind of activity,
caught in mid-gestation, travelling through successive floors to
nest in the ceiling above.
Richard Woods transforms real surfaces into cartoon like versions –
whether in his overtly fake wooden
floors; or hand printed renderings of brick or Tudor architecture.
For MADE UP, Woods moves his attention from ‘real’ architecture to
the conventions of temporary surfaces intended to conceal and
disguise – the numerous hoardings erected around buildings or
building sites and decorated with screenprinted logos.
Lewis Biggs Chief Executive of Liverpool Biennial said, "Liverpool
Biennial's commissions outside the
gallery are a powerful way of involving the widest public, and have
become one of the international
exhibition's best-loved features. This year's bumper crop for MADE
UP will be not only surprising and
enjoyable, but will inspire further thought about how art can
impact on the developing cityscape."
Peter Mearns, Executive Director of Marketing at the Northwest
Regional Development Agency
(NWDA), one of the event’s principle sponsors, said “Liverpool
Biennial has proved itself to be an
outstanding event of international standing and the NWDA is
delighted to be able to support it in 2008.
This year’s event promises to be one of the highlights of the
Capital of Culture programme and will again
reflect the region’s world class cultural offering. The Biennial
plays an important role in showcasing both
Liverpool and England’s Northwest to the UK and overseas,
increasing the profile of the region as a leader
in innovative visual culture.”
Councillor Warren Bradley, leader of Liverpool city council and
deputy chair of the Liverpool
Culture Company, said: "Over the past decade the Biennial has
firmly established itself as one of the
cornerstones of Liverpool's cultural offer, and as an event of
international significance it attracts tens of
thousands of visitors from across the UK and beyond. It is
extremely fitting that the festival will mark such
an important milestones in its development during Liverpool's year
as European Capital of Culture.
Previous Biennials have brought some really significant work to the
city and I'm looking forward to a
programme for 2008 that will excite and challenge in equal
measures."
ENDS
Notes to Editors
The Liverpool Biennial 2008 festival of contemporary visual art
is presented by Liverpool Biennial, with the Walker Art
Gallery
(National Museums Liverpool), John Moores Liverpool Exhibition
Trust, and New Contemporaries at Greenland Street (A
Foundation). It involves many smaller city centre galleries and
alternative spaces.
1 in 3 of the commissioned artists have represented their country
at the Venice Biennale.
The public realm commissions for MADE UP are supported by the
Northwest Regional Development Agency, as well as
many other UK and international partners including the Calouste
Gulbenkian Foundation and the Henry Moore Foundation.
Ai Weiwei’s Web of Light is part of the year long public realm
programme, commissioned by Liverpool Culture Company as
part of European Capital of Culture 2008 and managed by Liverpool
Biennial.
Established in 1998, Liverpool Biennial is the UK’s largest and
most widely reviewed festival of contemporary visual art, and
contributed significantly to the award of the title European
Capital of Culture 2008 to the city of Liverpool. It is a major
player
in the cultural economy: the 2006 festival received 400,000
visitors, 50% travelling from outside the Merseyside region
and
created an additional £13.5m spend in the city. The 2004 festival
won the Northwest regional title Best Tourism Event and
was runner up (to The London Eye) for the accolade Best Tourism
Experience in the national Enjoy England Awards for
Excellence organised by Visit Britain.
Liverpool Biennial is funded by:
Founded by James Moores with the support of
Liverpool European Capital of Culture 2008
For further media information please contact: Catharine Braithwaite
on 07947 644 110 or
cat@we-r-lethal.com