52 Renshaw Street is the home of the 2010 Liverpool Biennial. It was formally known as a Rapid hardware store, and still reveals the remains of the promotions, wall displays, and general wear of the years gone by.
Throughout the maze of levels and rooms, there is a range of artwork that dips into the subject of ‘Touched’, from installation to painting, sculpture to video.
Right in the top corner of the building I found the most striking and ambitious piece of the building, Free Post Mersey Tunnels (2010) by Rosa Barba. This is a large scale, sculptural piece which dominates the room it is in. The labyrinth of pipes expose the recorded sounds of the inner life of the city’s underworld, creating “an analogy between the body of the city and that of a living entity, taking an internal viewpoint in order to explore its primeval self.”
When I first saw this piece, nothing about that above description entered my head, however after analysing this installation, the connection between the city and body became apparent to me through the similarity of the internal noises. I find it interesting how I can relate such empathy to something that looks so lifeless and abstract.
Throughout the maze of levels and rooms, there is a range of artwork that dips into the subject of ‘Touched’, from installation to painting, sculpture to video.
Right in the top corner of the building I found the most striking and ambitious piece of the building, Free Post Mersey Tunnels (2010) by Rosa Barba. This is a large scale, sculptural piece which dominates the room it is in. The labyrinth of pipes expose the recorded sounds of the inner life of the city’s underworld, creating “an analogy between the body of the city and that of a living entity, taking an internal viewpoint in order to explore its primeval self.”
When I first saw this piece, nothing about that above description entered my head, however after analysing this installation, the connection between the city and body became apparent to me through the similarity of the internal noises. I find it interesting how I can relate such empathy to something that looks so lifeless and abstract.
I have noticed while visiting all these exhibitions in Liverpool that there is a trend for exhibiting work anywhere but the standard ‘white-walls gallery’. Every other exhibit is held at an abandoned warehouse, unused shop, or crudely build shelter. In relation to the Biennial theme ‘touched’, perhaps this is a way that art ‘touches’ the world around it, bringing relevance back to the buildings that have escaped from peoples memories. Or perhaps it is the buildings that ‘touched’ the artwork, as I have seen many interesting site-specific works throughout my journey through this Biennial. I can imagine that these spaces are not to everyone’s taste, however I feel they give another dimension to the experience, as I find myself analysing the derelict structure as much as the work itself.
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| Wolstenholme Gallery |
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