Touched: Liverpool Biennial
featuring Daniel Bozhkov, Nicholas Hlobo, Carol Rama and Ranjani Shettar
The Bluecoat, Liverpool
September 18 - November 28, 2010
In response to the Biennial theme “Touched” at the Bluecoat we asked questions such as how are humans touched by seeing or making art? How or why does a moving experience stay with you? And how can an artist’s work be inspired through an understanding of what touches people? The work of the four invited artists suggested possible answers to these queries. They employed strategies that revolve around the trace of memory and matter, identity and humour, and they used familiar objects in unusual or unexpected ways.
Carol Rama - The Cabinet of Carol Rama included twelve works (ten of which had never been seen in the UK), including wedding dresses made and worn by the artist, along with watercolours, collages, sculpture and photographs. The selection of works, spanning a sixty-year period, created a very intimate space; referencing clothing, the female body and the hint of sexual encounters, but, more significantly, the biography of the artist and the private realm of Rama’s own home and studio.
Nicholas Hlobo - Ndize connected two galleries with a trail of rubber, fabric and white clay balls. The sculptural installation enticed visitors into a game of hide-and-seek. In Xhosa the game of hide-and-seek is called “undize” and “ndize” is the player who seeks. Hlobo introduced him in the ground floor gallery; a lone figure leaning against the window, peering out, suggestively presenting his rear and silently counting before the search begins. From “ndize” the playful trail wound its way around and out of the gallery, meandering up the stairs, in search of the other players. Once upstairs, visitors entered a sensuous maze of brightly coloured, densely woven ribbons that hung from a great height to the floor.
Ranjani Shettar - Aureole was the result of Shettar’s experiments with bronze which presented an elegant installation in the Vide at the Bluecoat that provoked a conversation about the touch between materials and architecture. Cast using the ancient lost wax process, Shettar’s work drew attention to the very process of making bronze; it embraced the idea of lost forms and recreated them as a large, closed organic form that sloped away from the viewer, circling, ascending and clinging to the walls and floor of the Vide.
Daniel Bozhkov - Music Not Good For Pigeons merged the phenomenon of online culture with football, music and politics. The main structure of Bozhkov’s installation was a replica of the Liverpool Football Club dressing room. At the centre of the structure was a YouTube video played repeatedly on several monitors of a sneezing panda cub. In addition there was a music video projection of the semi-forgotten, but still controversial, history of Militant Tendency juxtaposed with scenes of Bozhkov taking voice lessons. He learned how to sing John Lennon’s “Imagine” with local musicians and bands, and in a style that changed from folk to punk to Socialist and anti-Fascist songs.
Read an introduction to the theme “Touched” by curator Lewis Biggs here
Read curatorial essay and artist pages here
Learn more about the Liverpool Biennial here
