Biennial Bulletin: It’s On!
Welcome to the first in an occasional, and some would say gossipy, bulletin rounding-up our Biennial experience…
Today saw the official opening of Biennial 2012, the seventh edition of the largest international contemporary art festival in the UK, but for those involved September 14th marks the day all of their hard work and effort sees the light of day. For the artists, the venues and Liverpool Biennial, today represents that watershed moment.
For our part, the Biennial got underway in earnest at the beginning of this week when we were privy to a lovely conversation between Avant-Garde musician Rhys Chatham, and the man who booked him and A Crimson Grail to make its premiere at Liverpool Cathedral later this evening, Andrew Ellis.
Since then, it’s been pretty much non-stop behind the scenes shenanigans, resulting in us finally being able to reveal our full line-up of guest-speakers at our Biennial public programme event, The Medium is The Medium. The first actual public event we attended though was an artist talk at FACT yesterday.
Featuring duo Anja Kirschner and David Panos, plus Jemima Wyman and Joanne McNeil, Senior Editor of Rhizome.org, the new media organisation who is working with FACT on the Biennial’s online programme, the talk provided a useful insight into how this Biennial’s theme, The Unexpected Guest, may be interpreted differently, artist to artist.
From there, we have to get a wriggle on, as we’re fortunate enough to have been invited to the artists’ dinner at the Monro. The gastro-pub (which also plays host to work this time) is jam-packed with familiar faces, and we do our best – in the interests of journalism – to schmooze, we mean interview, as many as we can. Talking to Karen Newman, curator at the Open Eye Gallery, we’re interested to hear that feared Guardian critic, Adrian Searle had paid them two visits today – we’ll be interested to read what he made of their Kohei Yoshiyuki exhibition.
We also had the pleasure to meet Ian Francis from Birmingham’s Flatpack Festival, making up part of City States at the LJMU Copperas Hill Building. Other brief encounters we had included an introduction to the sound, moving image and text artist, Paul Rooney. Liverpool-born Rooney is exhibiting the intriguingly titled Here Comes Franz at the Victoria Gallery and Museum. More to come on Paul soon.
From the bosom of the Biennial and their artists, we walked the short distance to CAVE. Situated in the Baltic Triangle’s Baltic Creative, the new model for art fairs which runs until Sunday. Here, we found another slew of friendly faces. Singapore-born Ming Wong, the man behind Making Chinatown is here, enjoying – like everyone else – the terrifically presented piña colada’s from on-site bar for the night, Aloha.
It’s around this time that we check our watches, and lo-and-behold, it’s after midnight and Bienniel 2012 is now officially upon us. Between now and 25th of November, the city will be awash with art of all shapes and sizes, the sheer quantity of which makes for as good an excuse as any to explore as much of the city and host venues as possible. Keep your eyes peeled, you’ll probably see us around.
BREAKING NEWS: In the last hour, it has been announced that the Manchester-born artist Sarah Pickstone has won the John Moores Painting Prize, British painting’s most prestigious title, with her Stevie Smith and the Willow (pictured).
