Biennial 2012: Last Chance to See
Postpone no more – as the end of the Biennial draws near, we sum up what you absolutely can’t afford to miss …
How time has flown. This year’s Biennial started mid-September with a press event in Liverpool, then London, with gimmicks (remember the postman?) and familiar promises to be the best one yet. It needed to be; going months without an Artistic Director, with a rumoured and vague theme of ‘Hospitality’, the beginnings were shaky.
And then came new Artistic Director Sally Tallant. A force of nature crash-landed in the city. Taking cynics hostage, armed only with a ninja smile and an anorak, Tallant could be seen visiting all possible venues, and meeting who she felt to be the most important cultural instigators.What followed was a development of the programme into a considered, multifaceted assortment of commissions under new title The Unexpected Guest, alongside newly won partnerships, including individuals and independents like (for the first time) The Royal Standard gallery.
Welcoming hundreds of artists and exhibitions, and thousands of visitors from around the globe, the pressure is always on during Biennial time. It does, after all, bill itself – quite rightly (it is the largest international contemporary art festival in the UK) – as the ‘UK’s Biennial’. Such a responsibility calls for the delivery of a high quality and ambitious showcase of contemporary art. But have you seen enough to decide whether it delivers?
No doubting the critics’ favourite – John Akomfrah’s film The Unfinished Conversation at the Bluecoat. A documentary based on the life of Jamaican-born Stuart Hall, a theorist responsible for our ideas of cultural studies, identity and difference. The film focusses on his formative years in the 50′s and 60′s, which were massively influenced by race, nuclear disarmament, television, Marxism, and mass protests in Britain. The Telegraph described it as “a beautiful and moving film … of substance that says important things about what Britain has become over the last half century.” Currently being developed for TV and cinema release, which is exciting.
Markus Kåhre’s haunted fake hotel suite, on the first floor of The Monro dining rooms (92 Duke Street), even had art critic Adrian Searle quaking in his boots. “Kåhre’s work is perfectly in tune with the title of the Biennial’s main exhibition, The Unexpected Guest. In art, we are used to expecting the unexpected, though genuine surprise is rare.” We don’t want to spoil it, so visit this cunning, atmospheric installation on your own and be open to your surroundings …
Meanwhile, Ming Wong’s Making Chinatown (28-32 Wood Street) is still our personal favourite. Housed in the former Open Eye Gallery, Wong casts himself in all the main parts in a lush remake of Polanski’s 1974 noir Chinatown, complete with extras faithful to the original. Dressed as Faye Dunaway (with some questionable eyebrow make-up), Wong is no actor; somehow the ludicrous nature of this masquerade successfully delves into Asian identity, Hollywood and the absurdity of film culture. The third room is an uncomfortable and clever realization of Wong’s narrative. A revealing collection of movie paraphernalia throughout the years, with an emphasis on the casting of ‘Chinese’ people from white Western actors, and is both a cineaste’s joy and shame.
The Anfield Home Tour has been THE success story of the Biennial. An offshoot of the 2up2down project (investigated by our writer Linda Pittwood) by Dutch artist Jeanne van Heeswijk (pictured above), who used Biennial funding over the past two years to worked with a group of local residents (young and old). The focus was to design and build a small, collectively owned housing unit, and reopen a bakery closed by the effects of housing market renewal. Exploring issues of community, people and ‘home’, the tour takes in the entire project from residents to areas of devastation. Kenn Taylor for the Guardian, on completing the tour, confirmed a truth that is so crucial to arts outreach projects (that is all too often forgotten). “The people who know what is best for communities are communities themselves and they are the only people who can truly regenerate an area.”
The newly relocated Open Eye Gallery has three exhibitions on show, but the highlight has to be Japanese photographer Kohei Yoshiyuki’s The Park (main picture). An unsettling, pitch-black exhibition of public sex, the visitor (that’s you) plays the part of voyeur, willing or not. The only way to view the photographs is to use a small torch, given to you by the assistant before entering, and what is revealed is a very rare glimpse into Japan’s underground ‘70s sexual culture. Grainy and abstract at first, look closer and forms, limbs, couples and groups of ‘watchers’ start to emerge from backgrounds of grass and shrubbery. Enhanced by the way it is presented, and the fact that this is only the second ever time to have been on show, we left asking more questions than there were answers (which is always a good sign).
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See our original Top Ten Biennial Highlights from back in August
