01/09/10
MEDIA RELEASE – For immediate release
THE BLUECOAT ANNOUNCES LIVERPOOL BIENNIAL 2010: TOUCHED ARTISTS
Daniel Bozhkov (Bulgaria/New York), Carol Rama (Italy), Nicholas Hlobo, (South Africa)
Ranjani Shettar (India)
With 92 year old Italian Carol Rama showing work never seen in the UK and New
York based Daniel Bozhkov re-creating the Liverpool Football Club dressing room,
Liverpool’s creative hub, the Bluecoat promises to be an exciting Biennial host.
Of all the artists exhibiting in this year’s Biennial, no one is engaging with the city quite like
Bulgarian born Daniel Bozhkov. Through Music Not Good For Pigeons, Bozhkov returns
to Liverpool almost twenty-five years after his first visit to investigate the discrepancies
between what caught his attention then and now. Merging the phenomenon of online
culture with football, music and politics, his reflection is darkly humorous, poignant and
timely.
Bozhkov often characterizes his site-specific works as “situation retrievals,” created after
months of research and engagement with a particular location and its people.
The main structure of Bozhkov’s installation is an almost to scale replica of the Liverpool
Football Club dressing room in the Bluecoat’s vast gallery two space. After gaining
exclusive access to the dressing room, Bozhkov was struck by how humble and austere the
spaces were. At the centre of the structure is a YouTube video played repeatedly on
several monitors of a sneezing panda cub, which was viewed by over 60 million people
world-wide. Then there is a music videoprojection of the semi-forgotten, but still
controversial, history of Militant Tendency - a Trotzkyist group within the British Labour
Party, which played a crucial role in the Liverpool City Council’s struggle against the
Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher between 1983 and 1987.
Bozhkov interviewed several of these former Militant Tendency councillors, and then
painted a series of frescoes inside the cells of the recently-closed Somerset County Jail in
Skowhegan, Maine, recounting chapters of Militant’s story. These frescoes appear in a
music video along with scenes of Bozhkov taking voice lessons in Liverpool and learning
how to sing John Lennon’s Imagine with local musicians and bands, in a style changing
from folk to punk to Socialist and anti-Fascist songs. Here, Bozhkov provocatively suggests
that the message Lennon embedded in the song could be viewed through a more specific
political lens.
Also exhibiting is 92 year old Italian artist, Carol Rama. In The Cabinet of Carol Rama
there are twelve works (ten of which have 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, creates 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.
Born in 1918, Rama is a self-taught artist who has been making art for nearly 70 years.
Producing work consistently characterised as unconventional and darkly erotic, Rama’s
style has moved from figurative to abstract and back again through the decades,
accompanied by an exploration of diverse materials and the affect of trauma in modern life.
Sara-Jayne Parsons, exhibitions curator at the Bluecoat said; “In response to the Biennial
theme “Touched” 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 suggests possible answers to these queries. They
employ strategies that revolve around the trace of memory and matter, identity and humour,
and they often use familiar objects in unusual or unexpected ways.”
South African, Nicholas Hlobo’s work at the Bluecoat connects two galleries with a trail of
rubber, fabric and white clay balls. In Ndize, Hlobo’s sculptural installation entices 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 introduces us to 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 winds its way
around and out of the gallery, meandering up the stairs, in search of the other players.
Once upstairs, visitors are met with a sensuous maze of brightly coloured, densely woven
ribbons that hang from a great height to the floor. For seekers in the game there are several
paths to choose from; the labyrinth is delicious in its intimacy and mystery.
Hlobo creates sculptural installations that explore and reflect his Xhosa heritage. Entwined
with this cultural scrutiny, the artist engages in an investigation of sexual identity and
personal politics, contemplating his position as a gay man within Xhosa culture in postApartheid South Africa.
In his investigation of past and present Hlobo reinvents and recycles objects. His materials
often include leather, rubber, ribbon, furniture and other domestic found objects.
In Aureole, Indian sculptor Ranjani Shettar explores the relationship that humans have
with particular spaces in the built environment. Shettar is interested in the scrape or
collision between the industrial and the organic, the mundane and the unusual, the
traditional and the contemporary. She searches for possibilities of meaning in humble
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objects and usually works with everyday materials such as wax, ink, paper, cotton, plastic
sheeting or mud.
For Touched, Shettar has experimented with bronze and presents an elegant installation in
the Vide at the Bluecoat that provokes a conversation about the touch between materials
and architecture. Cast using the ancient lost wax process, Shettar’s work draws attention to
the very process of making bronze.
Aureole embraces the idea of these lost forms and recreates them as a large, closed
organic form that slopes away from the viewer, circling, ascending and clinging to the walls
and floor of the Vide.
Images
1) Nicolas Hlobo’s Ndize, in progress
2) Carol Rama, Feticci, 2004
3) Carol Rama, Renards, 1938
Notes to Editors:
The Bluecoat
Situated in the heart of the city, the Bluecoat is one of Liverpool's most distinctive buildings. The widely
revered arts centre uses its unique spaces to showcase talent across visual art, music, dance, live art and
literature. It also houses a creative community of artists and businesses and runs a participation programme
with local communities. In March 2008, the Bluecoat re-opened after a £14 million re-development.
Touched
Liverpool Biennial International Festival of Contemporary Art was conceived and founded by
James Moores (with Jane Rankin Read, Lewis Biggs and Bryan Biggs) in 1998, and is presented free
to the public every two years over a ten week period. Alongside the International exhibition, the
Festival includes the John Moores Painting Competition and Bloomberg New Contemporaries (both
UK based competitions administered independently with more than 50 years history behind them) and
for the first time, City States - international exhibitions exploring the cultural dynamics between cities
and states – at the Contemporary Urban Centre.
Since its inception in 1999, the International exhibition at the heart of the Biennial has always been
shown in multiple gallery and non-gallery spaces across the city. In 2000, Lewis Biggs became Chief
Executive and Artistic Director. He initiated both collaborative curatorial responsibility and the principle
of the exhibition being composed primarily of commissioned new work. This combined approach
ensures the exhibition is embedded in the city, and remains unique among Biennials globally.
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Liverpool Biennial International Festival of Contemporary Art 2010 will take place in venues and
sites around Liverpool City Centre, including the Walker Art Gallery, FACT (Foundation for art and
creative technology) the Bluecoat, Open Eye Gallery, Tate Liverpool, A Foundation Liverpool, and
many other gallery and non- gallery sites. Visit www.biennial.com
For further information and images, contact Phil Bridges, Communications Officer at
the Bluecoat. Email: philip.b@thebluecoat.org.uk / Direct line: 0151 702 7769
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