Colour Chart @ Tate Liverpool

When I started writing this blog, I thought I was in Manchester to stay. Less than a year later, an unexpected but pretty awesome, sequence of events has led me to relocate to Liverpool.

While I was flat hunting I went to have a nose around Tate Liverpool and it's very appealing sounding Colour Chart exhibition - a welcome break from viewing dishwater dull execu-flats.

The whole setting of Albert Docks is pretty unfortunate, a snarled tangle of pedestrianised bits and one way streets, which equalled cyclist hell. Why do traffic calming measures always bring out the worst in motorists?

Anyway, Albert Docks feels like a pretty odd place to put this gallery. The other Tates stand with architectural arrogance that reflects the institutional prowess and self confidence. Tate Liverpool is bunged into a colonnade with nasty tourist shops selling overpriced gewgaws and leather sofa packed chain wine bars.

Inside it feels more like a Tate, and with not a lot of time on my hands I went straight to the top floor to see Colour Chart. I'm saving the rest of Tate Liverpool for another day... like a kid hiding sweeties from themselves.

It's a wonderful exhibition. At the best moments the profusion of colour creates an ambience I last experienced in the Rothko room at Tate Modern. At the worst it feels a little stark and dehumanised. But in some ways this scintillation between states is exactly what you need and expect from an exhibition based upon such an utterly abstracted art concept. It's hard to find the right critical phrases to apply to such a beautiful monster of an exhibition, apart from that is is both marvellous and enthralling, stepping between the simply delightful and the sublime.

Perhaps the unusual downplaying of figurative images allows the viewer to experience things in a new manner? Although we are used to seeing non-figurative art, it is not often in such a focused presentation.

Beyond what is a marvellous and enthralling exhibition, the commercialisation of the show is a little annoying. There are so many things to purchase from the shop, so centrally displayed on the website, that it feel a little too much like a shopping opportunity. We do love colour, but the endless merchandising is just a little too much for me. When did shopping become such an integral part of a visit to a art gallery?

Seriously, Southampton Art Gallery, what are you thinking?

Being from Southampton is a strange burden. On the whole it can look like a pretty shitty place, full of small minded bigots, ketamine fuckheads, bad retail and worse memories.

However, the further away you get, both physically and chronologically, a certain nostalgia seems to set in. If you read Owen Hatherley's blog, you'll notice that a certain wistful tone worms its way in when he writes about Shirley High Street. Southampton has nice parks, at times ace charity shops and a Waitrose right near my parent's house. Ah, Portswood. It also has a somewhat kick arse art gallery.

Southampton Art Gallery, in both its building and its collection, is certainly the jewel in what can be considered the rather rusty crown of that dilapidated port town. It's collection is both varied and comprehensive. From my childhood visits everything I understand and love about art stems. There is not a thought or feeling I have in relation to art that can not be traced back to the place. Beyond what I experienced in my home, beyond what I was shown by my artist mother, Southampton Art Gallery is what I model my relation with all other institutions. I'm not saying its right, or useful, but it's frankly the truth.

That is why I'm distressed and pissed off when I discovered that Southampton Art Gallery is intending to sell off some of it's collection to fund a shitty heritage museum. Fuckit, they'll probably call it a Local History Family Experience Centre, or something else equally twee and meaningless! It's not a case of "robbing Peter to pay Paul"; the inevitable editing and re-presentation of Southampton's history, almost certainly coupled with stultifying didacticism, could never equal the value and immediate personal impact that those lost works of art could deliver.

Southampton needs an identity beyond West Quay, the Saints and the Titanic. As well as setting a dangerous precedent for regional collections throughout Britain, it undermines any cultural ambition that Southampton could ever hope to foster.

As usual, Jonathan 'intellectual hunk' Jones says it better - http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2009/aug/06/southampton-art-sale

If you one of those who believe in the possibilities of democracy, sign the petition - http://www.gopetition.co.uk/petitions/save-our-collection.html

Yours sincerely,

Appalled in Rusholme

P.S. If anyone from Southampton Art Gallery is reading this, you seriously need a better website.

Everyone Loves Gormley

Antony Gormley from Manchester Art Gallery on Vimeo.

Trade City @ CHIPS

Finally getting round to writing something which is not about the Cornerhouse.

New Islington is a weird place. For cyclists it moves between two extremes, beautiful quiet roads with lovely new surfaces to dual-carriageway, bumper-to-bumper-traffic, broken-glass hell. It's not an easy place to get to, even if it's just a few minutes walk from the Northern Quarter.

However, this awkward combination of untenable luxury flats and knackered social housing is actually quite a suitable context for Trade City (4 - 19 July). This is the first exhibition from Contemporary Arts Manchester, a new, not-for-profit consortium of arts organisations from across Manchester.

A rather tired looking set of objects and audio visual installations are sprawled around the space, the unused and incomplete space on the ground floor of the improbably named CHIPS. Even though I may be fully conversant with the theory behind the pieces, "site specific" piles of building materials or rubbish stuck to the walls, for me at least, needs a little more pizazz if they want to be more than the sum of their parts.

However, there is something hopeful and virile about the rather disorderly and earnest way that the exhibition is (not/group) curated. Though I don't really like most of the stuff that the exhibition contains, there is a maturity which cannot be denied.

This is a classic case of something not just being my cup of tea.

Jeremy Deller's Procession: An Exhibition @ Cornerhouse

Quieten down and listen carefully, pay attention you at the back! You are going to hear something very special which doesn't happen very often.

I bloody love the current exhibition at the Cornerhouse.

Jeremy Deller's Procession: An Exhibition (9 July - 23 August) is the friendliest and most inspiring thing I've seen this year.

Sadly, I missed the Procession itself - sea swimming and getting sunburned in Anglesey was my consolation prize - but the if it was anything like the exhibition it must have been really something. The slightly manic, ethnographic, nonsensical atmosphere in the galleries of the Cornerhouse was invigorating. At the opening the attendance of participants from the Procession itself meant that the sea of faces was different to the usual Cornerhouse crowd. The banners were fascinating and the photographs beautiful. The inclusion of the recreation of that Bury Cafe had an even weirder than expected effect on the gallery space.

Where POI was lovely and wistful in the best bits, Procession: An Exhibition is just sheer joyful and perfectly odd. How often does that happen in an art gallery?

'Nuff said, go and see.

Jeremy Deller’s Procession: An Exhibition OR "Everything That Happens Will Happen When You're Away"

I woke up this morning with the words of the Eno & Bryne song transmogrified into "Everything That Happens Will Happen When You're Away"

And It is kinda true, apart from summer exuberance - never mind the sweaty red faced damp grimyness of summer in the city - means that no event is just an event. Events all must have a full gamut of meta-events, otherwise how do we know they've happened?

I'm pretty annoyed about missing Jeremy Deller's Procession. The combination of nutty frivolity and hefty provenance makes very appealing. Although, I can't help but think that a parade like this is the perfect opportunity for some creepy Cape Fear/I Know What You Did Last Summer type shenanigans. If anything happens along those lines, let me know.

However, this parade is not just a parade. For those intent on spending the weekend in rain swept Wales, the Cornerhouse is presenting Jeremy Deller’s Procession: An Exhibition (Thu 9 July – Sun 23 Aug). Curated by The Salford Restoration Office, the exhibition will bring together a collection of objects from Deller's Procession.

Luckily, the exhibition looks to be just as playful, obscure and thoughtfully flippant as the event it is spiralling off. The inclusion of a full size replica of a cafe in Bury - which I'm rather sorry I won't get to see as a float - which will apparently be serving tea and cake is a master stroke. Is there anything which isn't better for the addition of tea and cake?

( I'm looking at you, Yorkshire. )

Whatever! Criticism is not a democracy...

If you haven't worked it out already, I have a fairly sweaty intellectual crush on Guardian blogger Jonathan Jones. He managed to mirror so many things I feel in my voluminous gut - plenty of instinct there - and be so wonderfully succinct with it.

Once again he's done it with his spot-on post "Art criticism is not a democracy"

Jones writes :

"The reason so much average or absolutely awful art gets promoted is that no one seems to understand what criticism is; if nothing is properly criticised, mediocrity triumphs. A critic is basically an arrogant bastard who says "this is good, this is bad" without necessarily being able to explain why. At least, not instantly. The truth is, we feel this stuff in our bones. And we're innately convinced we're right."