Monthly Archives: July 2014

The Craft of Art

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The Craft of Art

The Craft of Art

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The Craft of Art

The Craft of Art is the collective name for a couple of statues by Adrian Jeans which, for the duration of the Liverpool Biennial 2014, will sit in the incongruous setting of the Met Quarter in the centre of the city – a shopping mall full of expensive shops, with products produced by slave labour, to be bought by people who don’t really need them and with money they don’t have.

The two statues are called An Allegory of Death and Destruction and An Allegory of Life and Creation and are supposed to represent, through the Chinese/English model and the debris of the Victorian houses on which she stands, the international nature of the city and how it has changed over time.

Apart for the colour, one is white the other dark grey, the statues are the same apart from the fact that in her hands the figure holds an AK47 in one and a bunch of weeds in the other.

It seems that Jeans is one of those who thinks that the building of shopping centres and the proliferation of cafes, restaurants and bars in what used to be warehouses and banks indicates that the city has stepped out of the decay that it was in during the final decades of the 20th century.

But his representation is reactionary in contrasting the two images.

If there was one point where national government took in interest in post industrial Liverpool it was after the riots in Liverpool 8 in 1981. Up to that time the Thatcher government (as well as the so-called Labour opposition) had basically written off the city. Why? Because it was prepared to fight.

To Thatcher’s chagrin she was forced to allow in injection of money to the city in the form of the Garden Festival of 1984. After two, seven-year periods of EU Objective One money (given only to the poorest parts of Europe and Liverpool was the only one (ever) to have received two bites of that particular cherry) things were still bleak. By the end of the century the fight had gone out of Liverpool as it had in all other parts of the country and now low paid jobs in retail, catering and tourism are considered adequate compensation for the loss of the traditions which the city held for hundreds of years.

These are the weeds that the white statue holds in her hands. For the flowers that we look for in a decent future are not gained without struggle and sacrifice, ‘without taking up the AK47’ which Jeans considers only represents death and destruction.

However, this sort of debate about contemporary art can only take place when we consider the two statues together. The interpretation of a single piece would lead to an entirely different perception.

The statue with the gun, especially as the model is Chinese and wearing a military style cap, would seem to indicate a guerrilla fighter. The one without the gun is just a Chinese woman holding a bunch of weeds.

Another point which this installation poses surrounds the ‘Do not touch’ signs. It’s not only here but also in the main centre of this year’s Biennial at the ex-unemployed centre on Hardman Street. One of the things I thought modern, people-centred artists (who are supposed to be those exhibiting at such Biennials) wanted to create a closer connection with the viewer. How is that possible if they literally put their creations on a pedestal and don’t allow any tactile involvement. NB. This installation is part of the Independents Biennial!

Some of these artists pretend to be ‘of the people’ but they are merely younger versions of those precious, self-obsessed artists from history.

The management of the Met Quarter probably see themselves as patrons of the arts and being magnanimous by allowing the statures space on the ground floor of the mall. However, they couldn’t be any further back and are so ‘out’ of the shopping space that the shops spaces closest to them are empty, whatever businesses might have been there in the past unable to make a go of it – even in the present phantom up-turn in the economy.

Nonetheless they are worth going in to have a look. If you do make sure that you look out for the alcove on the left hand side as you go to see The Craft of Art. Here, next to the lifts, is the War Memorial to fallen postal workers that used to sit in the main hall of the Post Office when the building was Liverpool’s main sorting office. This beautiful statue, a young woman with bowed head mourning the dead, is by the Liverpool sculptor George Herbert Tyson Smith. One of his other works is the unique Cenotaph on the St George’s Plateau (where another of the Independents Biennial projects, The Middle Way (the red hand), will be on display).

The installation will be in place until 31st August 2014.

As a companion to the statues in the Met Quarter Jeans also has a display of six heads in a shop window in Nelson Street, the centre of Liverpool’s Chinatown.

*ic* Heads

*ic* Heads

Once a vibrant street (not too many years ago) any visit here now is a sad affair. Although Jeans argues that Liverpool has been ‘revived’ the corpse looks definitely dead in Chinatown. There are more plants growing out of the buildings than are on the street, the largest Chinese arch in the world outside China looks incongruous next to the Blackie and the once fascinating pub, the Nook, has been closed down for years.

The Nook, Nelson Street

The Nook, Nelson Street

“In the world today all culture, all literature and art belong to definite classes and are geared to definite political lines. There is in fact no such think as art for art’s sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics.”

Mao Tse-tung, Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art, May 1942

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Independents Biennial Liverpool 2014

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Independents Biennial Liverpool 2014

Independents Biennial Liverpool 2014

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Independents Biennial Liverpool 2014

Every time the city has hosted the Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art it has always been accompanied by the Independents Biennial. This gives those local, and international artists, who don’t come with big sponsorship – and therefore able to afford the big venues – the opportunity to display their work in smaller locations throughout the city.

One of the most interesting aspects of the earlier biennials was the fact that art was taken to the people in the sense that there were many installations out on the streets, away from the traditional art galleries, in an attempt to attract the people who were not used to going to art exhibitions.

Even in a country where most (although sadly not all) exhibitions are free to enter only a small percentage of the population will take advantage of these opportunities as a matter of course. In this sense the appreciation (or otherwise) of art is still an ‘elite’ activity in Britain. And this is even more so when contemporary art is concerned.

This attitude is demonstrated every year with the announcement of the short list for the Turner Prize.

If you were to ask people of a certain age what was the piece of contemporary art they consider the most famous they might well say the pile of bricks (officially called Equivalent VIII) that the Tate bought for $2,000 in the 70s. This created a media ‘outrage’ that public money was being spent on something ‘a child could create’. (Interestingly the now 78 year old artist, Carl Andre, has described 21st century modern art as ‘humbug’ – a suitably archaic word.)

Somewhat younger people might say Tracey Emin’s unmade bed, My bed, that was first exhibited at the end of the 90s and which has just this very month been sold by the Thatcherite Charles Saatchi for £2.2 million. Nice work if you can get it, no?

Even younger people might say it was a computer game, but there they lose me.

Each time there’s a media storm about such a piece of art it has the effect of putting ordinary, non-professional people off ever entering a gallery. Instead of a positive reaction that would say ‘this is unacceptable we need art that is relevant to our everyday lives’ just the opposite happens. The elite, in terms of artists and critics, maintain their control of the artistic expression of the country.

In the process it’s forgotten how modern, contemporary art IS part of everyday life and this is especially in the field of left-wing politics. An example of this would be the trade union banners created in the 19th century onwards to the home-made, individual placards that were carried through the streets in demonstrations against the illegal Iraq war and will be carried in the streets this weekend against the murderous Zionist invasion and the continued persecution of the Palestinian people.

There was a very good exhibition of such work at the Tate Liverpool at the beginning of this year. Art turning left: How values changed making, 1789-2013 displayed artefacts that were, in may cases, working pieces of art. They were created for a purpose, to argue a case, to promote an ideology, as pieces of propaganda (a word which has been given a negative connotation merely in order to try to castigate the left and socialist movements – obviously capitalism doesn’t stoop so low as to use ‘propaganda’).

However good this exhibition was, in my estimation, it was not hugely well attended. And that comes from the demonisation of contemporary art over the years and the alienation of the vast majority of people from such ideas.

That’s why the early days of the Liverpool Biennial were interesting and challenging. It sought to bring art to the people (a phrase that can sometime sound, and be, pretentious) by literally taking the art to the streets. As time has passed, however, (this is now the eighth Biennial) there seems to be less of that approach. The Independents Biennial might be in smaller locations not recognised as conventional galleries, many of them cafés or bars, they are still inside, it is still necessary for people to enter an environment they perhaps are not used to rather than just turning a corner and bumping into something, strange, out-of-place and hopefully thought-provoking.

Although this is the idea written about in the Independents Biennial Events Guide there seems to be less of such work than in previous years. It will be interesting to see if my perception changes over the course of the next couple of months or so and any ideas will be added to this post.

One installation that follows the tradition of placing art in those places where people don’t normally go for the enrichment of the soul (but rather to worship at the feet of Mammon, spend money they don’t have and participate in the ludicrous, ridiculous and obscene practice of ‘retail therapy’) is The Craft of Art, two statues in the Met Quarter, the shopping mall in Whitechapel, in the centre of town.

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Fruitvale Station

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BART Fruitvale Station

BART Fruitvale Station

Fruitvale Station (2013) – dir Ryan Coogler

I’m still trying to work out what Fruitvale Station, the film about the ‘accidental’ shooting (in the back whilst being pinned down on the platform) of Oscar Grant on New Year’s Day 2009 is trying to tell me. The film takes its name from the station on the Bay Area Rapid Transport (BART) system where this all took place.

It’s one of those films where there’s no need to shy away from talking about the ending as it’s about an actual event and the fact that a young black man ended up dead is well-known. I say ‘well known’ but I don’t know if that is really the case.

I tried to work out why I had no memory of the incident but then realised that at that time I was in China and followed events from the perspective of that country. However, even there I think I would have been aware if the reaction on the streets was such that had followed the criminal outcome of the trial of the police officers in the Rodney King case.

Yes there had been some reaction on the streets, both peaceful and more angry, but it was contained by either the organisers or the authorities. Perhaps when such events are happening all the time it gets difficult to expect people venting their anger in public. What it almost certainly does create, on the other hand, is a simmering anger where an increasing proportion of the public feel alienated from the society in which they live.

(Here it might be worth mentioning that, each year, something like 400 people die in the United States at the hands of law enforcement agencies. That’s quite an horrendous figure but we in the ‘non gun-toting’ United Kingdom should be careful about taking the moral high ground. It’s reckoned that about 50 people die in police (and other security forces) custody each year. Here they are rarely shot (although incidences of shooting are on the increase) but are more likely to be suffocated or crushed to death. What we should remember is that the population of the United States is 5 times that of the UK so living here is an even MORE dangerous activity than in the gun happy US of A when it comes to contact with the law.)

Although Oscar (as were most of the others who were detained after an altercation on the packed train as people were heading back home to the Bay Area after seeing in the New Year in San Francisco) was black that didn’t seem to be the main reason they were picked out from the crowd – although ‘institutionalised racism’ is never to be discounted, even in police forces with a substantial number of black or ethnic minority officers.

Inept transport police, whose attitude was aggressive and threatening from the start and, not surprisingly, on the receiving end of abuse from those who felt themselves to be falsely accused and detained, ended up killing Oscar by a single shot to the back, which punctured a lung which the hospital surgeons couldn’t put right.

There are similarities to the Rodney King case in the fact that the whole incident was recorded by tens of camera phones and the whole affair being posted on YouTube even before he was dead the next morning. But in our society even that is not enough to convict the police as the one who shot Grant was eventually convicted of involuntary manslaughter and served about a year and a half in gaol.

The forces of the state getting away with murder is nothing new but in countering this fact of life and demanding justice it’s no good in changing the victim into a saint and cry ‘it’s not fair’.

Oscar Grant wasn’t an angel. Why should he have been? Unless you get a lucky break it’s hard for working class children of whatever colour to have it easy in the United States. Figures show that their income has barely managed to stand still in the last 20 to 30 years, long before the most recent capitalist crisis and even during times of ‘prosperity. The ‘American Dream’ is a lie and the sooner the US working class recognise that the better it will be for them and – as their country is never backward in attacking and invading other countries – much of the rest of the world.

However, here the film makers decide to show that despite all the odds and the difficulties he was facing that on the very day before he was to die violently at the hands of the American state he was really going to turn over a new leaf. So the injustice he suffered was greater because he was trying hard ‘to get his life back’? This is a superficial approach and is no way to demand justice. If he had been really ‘bad’ does that mean the police were justified in killing him?

Rodney King wasn’t, by all accounts, the most likeable of characters but what was important in his case was the way that the State rallied around to distort the justice system to ensure that their agents and toddies would be kept from harm. The result was that Los Angeles burnt in 1992.

Investigating the case further I discovered that the family, within days of his death, had put in a ‘wrongful death claim’ against the BART with a compensation claim of $25 million – this was later raised to $50 million. Now, so soon after the event the family would have been vulnerable to all the legal vultures that descend in such circumstances, where the percentage fees for large claims are irresistible.

However, the family stuck with this claim and Grant’s daughter received $1.5 million and his mother $1.3 million EVEN before the case was resolved in court. Why is it that whenever things go wrong in capitalist society the loudest cry seems to be ‘compensation’. (It is interesting to note that $3.8 million is exactly the same that Rodney King got when he sued the city of Los Angeles.)

What the companies the size of BART pay out is chicken feed and in order to make sure there is no loss to the company they will merely put the price of a ticket up a cent or so. What it does do, on the other hand, is give the impression that any wrong can be righted if enough money is on the table.

A foundation has been established in Oscar Grant’s name to help those who are victims of such ‘injustice’ and perhaps some of the money from the compensation claims have gone to pay for its expenses. That doesn’t make the taking of the money any more acceptable.

If, as the film seeks to portray, on the day before his murder Oscar really was trying to find a way to provide for his family he surely wasn’t thinking that his death would be the quickest way to secure his goal.