Art and the City

Critics love it and hate it by turn. Contemporary art, that is. The only time it is likely to be presented to the masses is when it hits the news pages of the dailies – in its most obscure form, like the recent Turner Prize winning piece – immersed in controversy. The positive reviews are hidden in the depths of the arts sections, buried somewhere between news and sport.

This perhaps explains why the Liverpool Biennial has garnered less column space than the recent Turner Prize winner: people actually like the art there.

Lewis Biggs, Liverpool Biennial’s chief executive and co-founder, is confident there are ways other than controversy to get the public to view contemporary art.

‘The Turner Prize sets itself up for controversy,’ he says. ‘Controversy is its lifeblood: it needs to pull people through the door and that’s the way it does it. It’s to do with the history of the Tate and that particular prize. There is a place for that, and I’m pleased it happens.

‘But there are other ways to get audiences,’ he continues, citing the example of one of the Biennial’s highlights, the Villa Victoria. Japanese artist Tatsurou Bashi has converted the Queen Victoria monument in Liverpool’s main square into a hotel room with Queen Vic as the centrepiece, for the International strand of the biennial. For a fee, members of the public can book the room for the night. It even succeeded in impressing the critics; not one, but two Guardian writers camped out at Vic’s feet.

‘It’s been visited by tens of thousands of shoppers, who have never asked the question: ‘Is it art?’ Biggs observes. ‘No one visits the Turner Prize without asking that question. But here is a very good piece of contemporary art which may not be shocking, but it’s staggering. People’s jaws literally drop open. And because it is obviously very good, no-one has ever asked the question whether it is art. I think that’s a much more constructive way of creating new audiences for contemporary art than by setting out to create controversy.’

Biggs has lived and worked in Liverpool for the past 15 years as director of the Tate gallery, before co-founding the biennial. Villa Victoria is an example of his vision for the biennial to maintain a relationship between artists and the city, but also to bring art to a wider audience. Despite the proliferation of art biennials around the world, according to his understanding, Biggs says this notion of relating the biennial to a particular place is unique.

So, too, it seems, is the fact that four exhibitions take place under the event’s umbrella. The second biennial, which has actually occurred three years after the first, to await the completion of the Walker Gallery refurbishment, is designed to coincide both with the UK’s premier painting award, the John Moores 22 Exhibition, and the Bloomberg New Contemporaries, which showcases the work of fine art students and recent graduates nationwide. The ‘Independent’- often referred to as the fringe element to the festival – involves Liverpool and London artists including Tracey Emin, while the ‘International’ strand is at the core of the biennial, exhibiting at various venues around the city.

‘The ambition is to achieve continuity, but at the same time we don’t want to settle into any particular model,’ Biggs explains. ‘The curatorial process for the International exhibition was completely different from the first time and will probably be different again at the third.’

‘Also, the very close relationship between art and the context in which it is shown is something we want to grow and develop. Of course, the city itself will be changing over the next 10 to 15 years, so the biennial has a task to keep up with that.’

‘Regeneration’ is a term that keeps cropping up again and again, not only in Liverpool, but to a large extent around Britain. Liverpool is clearly attempting a cultural resurgence to move away from its perceived ‘industrial’, ‘down-trodden’ past, and from the Beatle-mania of the ‘60s, which has defined it for so long.

Arts and Leisure Officer at the Liverpool Council, Sally Medlyn, has noticed a perceived change in public attitude. She recounts the day she visited Villa Victoria, noting that even 15-year old lads were impressed, describing the piece as ‘scary.’

‘I talked to the local people in there, including the security guard,’ she continues. ‘He freely confessed he had never visited a gallery, and had walked past the statue of Victoria for years and never really looked at it. He was really knocked out and loved the whole idea of it.’

But for others, Bashi’s work has caused confusion. Although a fully-contained hotel room, from the outside the monument is enshrouded in scaffolding. A BBC Newsnight reviewer on his way to visit the monument in a taxi was surprised when the driver advised him against it, because it’s boarded up.

Meanwhile, an Observer writer commented upon visiting the biennial: ‘The weather was brilliant, the Victorian architectural fabric of the centre as charismatic as that of downtown New York; the people friendly. It was enough to make you browse in an estate agent’s window, where if you did, you could find a terraced house for £20,000.’

So perhaps to a degree public perception of Liverpool is slowly changing. But both Medlyn and Biggs agree while the biennial certainly assists in boosting the city’s profile, it is just one element of the regeneration process and they hope, would have happened regardless of any regeneration schemes or the bid for the Capital of Culture 2008.

But Biggs holds an additional point of view on the whole regeneration argument.

‘I think in the context of regeneration and what art can do for regeneration,’ he begins carefully, ‘politicians and developers have focused on buildings rather than people. A building is just a building, it’s not ultimately about art or about people. In the end what generates wealth is people.

‘Events like festivals are where art and people actually meet. They can meet in a building, but also, more effectively and cheaply be in the street.

‘My jump, if you like, to being in a building-based museum to a street-based festival is from conviction,’ Biggs observes. ‘It is not just by accident.’

The Liverpool Biennial runs until November 24. www.biennial.org.uk