Wood Street: Liverpool Biennial 2012 – review #3

The following extracts are two of my reviews taken from my joint feature for LS Media with Rosie Dodd. For the full article please visit: http://liverpoolstudentmedia.com/2012/11/wood-street-liverpool-biennial-2012-review-3/


Collective Coverings, Communal Skin – Jemima Wyman

Jemima Wyman’s Collective Coverings, Communal Skin (2012) is currently on display at FACT and centres on the idea that fabric is a social camouflage. This idea is illustrated with clarity with the inclusion of camouflage fabric within the installation itself.

For this communal project Wyman “explores camouflage fabric as material with symbolic links to violence and conflict”. Through a series of community workshops during the first few weeks of Liverpool Biennial 2012, the people of Liverpool and Wyman created soft-psychedelic weavings which are currently hanging on the ground floor of FACT’s arts space.

Wyman addresses the commonly held preconception that patterned fabrics are typically seen as being passive and feminine, however in her research into patterned materials quickly discovers how such materials started being used in situations of conflict and war. This is illustrated through Wyman’s choice of incorporating camouflage (as well as other patterned materials associated with violence) into this communal installation.

With Collective Coverings, Communal Skin Wyman manages to change the collective reception of the materials used from associations with violence and conflict to a more comforting, contemplative one with the weavings, baring an arguable similarity to Native American dream-catchers. Wyman manages to make collective assumptions concerning patterned fabrics come full circle – a possible intention of the artist considering that all the weaving frames are actually hula-hoops.

Melodrama and Other Games – Pedro Reyes

Photo courtesy of UoL Contemporary Society

Pedro Reyes’ Melodrama and Other Games (2012) can also be found at FACT during Liverpool Biennial 2012. Near the entrance of FACT, the public are invited to participate in a series of interactive games which on completion allows them to claim a poster designed by Reyes himself.

Melodrama takes the form of a board game similar to snakes and ladders but with the intention of illustrating the ups and downs of personal relationships. With these games Reyes hopes to “encourage visitors to improvise new forms of social interaction with each other”, this is possibly best seen with Slow-Motion Fight where the audience are invite to have pillow fights with one another.

As a practicing architect, Reyes views relationships through the prism of his discipline and uses the format of board games to consider “the architecture of relationships in an increasingly commodified environment”. Perhaps another reason behind Reyes’ decision to tackle ideas of societal problem solving and the ‘encounter experience’ through a series of games is in response to the Biennial’s over-arching theme of hospitality. Not only do Reyes’ games present the idea of parlour games that one may encounter when at the receiving-end of hospitality; it also nods to the reasons behind the Biennial’s decision to choose ‘hospitality’ as this year’s theme – the Olympics, with Melodrama being the most obvious reference to Ancient Greece, the birthplace of the Olympics.

Melodrama and Other Games offer the people of Liverpool one of the most interactive and immersive contributions to Liverpool Biennial they are likely to encounter this year.

Ming Wong at 28-32 Wood Street

Ming Wong’s contribution to Liverpool Biennial 2012 exists in three parts – Making Chinatown, After Chinatown and The Chinese Detective, all of which can be found at 28-32 Wood Street. Wong explores Hollywood traditions and representations of the stereotypical ‘Chinese detective’ through video installations and a collection of cinematic posters from the 1930s and 1960s. Concerned with ideas of ‘what makes a Singaporean’, Wong explores the Chinatowns of the world until he is led to Liverpool, which has the oldest Chinatown in the UK.

 It stands to reason that Wong includes his video installation (originally displayed in Los Angeles) Making Chinatown alongside his other works designed specifically for Liverpool Biennial 2012. In Making Chinatown Wong himself plays all pivotal roles in a film which draws on Polanski’s 1974 iconic Chinatown; Wong’s tongue and cheek performance arguably provides playfulness to an issue which may well cause discomfort for some viewers.

The audience may conclude that this film illustrates a cinematic vocabulary of the mid-twentieth century that enters into the collective consciousness of the period as anti-immigrant sentiment. Wong explores ideas of ‘the menace of the orient’ perpetuated through the popular culture of the period. Certainly, when viewing Wong’s collection of movie posters located in the back room of 28-32 Wood Street’s art space, the audience is arguably shocked and appalled by the vilification and mockery of the Orient’s ‘stereotypical’ representation.

With this exhibition, Wong potentially offers an alternative interpretation to Liverpool Biennial’s theme of hospitality, with the possibility that countries such as USA and the UK have not always had such a welcoming approach to newcomers.