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Tales from The ciTy: liverpool
words MARk RAPPOLT This month sees the announcement of might prove a little depressing
the Turner Prize winner. “Aha! Just for Liverpool 08’s merry band of
like every December”, I hear you cry. cheerleaders. A scaffolding featuring
This year, however, there’s a new that title text (which originates from
twist. For the first time, the prize a tale of the clash between royal and
has moved out of its traditional home divine prerogative in seventeenth-
at London’s Tate Britain (where there’s century France), illuminated as a
a retrospective of work by previous fairground-style sign made up of
winners in the prize’s 22-year history) plastic lightbulbs, the work appears
to the Tate empire’s northernmost to articulate both the power and the
outpost, Liverpool. futility of interventions in the built
environment (which is the principal
The move has come about to mark the subject of much of Coley’s work).
city’s impending status as European
Capital of Culture (a designation that The other works on display seem both
it shares with the Norwegian cities of further to water down Liverpool 08’s
Stavanger and Sandnes) in 2008. And rocket fuel and to render it more
the Liverpool 08 website is positively pure. Wallinger’s video Sleeper (2004–
brimming with excitement and hyperbole 5) captures the artist dressed in
about the importance of its new title: an oversize bear suit and wandering
‘2008 is the rocket fuel that is round Mies van der Rohe’s Neue
propelling Liverpool’s economy, and Nationalgalerie in Berlin at night.
solid foundations have now been laid The bear, of course, is the symbol of
for its ongoing transformation into that city (just as much, perhaps, as
a world-class city’, it squeals out the Beatles are the symbol of Liverpool
breathlessly as a counter ticks down – in January Ringo Starr and friends
the days to go until the great event. will be appearing in Liverpool the
Musical, which kicks off the Capital
of Culture celebrations). Among its
many resonances, the work articulates
Liverpool 08 is a bit
culture (in the form both of Mies’s
architecture and what it contains)
like an arts-led version
as a zoolike prison, an identity trap.
Which of course is something Liverpool,
of the Olympics, but less
with its fine array of Beatles
memorabilia shops and John Lennon
cripplingly expensive
Airport can well identify with.
Meanwhile, Nelson’s Amnesiac Shrine,
or the misplacement (a futurological
Launched in 1985, the Capital of fable): mirrored cubes – inverted
Culture scheme aims at providing – with the reflection of an inner
socio-economic regeneration of Europe’s psyche as represented by a metaphorical
urban centres via the marketing and landscape (2007) provides another take
rebranding potential of culture. on the psychological baggage of space.
It’s a bit like an arts-led version of The main body of the work comprises
the Olympics (and incidentally, Athens four cubes in which a nighttime desert
was Europe’s first European City landscape populated by myriad tiny
of Culture, as the scheme was then lights is endlessly reflected by the
called), but less cripplingly expensive internal mirroring, and it comes with
and operating on a smaller scale. a backstory – that it was created by
the Amnesiacs, a (fictitious) biker
Given all that, it’s fitting, then, gang composed of Gulf War veterans.
that the nominees for this year’s All of which suggests a powerful sense
Turner Prize – Zarina Bhimji, Nathan of the way in which place and space
Coley, Mike Nelson and Mark Wallinger form an integral and enduring part of
– are all exhibiting works that focus, our psychological makeup. Similarly
in one way or another, on the Bhimji’s beautiful and poetic video
psychosocial impacts of built space. Waiting (2007), which documents a
However, an encounter with Coley’s sisal-processing factory, suggests that
THERE WILL BE NO MIRACLES HERE (2006), buildings are an important container of
a work that dominates his section history, memory, poetry and humanity.
of the show, is an experience that Liverpool 08 take heart.
ArTrEvIEw 44
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