© Charles Schulz

I don’t think there’s ever a time early Peanuts – especially any of the Snoopy or Schroeder strips – fails to cheer me up. The sun is shining, the coffee is hot – how could today fail? An absolute masterpiece of a comic. In four panels Schulz manages to convey an entire story – not a million miles away from the idea of a photo story. Perhaps why I like it so much. I think it goes along with Alec Soth’s views on the similarity between poetry and photography.

Trip To Liverpool 2/2

Sorry for the delay in finishing this, life gets in the way. Noisy neighbours, work, lack of coffee – just a few of the contributing factors to the lateness of this post. And my beloved Newcastle United were just relegated from the Premiership yesterday. A sad day.

Anyway, after leaving Milkandsugar we moved on to the Open Eye Gallery on Wood Street. Certainly the best photographic gallery in the North (being from the North-East I do have a weakness for the Side Gallery which has excellent reportage and photojournalism exhibitions regularly but Open Eye is a wonderful site) and it’s always a pleasure to visit.

The current exhibition is a group show called Until It Hurts which is named after Sascha Weidner’s photo installation. There are four artists exhibiting: Markus Hansen, Yang Zhenzhong, Josh Weinstein and, of course, Sascha Weidner.

Sascha Weidner’s installation is the first thing you see upon entering the gallery. Small (7×5″ I think) photographs arranged in a line. Non-sequitar images working together to tell a store. Working on a horizontalal axis it gives the impression of a time line, something which is enhanced by the fact old photographs sit next to new ones. One image doesn’t really do the installation justice but here’s one anyway.

Sascha Weidner – Until It Hurts (2008)

The next artist was Markus Hansen. I’ve seen Hansen’s work in various places lately, magazines and blogs so was nice to actually see some in person. His video projection Other People’s Feelings was being shown. Simply it’s a photograph of a sitter, then a very similar photograph is taken of Hansen adopting the subject’s posture, clothing and expression. On a big scale it’s really impressive, it’s probably closer to method acting than the Cindy Sherman school of photography.

Markus Hansen – Elizabeth, Mother (2006)

My favourite piece was Josh Weinstein’s video installation Cross Examination in which he asks members of the public questions about himself such as what they think his job is, if they think he’s in love and what animal they think he’d be. It’s quite an interesting piece, one lady assumes he’s not financially well-off as he isn’t wearing a suit.

The final artist in the exhibition is Yang Zhenzhong’s video piece I’m Will Die which has many people from around the world repeating the words to the video camera. Sadly, it didn’t capture my imagination in the way Josh Weinstein’s video did, I often find video installations hard to get into and this was no exception, a lack of humour or narrative probably prevented me from enjoying it fully.

From here I went to the ever-full Bluecoat bookshop. I picked up Volume Two of the Complete Peanuts for £7. A bargain, I’m a huge fan of Peanuts and I didn’t have that volume.

Then it was on to Tate Liverpool. I mainly went to see the Glenn Brown retrospective but a look round it’s permanent collection is always worth an hour or two of anyone’s time. This time there had been a rehang, based around sculpture and curated by Michael Craig-Martin. It’s always a joy to see works by Bacon, Matisse, Giacometti et al but I prefered the previous hang of it. And the room curated by Wayne Hemingway was absolutely woeful.

The Glenn Brown exhibition was as mighty as I was expecting it to be. There must have been a good hundred paintings – it must have been close to having nearly everything he’s done since leaving university. One thing I wasn’t expecting was his cycles of work where he reworks the same image in different hues and tones to give similar but different paintings. Much has been said about Brown’s painterly techniques and they are worth repeating: up close his paintings are astounding. There is absolutely no sign of brush mark regardless of how thick the marks of the painting look.

Glenn Brown – The Revolutionary Corps of Teenage Jesus (2005)

Glenn Brown – Anaesthesia (2001)

The Glenn Brown exhibition has now ended sadly – I went during it’s last week. This was the icing on the cake for a great day. Liverpool must be one of the best art cities in the country if not Europe.

Trip To Liverpool 1/2

Every few months we hop on a train and go to Liverpool. Now, Liverpool and Manchester have a fairly healthy rivalry. It’s mainly football based. The major problems between them are that Liverpool has the book shops and galleries while Manchester has the record shops and live music.

First stop was the Walker Art Gallery, to see the exhibition past winners of the John Moores Prize – again. I love the John Moores. For those of you who aren’t aware the John Moore Painting Prize is a bi-annual national exhibition of painting, the top thirty entries are shown and there are five award winners. Past winners include Dan Hays, Peter Doig, David Hockney and Michael Raedecker. It’s always a joy to see Peter Doig’s wonderful Blotter and Alexis Harding’s Slump/Fear (Orange/Black). Peter Doig is the finest painter this country (okay, there’s several countries who could claim Doig as theirs but our claim is as strong as any!) and I like the fact that so many people get to see his work.
The entries and winners of this competition aren’t always to my taste, and that’s how it should be – a genuine mixture of contemporary UK-based painting.

Peter Doig – Blotter

Alexis Harding – Slump/Fear (Orange/Black)

Sadly, the current exhibitions weren’t up to much (I’ve never much liked the work of Maggi Hambling and sports fashion isn’t really aimed at me) but was certainly worth seeing for Blotter alone! A minor gripe though: Slump/Fear isn’t in the winners room despite winning in 2004. Poor.

Went to the Egg cafe which has regular group exhibitions on, under the title of EggSpace. A mixture of work, mainly painting and photography. Some is good, some isn’t. Very good vegetarian food. I recommend the Tandoori mushrooms.

Then moved on to a new gallery, Milkandsugar, which is based in the Tea Factory on Wood Street. Currently on show is Liverpool One: Remaking A City Centre by Paul McMullin. An enjoyable series of photographs documenting the regeneration of the Liverpool high street.

Paul McMullin – Dar Mlodziezy Leaving Wellington Dock

To be continued.

I stayed up late to watch the Ricky Hatton-Manny Pacquiao fight on Saturday night: brutal. Hatton fought with his hands very low and got destroyed with a left-hook. Ouch. KO in the 3rd.