Liverpool Biennial 08

The theme for this biennial, 'MADE UP' has been interpreted very differently by the various curators at the diverse venues in this well organized and comfortably sized art crawl.

The Bluecoat's Bryan Biggs and Sara-Jayne Parsons describe their approach to the theme as 'a dialogue with artists on the subject of imagined futures and the creation of personal and collective utopias'. This seems rather turgid and doesn't do justice to the great selection of bold and silly work in the gallery, amongst the best in the biennial.

By far my favourite exhibition here though is at the Tate Liverpool, whose curator Laurence Sillars selected and curated the show, as opposed to the biennial's selectors who have commissioned much of the other work throughout. His introduction questions 'what is actuality, what is fantasy, and can one exist without the other?' which does indeed make sense when considered alongside much of the work.

Omer Fast's 'Take a Deep Breath' is an absorbing and confusing film split over two screens. We watch the production of a low budget movie playing out a suicide bombing in a falafel shop. The American camera crew form the work’s subjects, and include an actor playing Omer as the director, alongside a group of cruelly clichéd Americans; irritating and ignorant, they rile the actor playing the dying suicide bomber until he quits the production. The film switches fluidly from documentary of the movie being made to the movie itself, then from the protagonist narrating the real story to a love story in the cast canteen: layers are built up and the overall work is fascinating and difficult to grasp.

This film was a star of the biennial, and praised by reviewers, but disappointingly placed alongside a lovely 'drawing room' with work by Charles Avery, Roman Ondak and Rachel Goodyear. These were made to feel irrelevant and peripheral beside the topicality of Omer Fast's subject matter.

Other notable works in the Tate included Guy Ben Ner's film 'Second Nature' and Adam Cvijanovic's large bold and brutish house-painted murals of what looked like apocalyptic science fiction book covers, arranged on a huge cube. Carefully tackled in this show but lacking at FACT and Jesper Just's video at Rapid Paint Shop is the attention paid to engagement in video work. I find much of this self indulgent, presuming that the medium’s association with cinema and tv will cause viewers to stop and pay attention. Perhaps wrongly, I look at video as I would an object; and if it doesn’t inspire interest in the first few seconds it will be forgotten. I doubt that my impatience with it is rare amongst viewers.

The videos at the Tate were based upon manipulated, confused narrative. At FACT, it seemed a huge waste of space dedicating three or four projection areas to massive, slow moving and boring videos. Why not put them on a showreel and keep the rest of the space for an innovative way of presenting video?

Tracey Moffatt's work at the Bluecoat included the video 'Doomed', a montage of apocalyptic scenes from movies cut together to produce a ridiculous and entrancing mega disaster involving aliens, huge waves and explosions set to pumping action movie music. This is accompanied by her 'First Jobs: Self portraits' series of vividly coloured images of factories, corner shops and supermarkets amongst other dull ‘character building’ jobs. Tracey is found grinning in each, reminding me where she started out – what a relief.

Also at the Bluecoat, Sarah Sze's poorly placed rambling installation climbs up alongside the lift shaft. The gallery assistant tells me three times ‘It’s good’ and encourages me to take the stairs to look at it from different angles. I don’t take the stairs and she then raises her voice ‘you’re lazy, take the lift!’ and so I can’t be bothered at all. Sze’s installation looks great in areas, but seen all at once doesn't quite work together. The detail in this work is engrossing; stacks of pebbles and matchsticks arranged in painstaking constructions glued with UHU; I imagine the mess and can sense her immersion in the task but in the detail I lose sight of the whole. The tension between huge and tiny is probably the major success of her work, but this installation is either too big to focus on or too small to be overwhelming.

At the A Foundation, there’s the first outing of annual student comp newcontemporaries. Sachiyo Nishimura’s black and white photos of pylons are satisfying and Andrew Larkin’s floor piece would be great if it hadn’t been given a huge and imposing sign advising for it not be walked on. However I am mystified particularly by the choice of sculptures which seem so attention grabbing and literal; with several body replicas of dodgy looking kids facing into a corner, some weird crossed bodies in a cube baloney, a ridiculous stuffed fox with flourescent lights pierced through it pretentiously titled 'Suspension of Disbelief' and another 'The Unconscious Significance of Hair: Queen', a huge grotesque hair object. These big works were made for their degree shows, where students commonly enter into an aggressive size and wow factor battle: but here they occupy the same space and it is bizarre and doesn’t work well. They all scream for attention and overshadow the better, less imposing works in this show such as paintings by Steve Bishop or Giles Ripley's video 'Pay Attention'.

Mostly this biennial showed me how difficult video can be to get right. All art work in exhibition has the task of engaging the viewer. Videos by Tracey Moffatt, Guy Ben Ner and Omer Fast proved just how entrancing this can be when these basics are applied.