Liverpool Biennial

Yesterday I went to Liverpool for an art filled day. I found lots of inspiration throughout the whole day, from the fabric pattern on the coach seats to the peachy orange pillars of Albert Dock.

Two pieces that I saw particularly caught my eye, and the first was at the Walker Art Gallery. It is named Waiting and was created by an artist called Zheng Jiang.

It is made using oil paints and I love how the tone in the piece is created by subtle changes in colour and the detailed pattern embedded in the piece. When taking a closer look, the pattern was cleverly painted to make it look as though it was engraved in wood.

The next piece I saw at the Tate, and it confused me at first. My first reaction was ‘how is this art’. At first glance it looked like any ordinary map of the UK, however on a closer look, it had been cleverly collaged to mix towns and cities around. For example, Manchester was in Scotland and Glasgow was near Cornwall. Its called United Kingdom and is by Layla Curtis. I probably spent the most amount of time looking at this piece, intruiged by her placement of locations. Her collage was so well done that main roads linked together and the shapes and islands of the British Isles were also very accurate, so if someone didn’t know the real map very well, they wouldn’t have thought twice that it was a collage. This piece also gave me more inspiration for the brief ‘Journeys’, and I’m looking forward to trying some of these tecniques in my work for this project.