I went to Liverpool for the first day of the Biennial and this is a slightly jazzed up version of what went in my notebook:
John Moore's painting prize
Looks like a history painting, with a crowd of people carefully arranged in chaos. Although it also bears the style of a painting made from photographs. This contrast is also seen in the detail of a 'crime scene' sticker shown next to an engraving on the 19th century monument. It makes the G9 protest scene look beautiful, which makes me think of freee - 'protest is beautiful'. There's all sorts of people - a grinning couple, business women, lots who look like passers by which have become involved, and lots with cameras.
'Somewhere Between Prayer and Agenda' - Cara Nahaul
Painting presents a mingled body of people, who look like largely undefined Muslims in prayer. The loose, ambiguous style playing with our idea of 'Muslim' as a visual category (cues in painting include hats and beards)?
Hard to see the portrait because the whole painting is dark blue. It's also glossy paint, and in a glazed frame. I thought this was the whole point of the work - a literal portrait of Jesus, yet you can't actually see who he is etc. Then I read the wikipedia entry on Coventry and realised that the painting is one of a set, that forms a rainbow. It also relates to fakes and forgeries - it is itself based on a forged painting. I suppose it suggests that religious stories and texts are unreliable on their own.
As a child I was a Roman Catholic. Every Sunday morning at seven o'clock I had to go to church where I had a few minutes to look at the texts that I had to read for the service. The image of Jesus is like a container for all sorts of ideas. Maybe subconsciously I thought of theTurin Shroud as well, how the image is just barely visible - which itself is meant to be a fake. It's not a natural thing, but yet, I'm neutralising it as an image by making monochromes.
(Coventry quote from Wikipedia)
I think the phrase 'Jesus is like a container' Coventry uses is very accurate in describing the multitude of theories, theological and otherwise, that have been applied to Christ. It suggests a blank sheet to which you bring your own ideas, which relates formally to his monochrome paintings, and also presents a popular postmodern(?) idea. You could also see a container as something which holds its various contents together.
Other than that I saw Freee's window installations - commercial style window-sized stickers with their own slogans. Most of them were old pieces, so I thought it looked like a 'greatest hits' selection. I actually bumped into one of freee (Beech) on the train on the way back and apparently he'd said something similar to the organiser - 'you're the first person to give us an album, we've only has singles before'.
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