The Passing of The Biennial 2014

It’s been a funny Biennial, gaining mixed reviews. Some of them proclaiming doom and gloom or criticising the lack of political engagement.

Myself I wrote this for The Double Negative focusing on how I saw it as a Biennial which presented work that played with the conventions of the gallery space and the role of the visitor within that gallery space.

Three months on and how does this still stand up? Well Claude Parent at Tate Liverpool is still a playful, exciting change to the normal modes of gallery viewing. While the exhibition upstairs is interesting if a little hit and miss.

Though it’s always great to see work by Susan Hiller.

Whistler at The Bluecoat, I feel pretty much the same as I first saw it.

As for Sharon Lockhart’s exhibition at FACT I still find Lockhart’s use of the gallery space more engaging then the actual concepts that inform the work.

What of the main exhibition at The Old Blind School? On my final visit though I enjoyed the many sci-fi tinged works I felt that a lot of it had lost it shine. Now I see the edges of the projection screen of William Leavitt’s Artic Earth and Michael Stevenson’s remote controlled doors where far to accommodating for you notice that anything was awry.

Ultimately how do I feel about the Biennial? Well I’m not sure after the initial excitement of its arrive I never found myself possessed by a urge to revisit many exhibitions. On the whole I have had a more positive reaction to the 2014 Biennial then others. Looking back on it I wonder if this has been a Biennial that didn’t really have its mind on the here and now, but rather it was looking towards its possible future expanding outside the city centre.

Maybe this is true of most Biennials I guess we’ll see in two years’ time.