Axolotl

Venue

MODEL

Location

North West England

The ARKA Group/ Sam Belinfante/ Hannah Brown/ Adam Clarke/ Joe Graham / Patrick Goddard/ Mark Riddington

01.08.14 – 24.08.14

Artist led activity has a new reason to be excited in Liverpool, an unsuspecting gallery (although found to be more suspect with the giant ‘rent me’ decals on the windows) by the name of MODEL. In a recent interview with one the directors, they liked the name as “it has so many different connotations. We were thinking to model as in to model a piece of clay or to create a maquette”.

Getting buzzed into the malleable space from violent Liverpool winds serves as a safe haven, and the refreshment offered from a friendly James is welcoming. Brief direction is given with the exhibition, personal favourites are discussed and I start at a video by recent graduate of Goldsmiths University, Patrick Goddard: Free Radicals. A monologue presented throughout the journey of sliding through a waterslide, feet-first. “free right…”, “yeah right!” an objection, amongst others throughout continues like a heckler at an open mic night. “Freeloader”, “you’ve said that…” a good amount of critique in the video becomes a more composed dissolution that could narrate through a wormhole or spiritual process during self-inflection.

Hannah Brown, an artist who also co-curates at Cardroom, Manchester, 3-sided form of plaster powder, with a tri-fold contrast of the sharp cut lines of the edges, the chalky lumps of the third edge and then the uniform of the polished black tiles, satisfying and still very awkward: formed and dissolved as an object

The Taos Hum, A piece of half documentary, half aural investigation by Sam Belinfante begins with an interview with an elderly woman explaining tinnitus and its distinguishing features in relation to a rocky gorge. This is discovered to be a rare phenomenon that up to 11% of residents of Taos, New Mexico, USA were first able to hear in 1992. It appears within the video that not only is it an aural phenomenon but it has a finite ‘feel’ that some can feel and others cannot; a feeling of intangibility and presence. A professor of languages reports that he can hear the piece, yet the mayor cannot; make of this what you will, Belinfante digs into a certain liminal distinction between experience and effect that is difficult to pinpoint – noticeably metaphysical?

Adam Clarke’s steel and string Untitled sculpture contains a more visible level of tension within itself, it feels as though the string might slip off the string and slap you in the face. This makes it figuratively hit you in the face, a strong piece lining up with the layout of the gallery and those seductive black tiles, it brings about some thoughts of skinny Matt Calderwood’s Ply (Strapped), yet here Clarke plays with the reliance and responsibility of sculpture to the point of appearing kinetic.

The first in a series of independently curated group exhibitions during Liverpool Biennial, Axolotl has an abundance of connotations, within the press release we are teased with curious narratives linked to Julio Cortazar, and his short story over a ‘mineral lethargy’ relating to the animal in a Parisian zoo; Alain Tanner’s 1983 film “Dans La Ville Blanche”, a sailor nicknamed ‘axolotl’, and a brief bit of zoology regarding the axolotl’s evolutionary state. With such rich thoughts in the curatorial process, the work can be considered within these spheres primarily, but given ample room to think about the dissolved or ‘neoteny’ of materials, process or metaphysics.

An exciting new platform for artist-led activity, setting its mission statement clearly on all its publicity materials: “presenting newly commissioned ideas and dialogue around the sustainability of future artist-led projects in the city”. Bliss.