Peter Liversidge at The MAC
IT'S very impressive that The MAC has commissioned edgy English artist Peter Liversidge, whose CV includes work at Tate Modern, to produce a comment on our times.
Well, you won't be surprised to learn it ain't pretty but it is oddly reassuring.
You enter the fourth floor gallery and it's a much bigger experience than I expected. Scale is important in art as in life, and there are wonderful cardboard slogans all around.
Essentially, they sum up what it is to be human in tough times. What is particularly clever, and touching, is the way Liversidge has broken up his statements to reflect our Covid (and Brexit, frankly) dislocation.
So we get big capital lettered, primary colour statements round the room. This makes the point via font and line breaks. Also, the cheap cardboard and kids' primary school colours show anybody can relate to this or do it or plot the revolution.
There is a narrative arc in the room, unusual in installation or propaganda art in countries such as Russia where the phallic raised arm is repetitive, almost boring. It moves from the artist and spectator pleasurably near drowning - references to waves rising etc - to the quotes two fellow spectators picked out.
Aoife Burns liked Liversidge's slogan 'at our most vulnerable' and Jordan Doherty liked 'Don't Not Try'.
So do I, incidentally, and feel this show beautifully illustrates the good stuff, and the necessarily angry stuff, that's come out of the plague year. As the man painted, it's all about HOPE.
:: Runs until January 24 (themaclive.com).
