Greenland Street

Catherine Sullivan - Triangle of Need
Mustafa Hulusi - Cennet Bahçesi
SIMPARCH - drum n basin
Brian Griffiths - The Only Living (or Your Lonely Saucer Eyes)
19th October – 1st December 2007, reopens 20th February – 20th April 2008

Reviewed by Claudia Tanner

Skateboarders are not usually invited into art galleries, but they are at Greenland Street, the city’s newest modern art centre.
The regeneration in Liverpool is resulting in the outlawing of street skateboarding, and it is good to see a response, albeit temporary, to the “perceived decline in street culture".
Drum 'n' Basin is a major new work by US collective SIMPARCH, comprising a swimming-pool sized basin and 40ft long pipe.
Thursday nights are proving popular with local skaters taking advantage of the opportunity to perform breathtaking tricks on this remarkable large-scale installation.
Greenland Street consists of former industrial buildings at the old port in Liverpool, which were transformed into an impressive 2,500 sqm of gallery space by the A Foundation last year.
The three other major autumn commissions include a series of paintings based on photographs of gardens, an intense film work and a theatre-inspired sculpture display.
Painter Mustafa Hulusi, known for his unsolicited fly-posting campaigns in London’s East End, exhibits a series of distinctive, large-scale works featuring flowers and fruits native to Cyprus.
These hyper-real paintings, entitled Cennet Bahcesi (meaning The Heavenly Garden in Turkish), are saturated in colour and light and have a truly mesmorising and otherworldly quality. The artist is clearly prompting questions about the trustworthiness of visual culture.
Catherine Sullivan’s Triangle of Need consists of three films in three rooms, each displayed across multiple screens. Initially overwhelming, it is set to an original score performed in an invented language based on Neanderthal speech, with choreography based on the movement of the extinct hominid.
The American artist describes it as “a complex story about evolution, class, wealth and poverty, and the inequalities and injustices in our global economy.”
London-based sculptor Brian Griffiths was awarded this year’s Furnace Commission, the gallery’s annual project for artists to develop their work on an ambitious scale.
In The Only Living (or Your Lonely Saucer Eyes) has drawn upon the devices of showmanship from theatre and sideshows that “exaggerate scale and manipulate perspective”. The centrepiece is a striking 23-foot high giant sculpture of a concrete face.
If the Turner Prize exhibition at Liverpool Tate gets a tad pretentious for you, then Greenland Street is just a stroll down the road. The friendly staff, specialist art bookshop and café providing free wireless access are a bonus.

The exhibition is open from Wednesday to Sunday, 12-6pm, and until 8pm on Thursdays.
For more information visit www.afoundation.org.uk or telephone 0151 706 0600.

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