Having completed it today I can't recommend too highly the Liverpool: Centre of the Creative Universeexhibition catalogue. It really is an insightful, at times scintillating and always authoritative read. The spirit of it can be expressed in that it left me not looking back at the city's past artistic triumphs, but rather to the present and the future - since closing the book I've spent a while looking online at the work of young Liverpool artists I know, including Sean and Eleanor who I had the privilege of marrying three years ago.
They were among the one hundred and forty artists in the project, Gift, who contributed an object that they bought or found with the intention of using in an artwork, a source of inspiration or a starting point for a work that was never made. In a week-long event at Museum MAN late last year this collection of unused objects and unrealised ideas was offered to the public as gifts. Visitors were invited to take home an object they liked, first agreeing to document their use of it; this documentation will be given, as a gift, to the original contributing artist. Nice idea.
The catalogue contains the best of the visual images from the Tate show. And demonstrates that even Gormley's latched on late, because for a long, long, time in Liverpool we've been up to our necks in wierd, wacky, wonderful works of expressive engagement with the streets, clubs and beaches of our city.
john davies
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