For curator Lorenzo Fusi, the best Biennials never forget where they came from. For him, the word on the street is far more important than the sensational headlines…
Talk about culture shock. You’re the curator of Siena’s Contemporary Art Centre: a striking series of galleries set within, and connected to, the the 1,000 year old Santa Maria della Scala – originally home to one of the first hospitals in Europe.
Frescoed ceilings and honey coloured walls yield to angular glass and steel walkways leading on to light filled new exhibition spaces: oversized windows offering both a clear view of the art within, and a frame for the harmonious town scape beyond.
A year later, you’re wandering around the skeletal remains of Rapid Hardware. ‘More Lighting Upstairs’ signs falsely beckon you onwards. But you’ll find no frescoes here. Nor, for that matter, any plastic chandeliers.
For Lorenzo Fusi, curator for the 6th Liverpool International Biennial, the last 12 months has been an object lesson in how to accentuate the culture and eliminate the shock. And transforming the venerable hardware store into a temporary exhibition space is just part of the process.
“With every city, the important thing is to dig beneath the crust,” Fusi says. Do this, he believes, and you’ll find more things that unite our cultural hubs than divide them.
“Like Siena, Liverpool feels a long way from the capital. On the periphery…” he pauses, “… a little disconnected.”
To a curator intent on making his mark, cities on the edge are an excellent place to do it.
“If you’re caught up in the flux, which London and the major art centres can be, it’s all too easy to get distracted; for your focus to be carried away with the next big thing. Liverpool’s not as prey to that. It’s self-centered, but in a way that encourages creativity. It operates to its own rhythms, but still manages to be current, and vital,” Fusi says.
But Liverpool, perhaps because of its relatively compact core, and its self-sufficient milieu isn’t the easiest city for a new arrival to get to know.
“It took me a while to get understood, or to find the opportunity to get integrated,” says the softly spoken, animated Italian who’s curated shows around the world. “Larger cities have niches into which you can comfortably slot. Liverpool’s too small to have niches!” Fusi says.
Not that he wasted time waiting for the invites to drop through the post. Fusi didn’t have the luxury – there was the small matter of Britain’s biggest Biennial to oversee and, specifically, curate its strand focusing on art in the public realm.
As before, this is the pivot around which the entire Biennial rotates – amounting to around 50 percent of the event’s artworks, and, doubtless, even more of its attention.
Fusi arrived to the single word brief: Touched. There was, he said, no instructions beyond this.
We imagine him arriving at John Lennon Airport, whereupon a man in a Homburg hat whispered the solitary word in his ear, and vanished in the mists of the Mersey.
Sadly, even the Biennial doesn’t operate along quite so quixotic lines. Still, the task remained: build a world class biennial based on a brief that’s at once simple, yet fiendishly ambivalent.
“I needed to find my own interpretation,” Fusi says, “It was a unique way to approach a show. But it helped me focus on how, in my opinion, art can really touch a place, and its people.
“Obviously, my starting point was that of the Biennial’s mission – ‘engaging art, people and place’,” he says, “but in the public realm the boundaries between the makers and consumers of art are often blurred. Then it becomes a case of what is being touched, and by whom?”
Engaging emotions – whichever way the engagement flows – is something Fusi has been grappling with for the past decade or so: “It’s something I deeply share with the founders of the Biennial, and why I was so excited to be offered this role,” he says. It’s also the reason Fusi was so intent on leaving the medieval precincts of Siena, and heading to a post-industrial northern English city a full 18 months before the show began.
“I’m not one of those globe-trotting curators,” he says, “I have no time for art that’s imposed into a place, like some alien strain. From the outset, I was committed to the Liverpool Biennial full time, dedicating all my energies to it,” Fusi says, eliciting a clear distinction between his modus operandi and many who’ve gone before him (we all remember the Capital of Culture artistic director who worked out of an office in Melbourne, and recoil at the thought processes that led to that particular appointment).
“The public realm, by its very nature, is political – it’s of the people,” Fusi says, believing that you can only truly operate within it with the consent of the rest of us. “I was very aware of the need for collaboration, not just between myself and the artist, but between the myself and the city,” he says.
It’s not a trick that all Biennials pull off. Many of the bigger art events seem to exist in bubble wrap: two week jamborees for artists, agents, buyers and sellers to clean up, cash in and create headlines, with no real attempt to communicate with the city that surrounds it.
Liverpool’s event, thanks to the support of the city council and the engagement of the rest of us, has always been able to bleed out from the galleries and onto the streets.
“I want the Biennial to be perceived by future generations as something that has a lasting, tangible benefit. Art is a great way to empower people, and if I can facilitate this processes, I’ll have succeeded in my role,” he says. Fusi’s take on public art is one of the most obvious ways in which this year’s event will feel subtly – and in some ways, markedly – different to the rest.
“To me, the public realm isn’t all about the ‘big hitters’, or the show-stopping set pieces. To me, that’s far too limited, and it’s not something that, beyond the spectacle, has any lasting impact.”
Fusi’s preference, for art which operates on a more intimate scale, is all about layers, about reflection. The slow reveal. Don’t even think of a Swarovski-encrusted spider perched on a hi-wire web, this year, then…
“Of course, you need the easy catches to spread the word,” he says, “but you also need artwork with a more complex narrative, like Liverpool’s itself.”
All too aware of Liverpool’s strong political and social conscience, Fusi’s approach remains steadfastly nuanced.
“It would be easy to imprint political messages on a piece, just to seek the approval of the crowd,” he says, “but that would be a banal gesture; a quick win. Many artists operate like this, but I’m far more interested in those who seek to convey their messages in a more interesting way.
The Biennial does ‘Brick Up The Mersey Tunnels’ is, we imagine, still some way from being commissioned.
“Densely layered artworks are those I favour, but these are often the most beautiful,” Fusi says, pausing. “Yes…there’s a lot of beauty in this year’s show, but it’s emotionally challenging, and a little anti-glamorous too.”
Sounds like, in Fusi, Liverpool has found its match.
David Lloyd
. We are looking for menders to mend clothes and ‘be’ the artist Lee Mingwei for the festival. It’s a rather beautiful project and a lot less mortifying to bring your clothes to the artist to get mended than bringing them to your mother.
