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'Remake' exhibition @ Polished T.

A new breed of art gallery @ Polished T

A friend invited me to an exhibition opening one night at a gallery on Duke Street called Polished T, these events are usually quite formal, largely professionals sipping wine and mulling around talking about art, so I was slightly surprised to see crowds of young people spilling out onto the streets, laughing and talking around the steps where a small sign read ‘Polished T’.

The gallery was full to the brim of people of all ages, from the hip and trendies on the Liverpool art and music scene, to the middles aged hippies and art lovers in suits straight from work. The wine stocks seemed never ending, and the atmosphere was social and creative as people chatted surrounded by an interesting installation by three local up and coming artists, made up of sculpture, painting and drawing linked together with pink and green, and squares reminiscent of a Battemburg cake, or the sugar alphabet sweets I used to get from the sweets van when I was little!

I’d done a quick Google search prior to my arrival (other search engines are available!), which started to unravel my suspicions that this was smarter than your average exhibition space. The gallery claims to have Liverpool’s only legal graffiti wall for one thing as well as magazines and clothing unavailable anywhere in Liverpool, but what struck me most of all was the over arching claim that this gallery is totally open to all sculptors, painters, photographers, graf artists, film makers, fashion designers - to display their art how they want, without any editorial judgement or hierarchy. Could this be for real?

The current space is a sort of disposable gallery as it’s due to be knocked down to make way for the new Paradise Street developments in the new year. The gallery has a shelf life of exactly 180 days from when the directors took it over to the get out day in December, but what are the plans for the space, and exactly who are these people taking on the mission to help struggling artists and designers everywhere? I decided the best way to understand this strange and admirable oddity of the art world was to chat to one of the Directors Peter Kellett.

Where did it all start?

We established ourselves as a design agency and publishing agency under us being a kind of collective. Our first publication was Plastic Rhino, and it’s been produced to act as a kind of support network for artist’s and enable people to contribute easier. We’ve found that a lot of friends who were artist’s or photographers could never get their work documented because the kind of main stream pop culture magazines are very hard to get into, and to get your work published on an international level is really, really difficult. So our goal was to produce a pop magazine that would sit alongside magazines like Dazed & Confused. Plastic Rhino is a concept driven magazine, it’s always got an over arching theme such as ‘Keeping it Rhyl’ which was a day out in Rhyl and it was produced in that day.

Polished T the magazine…

From that we had an idea to produce another publication, which was a fictitious gallery space ideally, a really honest publication which would just allow artists to be able to exhibit their work, and there would be no hierarchies and there would be no editor really who’d be there to say what was the theme of this month, it just enabled us to allow contributors yet again to put work in. We also wanted to bring in known artists to help the unknown artist in climbing the ladder so to speak, it just helps them and the kudos of being able to say that they’ve been published with a named artist always helps.

It was just about seeing the magazine as a platform and seeing a magazine as a gallery space which you could just fill it with work, and not necessarily do what a magazine tends to be such as contents page and features - but just a place to have their work documented. The main thing was to have all the artists contact details that they wished to have in there, so if an agency wanted to use them they’d contact them direct, we wouldn’t act as an agent for them.

And Polished T the gallery was born…

Inside Polished T

We were lucky to then find a space, and we thought ‘wouldn’t it be great to have an actual gallery and treat it in much the same way as the magazine’. We found this place and we found that it had a short lease up until January, from the day we took it on we realised we had 180 days and we thought it would be really good to then kind of re-address the way galleries function. Galleries tend to have a certain programme so we thought well lets try and get as many shows back to back as possible within the life span of this building, and at the same time we also realised - with working in publishing, that there was no where to get design resources from, fashion magazines and such within the city centre, so we decided that we’d retail magazines from the space.

Then with working with artists and designers we decided we wanted to bring in their work as well, so the magazine (Polished T) becomes 4-dimensional almost because it’s mirroring their work, it’s exhibiting their work in the space but it’s also incorporating the things that they produce, whether it be the T-shirts or the toys, lamp shades or furniture - and giving a space to hopefully sell it. We wanted to produce this space that had a different way of looking at how a gallery should function, and a different way of looking at how retail can work as well.

All the retail relates back to the artists, it acts as kind of six degrees of separation, once you start kind of speaking to designers and artists on a daily basis and they’re looking to contribute you find that they do T-shirts, or they’re a new label starting up and they’re looking for exposure, and we can offer them exposure through fashion shoots in Plastic Rhino and we can offer them exposure by putting their product directly in to the store.

Where does the funding come from for the gallery?

We’re completely self-funded, we want to remain independent. We have a business which is the design and graphics agency which is obviously a self running business, we fund this activity but hopefully we’ll made money from the retail side of it, we don’t ever see that we’re going to make masses of money from that, but we just want to put out something that’s completely honest, and is there to support artists really.

We have drinks sponsors for the shows on and off, but sometimes we fund that side of it as well - because it’s important to support that artist. The channels of getting funding are so lengthy and convoluted that for many artists it’s often a brick wall, and everybody’s different - not everyone’s good at filling in forms, and everybody isn’t great at writing proposals, but they could be really great at what they do, so why should they have to jump through all these hoops to get noticed?

How have people found out about the gallery - have you marketed it at all or has it all just been through done through word of mouth?

We’re really low key on signage on the door, with our design agency we work a lot with marketing campaigns and how retail works, so we have an understanding for that, we can see how big companies work - and they can’t really afford to do types of experimental things that we want to do. We wanted to experiment with that kind of ‘mind set marketing’, the six degrees of separation - you invite people that you know and hope that they’ll come.

I feel that young people, and any people now want to experience things first hand for themselves and not be told by big posters and outdoor marketing what’s cool and what isn’t cool, we kind of want them to come into a space and feel like they’ve found it for the first time, and go away and tell friends if they think it’s good. I think that’s how we can judge how successful the space is going to be in 6 months time, if we’re still getting the audiences that we’re getting -and each show brings its own different audiences.

We see the same thing with retail, people will come in and hopefully buy a T shirt that you can’t get anywhere in Liverpool, and somebody will spot that T shirt and say where did you get it from? And hopefully it will work like that! We want to constantly change the face of the retail as much as the show changes, so they’ll come in every few weeks and the layout of the store will be different and the products on display will be different or added to.

Exhibitions @ Polished T

We’re always expanding the magazines I think we’re up to something like 70 titles now. They’re just titles that you generally can’t find in Liverpool, and then there’s the standard like Ten and Dazed & Confused that you will find else where, but that are still a valuable resource to people who would be interested in the other magazines that we stock. So they’re design related, architecture related, fashion related, as well as many independent magazines as well, which is good to have.

So what have you got coming up?

The series of shows are booked now until the end of the gallery space, but then we are now looking to book shows for the next two years really in the new space, so as of October 1st we’ll be able to over lap and have shows running there.

The next show (29th September) is going to be a show called ‘Supermanray’ by four conceptual artists that are coming up from London which are really good, that will run for three weeks so it will be interesting to see that kind of standard of work coming through and bringing artists up from London. The following show (20th October) is with the photographer Mark McNulty, we’re in the middle of producing a book called ‘Rocketships and Windmills’ which is documenting crazy golf courses around Britain, and for that event for the launch of the book we’re installing a crazy golf course throughout the whole space really, and that will be really good!  After that is ‘Homotopia’ (2nd November), which is a Trademark Retrospective - it’s good to straight away have that very different mix of sets of work there.

The on the 17th of November 55DSL are bringing a Trojan Records night, we can’t really say who the DJ’s are going to be but the DJ’s are going to be top names, and each of our shows have after show events, so that will be really good. Then although it’s to be confirmed, Playstation are looking to do an event in December, and following that is the final event which is the 'Sleepover Party'.

The idea behind the Sleepover Party is that we’re inviting Graf artists from all over Europe to come and stay the night, because we will have moved into our new space by then. Every surface in this building is available for them to use and just do what ever they want! So they’ll have 24 hours or so, and once they’ve finished the work we’ll have a final party to just invite everybody in to see what they’ve done. It should be really good, the standard of Graf artists that are coming, it should be brilliant.

Do you think you will have the same amount of freedom in the new space?

Exhibitions @ Polished T

Well it’s easy with a space that’s going to be knocked down to have no restrictions what so ever - but we want to apply that to the new space as well. When Supermanray curator Matt Golden came up with the artists that were involved in that, they couldn’t believe when they asked ‘can we do that? Can we move that? Can we take this partition down? And we said ‘do what ever you want!’ They thought it was so refreshing as they’re usually told what they can and can’t do immediately and there are many set guidelines.

We want to keep it changing we want to keep it open to absolutely anybody to do what they want really, and never have that elitism of turning round and saying ‘oh no that’s not us’, because we’re not a voice, we’re not opinion formers. We want it to be refreshing as well for people who come in, not to think that ‘they’re only into that one thing’ or whatever. Well we want to showcase whatever’s out there really it’s as simple as that.

How can people get involved?

Basically there’s many channels, through the publication Polished T where there’s email addresses to email for contribution, they can call us or post by all means.

I mean we get really excited by what we get and what we see, and we respond to it immediately. The editor of Polished T, Johnty O’Conner gets floods of work everyday. It’s an amazing standard and it’s from Italy, Germany right across Europe and throughout Britain, we want to support artists in Liverpool but we also want to bring to Liverpool things that people aren’t going to see. The Biennial is great for that, but in-between that there’s the Tate, but there aren’t any little independents bringing in the work.

Check out the new place from 1st October off Parr Street, in between Cream and Mello Mello and keep up to date with the latest news from their website below!