The building at 52 Roscoe Street lies on one of Liverpool’s back streets around the Ropewalks area, amongst derelict looking padlocked warehouses and businesses selling car parts, so you’d be forgiven for not realising that artists are busying away behind one of the doors! Although the official opening night at 52 Roscoe Street was on the 30th September the gallery opened properly to the public on 5th October, still putting up signs and arranging the work as curious people found their way through the doors. | "...you’re greeted by a huge white SAAB elevated off the floor in the middle of the room - then you realise that it has a rocket and wings attached!" | |
It seems a little misleading to call the space an ‘art gallery’ as such, as this conjures an impression of white walls and art meticulously placed ready for viewing. The old building reads more like a working artist’s studio with old furniture left for artists to sit round on in the middle of the room, and no attempt to disguise the paint pealing off the walls or odd bits of art work left around unfinished. The ‘Meta-Conceptual Gallery’ as it’s been named (no I’m not to sure what it means either!) has a different charm to other independent galleries such as View Two or Arena, with a freedom and creativity remnant of days spent trying out new ideas at art college. The Art Organisation specialises in finding a new purpose for run down old buildings, utilizing the semi-derelict buildings and transforming them into galleries and performance spaces across the country in places such as London, Kent, Margate and now Liverpool! A quote on their website reads 'making opportunity where opportunity may not exist' and this is never more true than with newly graduated art students which is perhaps the reason why the ‘Meta-Conceptual Gallery’s’ first exhibition is by recently graduated artists and designers from John Moore’s University. The new gallery space is intended to be artist led, with no rigid structure, set programme or themed proposals to rule what type of work can be made and displayed in the space from experimental art to music, poetry, so the graduate’s were just asked to ‘react to’ the newly occupied space for the opening exhibition. The result is a mixture of relatively literal sculpture and wall pieces with completely off the wall ideas and installations in a very diverse industrial style environment, miles away from the white cube of the atypical gallery space.
 | | Gordon Culshaw's RoShCo work. |
On entering the exhibition, you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d walked into a car mechanic’s workshop as you’re greeted by a huge white SAAB elevated off the floor in the middle of the room - then you realise that it has a rocket and wings attached and is raised at a 45 degree angle as though ready for take off! The work by Gordon Culshaw named 'RoShCo' is a hilariously clever mock entry (or at least I don’t think he’s serious?) in the competition for £150,000 space prize offered by Bigelar Aerospace, to come up with the next vehicle to theoretically reach outer space! The paperwork on the tables and walls around the spacecraft detail the proposition and plans to reduce NASA’s annual budget from $16 billion to around £75 (so far) with the ethos that it’s better to reuse than recycle! The step by step plans and fine points that support the model in the piece such as the note about the jet engine which they used for the model because it’s easier to get hold of - ‘although a rocket engine will be required for the oxygen free environment of outer space’, and the postcard sized application forms to be an astronaut which are then posted on the wall, all add to the humour of the work and make it one of the strongest and imaginative pieces in the exhibition.
 | | Hamish McLain's wall piece. |
In total contrast to the weird and wonderful contraption sitting opposite, Katriona Edrich’s delicate and poetic paper hanging is detailed and enchanting. Invoking memories of a grandmother’s wallpaper, with looping floral designs that have been painstakingly created by pin pricks through a single large sheet of pristine white paper, the piece is drained of colour and emotion. The patterns are insubstantial, hardly noticeable except for the white light shining through the holes and in the middle of each of the curling Morris style designs sits an army tank, small and toy like, un-detailed but un-missable, whispering a statement about war perhaps? Towards the back of the building the work of several artists is arranged on walls and corners, in a slightly more traditional square space. Hamish McLain’s found object’s become the canvas for his childlike painting and doodles hung on the wall. Office style, green chair cushions and children’s table tops are joined with cardboard and tupperware boxes to create an intriguing collage remnant of the old art table that everyone carelessly scribbled on in school! Other interesting pieces in the exhibition include Julie Swillow’s ‘Washing Line Jive’ (the only piece with a name?) which could be a reaction to multiculturalism with African style prints mixed with 80’s style checked shirts and art deco patterns, hung on a line or stuffed as though magically springing to life! The installation by Annie Houston covers a whole corner with rubbles of bricks next to regimented brick walls like a picture from the blitz - but crossed with scene straight out of a Dali painting with tongues on sticks poking upright out of the ground like R2D2’s periscope sticking out of the sand in a Starwars film!
 | | Annie Housten's installation. |
One of my favourite pieces in the exhibition was the room installations created by John O’Hare upstairs which I almost missed completely without realising it was even part of the exhibition! On entering the room I initially tried to make sense of it, the strong smell of varnish and brash Barbie pink, bright blues and yellows made me shun away, unable to make sense of the odd world he’s created where a pink garden bench and fake sprayed tree at side by side with a totally unrealistic pristine bedroom? But I realised that I was bringing knowledge and expectations of what I think a room should be in to an art gallery which has no such rules or reasoning. The rooms reminded me of a cartoon world, where nothing made sense and didn’t need to because anything is possible. The contrasting bright colours are reminiscent of a Rhubarb an Custard sketch - but with straight pristine lines instead, it could’ve been the fumes from the varnish (!) but I felt as if I’d walked up the stairs and opened the door into another world? The space at 52 Roscoe Street seems full of experimental and fresh ideas, but they don’t seem to mesh together properly, challenging the viewer perhaps a little too much and leaving the exhibition as a whole with a confusing uncoordinated feel. The artists I spoke to say they see the space as more of an ‘artist community’ that a gallery in the usual sense, which perhaps frees it of the need to make the art work flow or feel coherent in any way? On the other hand perhaps there’s something to be said for making things a little easier on the viewer, and there’s a reason the larger established galleries spend time carefully placing the work in a specific way? | 
