Bido Lito June 2021 Issue 114

Invernomuto & Jim C. Nedd, GRITO – Las Brisas de Febrero, 2021. Cotton Exchange Building - Photo: Rob Battersby
the entire programme, you must walk through every
corner of the city and in doing so you are immersed in its
context: the docks, the Georgian Quarter, the Ropewalks
– their history, what that history represents and their
roles in the formation of the city. At times, the context
overwhelms the art. Yael David’s Wingspan of the
Captive (2021) at Central Library is almost diminished
by the grandeur of the room itself, and the surrounding
displays of material that inspired the work – the rich 19th
century illustrations of American birds by J. J. Audubon
and letters from the Hornbys, the Liverpool family the
room was named after – make the sculpture itself look
more like an accompaniment to the collection, designed
to complement, rather than a work born independently
of inspiration.
At other times, the city and the art meld so
seamlessly that it is a wonder that the piece had not
sprung from the very spot it stands. Rashid Johnson’s
Stacked Heads (2020) is one such work. Set in the
Albert Dock, the two bronze ‘heads’ are covered in
etchings of the abstract faces from Johnson’s Anxious
Men series, with yucca and cacti plants positioned to
look as though they had grown organically, as though the
sculpture had always been there. The piece encourages
contradictions: the plants are not indigenous but can
survive the harsh saline winds that never seem to drop
along the docks; it fits with the other metal sculptures
in the area – the statue of a dock horse, a propeller from
the RMS Lusitania, old railway machinery – but its crude
style and totem pole form makes it seem foreign, almost
tribal. When first opened to the public, its positioning
next to the temporarily installed rainbow bridge made
it appear small and unassuming despite its ten feet,
experienced as something you have passed every day,
made inconsequential by its familiarity, imbued with
a faded permanence as something that has and will
always be there.
If the uneasy co-existence of nativeness and
foreignness is a muted whisper in Johnson’s piece, then
it is an unbridled scream in Invernomuto & Jim C. Nedd’s
Grito – Las Brisas de Febrero (2021) at the Cotton
Exchange. The visit itself feels climactic, as the building
is rarely open to the public. The art is displayed in the
basement, underneath the modern, recently regenerated
offices, where it is old and cold, with empty rooms full
of peeling paint, moulded cracked windows, exposed
woodwork and metal chains hanging from the ceiling.
Through the rooms, in front of four empty white plastic
chairs, a large screen plays footage of a pico competition
– street parties where neon-painted sound systems go
head to head playing records – in the Colombian village
of Palenque. The film is a celebration of culture, of
kinship, and plays almost in defiance of the building it is
being played in. The vibrancy, sound and movement of
the bodies on screen contrasts harshly with the empty
dereliction of the building so much so that a strange
sensation of jealously emits from the walls, as though
REVIEWS
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