Peter Liversidge’s double whammy show As Sculpture, which straddled both CGP’s The Gallery and its satellite space Dilston Grove in London’s Southwark Park, was devoted to patrolling the perameters of sculpture and performance. During its month-long run, the many and various exchanges between audiences and artworks were triggered through a live programme of DJs and stand up comics, as well as a new film featuring the comedian Phill Jupitus delivering a stream of jokes written by patients and staff at the Royal London Hospital. Also on show were works including the words “Hello” and “Always” spelt out in shining light bulbs. Then there was my personal favourite: a bundle of tree branches, many gathered from the surrounding park, precariously attached to the wall by a single nail and rendered disquietingly ritualistic with its dangling display of a mass of rubber bands, picked up by the artist from cities, towns and villages worldwide.
On Sunday (29 October), this most engaging of exhibitions came to a grand and appropriately all-encompassing finale with a stirring choral performance of Icelandic sea songs delivered by a choir of 40 non-professional singers, directed by the renowned composer and choral conductor Esmeralda Conde Ruiz. The other undoubted star of the show was the imposing raw space of Dilston Grove, a former mission church built in the early 20th century from poured concrete. With its soaring Romanesque-style interior, it was originally designed to provide the best acoustics for live song. This it did with a vengeance, and the experience was made all the more dramatic by plunging the audience into darkness—the only illumination coming from head torches worn by the individual singers and Liversidge’s small blue neon “&” sign glowing on the back wall.
Louisa Buck
After an uplifting 45 minutes of glorious sound reverberating through the gloom, sustenance of a more physical kind was provided over in the main gallery. This time Liversidge offered another most welcome live intervention in the form of a barbecued Lincolnshire sausage feast, made from his great grandfather’s special recipe. All in all, a most heart—and stomach—warming finissage and absolutely my kind of relational aesthetics.