What Big Eyes You Have, Cornerstone Gallery

Feb 14 2006 By Joe Riley, Liverpool Echo

AN EXHIBITION about being over-faced by an eat-as-much-as-you-want menu?

No. Think back. Think a long way back.

Yes...you've guessed correctly: Red Riding Hood talking to the wolf which is disguised as her granny.

Most fairytales are scary, and some like Red Riding Hood and Hansel And Gretel involve dark and mysterious forests.

We are now deep in the territory of this multi-media exhibition by Becca Backhouse and Elizabeth Willow, which emerged from a shared fascination with childhood stories and their enduring effect.

What was the runaway success of a non-budget movie like The Blair Witch Project (1998) down to, if it wasn't a childhood fear of mass of foliage and a complete lack of daylight?

Backhouse and Willow underline how the permanence of such dreads were instilled into infants of a certain age by putting some of the art and narrative on blackboards.

This makes the schoolroom the laboratory of manipulation and fear.

But hang on: Weren't we meant to enjoy fairytales as something extra-curricular to arithmetic and grammar (in the days when grammar was actually taught)?

According to records, there were far worse versions of Red Riding Hood than others, including one that involved both cannibalism and striptease; a prime example of a 16th century tale intended

to highlight apostolic knowledge among women, transformed into a story, which at worst, parodies women and even blames Little Red Riding Hood for her fate.

The exhibition is not without its own undergrowth of artspeak, that impenetrable waffle for which visual artists, rather than actors or musicians, are most guilty.

Backhouse talks of her writing and drawing "co-inhabiting a creative surface" when what she means is that repetition of the oral story and more lasting images move things on.

Cornerstone is an increasingly significant (and desirable) gallery, having already staged an important Adrian Henri retrospective.

The problem is both situation and access.

The Hope At Everton campus, adjacent to St Francis Xavier's Church, is not city centre, which is why flyers still require maps, and correspondence requires the additional "Haigh Street, off Shaw Street" tag.

Hopefully, time and the enticement of quality shows will solve that problem.