Dark side of game shows explored

May 27 2008 Liverpool Daily Post

ARTIST and performer Susannah Hewlett presents a humorous look at the dark side of Saturday night TV in a one-off live event tomorrow night at the Bluecoat.

It’s Not You is a series of "site-specific happenings" inhabiting different spaces around the gallery, drawing on Hewlett’s fascination with the TV game show and its familiar sense of anticipation and deflation.

The artist subverts emblematic moments from the world of TV light entertainment, humorously layering motifs of familiarity while exploiting the darker clichés and stereotypes within popular culture.

It’s Not You works around a special late night opening of the Variable Capital exhibition in the gallery, where the audience is invited to seek out the work around the Bluecoat.

Hewlett makes inter-disciplinary work for gallery, theatre and other performance spaces, often playfully disrupting the structures of venues by working in an interventionalist way.

It’s Not You is a Live Art UK touring commission, which seeks to develop unexpected ways of engaging with live art for audiences who may have never experienced it before.

The piece recruits new performers through open auditions as it tours to different cities and is adapted in response to the specifics of each location.

The Bluecoat is the final stop in the Live Art UK tour and works with performers from Liverpool and the surrounding area.

The free event takes place tomorrow night between 6pm and 10pm. No tickets or booking are required.