Stop shopping, go home and dream

Jul 1 2008 by Vicky Anderson, Liverpool Daily Post

Stop shopping, go home and dream

THE playful and thought-provoking work of Swiss artist Pipilloti Rist is already causing a sensation at Fact.

With two UK premieres and a small retrospective throughout the Wood Street centre’s galleries and media lounge, she forms the “climax” of its 2008 programme, Human Futures.

Fact director Mike Stubbs describes her as “the perfect artist” to do so, as the concept assesses “the fundamental changes coming our way in how we think about our bodies and our environment in what is an increasingly digitally networked society”.

Pipilloti, who combines her own name of Charlotte with that of her heroine, Pippi Longstocking, is at an exciting time in her career, and is moving into directing her first feature film.

A taste of her abilities in this department is Open My Glade, which can be seen on the Clayton Square Big Screen for the duration of the exhibition, and was originally commissioned to be shown in Times Square, in New York.

Curator Laura Sillars said: “We hope that shoppers in Liverpool city centre will enjoy the intervention so much that they stop shopping, go home and dream.

“Her work explores ideas of fearlessness, the body, nature and spirituality, and carves out a space where anything is possible.”

But the talking points so far have been Gravity Be My Friend, taking up the whole of the downstairs gallery, and the charming Das Zimmer (The Room).

Gravity Be My Friend invites the viewer to lie on a mound of carpet and look up to projections on the ceiling, featuring relaxing scenes of nature and sound.

The artist says: “With this work, I want to encompass a flash of consciousness in the spectators’ minds, a kind of mildness to themselves and a relativisation of their problems.”

The Room features an oversized sofa and chair for visitors to clamber on and watch some of the artist’s video work on TV.

“I have always been interested in how the body moves in the room in relation to the work of art. The viewing ritual and physical posture appear almost to be given facts,” she has said.

Pipilotti Rist, 46, burst onto the international art scene in the late 1980s with works inspired by visual art, music, architecture and social politics.

Celebrating the power of self-invention, she mixes fantasy and the everyday in a humorous and kaleidoscopic exploration of the female voice and body in contemporary culture.

Pipilotti Rist’s exhibition can be seen at Fact until August 31, and entry is free.

vickyanderson@dailypost.co.uk