Caravanners just keep rolling along

Sep 22 2008 by Vicky Anderson, Liverpool Daily Post

Caravanners just keep rolling along

THE much-loved Caravan Gallery has rolled into Liverpool again for the Biennial. The old-style caravan is filled with quirky photographs of some of the city’s unintentionally funny or poignant places, and offers the “alternative visitor guide” to the Capital of Culture.

Unfortunately, it’s a short stay for the gallery, which is set up in the Courtyard of the Bluecoat today and tomorrow only.

With a sign outside proclaiming “tourist information but not as you know it!”, the gallery captures snapshots of a Liverpool so down-to-earth as to be almost surreal, including the stall at St John’s Market selling pigs’ heads for £2 and the shoe shop called Trainees.

As well as the humorous side to the project, artists Chris Teasdale and Jan Williams also like to look at the regeneration of the UK, and have taken pictures of areas such as Everton Brow and Speke over the years to capture the changes – whether successful refurbs or just seeing how high the weeds have grown, in the time in between.

“We never go anywhere without our cameras,” said Chris Teasdale.

“People were so taken with the cards and images, it has just evolved from there.”

Their books, calendars, postcards and other merchandise are sold next to the caravan.

The gallery now has more than 100,000 pictures in its archive taken up and down the UK (only a small amount is ever on display at one time), and has even toured Japan.

Chris and Jan also like their visitors to fill in surveys to find out what local people think of their area and the UK in general, from what they like best and worst about their town to finding out if they have ever won meat in a raffle.

Jan said: “The good thing about the caravan is it attracts everyone from the top curators in the arts world to the workmen passing in their fluorescent jackets.

“Regeneration is a big theme in our work, making a record of all the things that have been disappearing.

“I’ve always been particularly fond of Merseyside.”

FOR more information, visit www.thecaravangallery.co.uk

vickyanderson