Tatton Park Biennial curator Jordan Kaplan on this year’s show

Feb 10 2010 by Laura Davis, Liverpool Daily Post

There are some weird and wonderful works under way for Tatton Park’s Biennial, as Laura Davis discovers

IT LOOKS like an Austin Allegro, drives like an Austin Allegro, but smells like a Rolls-Royce.

There’s also a piece of ice being kept cool by a row of solar panels, and a pineapple fossilising inside an industrial-looking contraption.

What strange world is this? You guessed it, it’s the world of conceptual art.

This year, the region will have two Biennials of contemporary visual art to amaze, puzzle, enrage and thrill.

As well as Liverpool’s in the autumn, there will be the second ever Tatton Park Biennial running from May to September. But while the first will be urban-centric, the Cheshire show will be a very rural event, says Jordan Kaplan, Tatton’s co-curator.

It is interesting that Kaplan should have accepted her role, as she is fiercely critical of many biennials – though not Liverpool’s.

“They’re seen, rather cynically, as opportunities to get your place on the map, but very often they don’t have anything to do with the places where they’re being held,” she explains. “They’re almost marketing tricks.”

Tatton will be different, she insists, because instead of inviting famous artists to exhibit their work in the park, all included pieces will have been made in response to the stately home’s surrounding landscape and history.

“We’re looking at what creates human identity – what about the landscape, does that inform who you are, how you see yourself?,” she asks.

“Is it the politics? This is an old estate where you had the class structure in place up until the 1960s, at which point it goes from being very private to very public very quickly. A lot of the same families who worked on the estate continue to do so, but now they’re employees of the local council rather than the local lord.”

Kaplan and her co-curator, Danielle Arnaud, approached a number of artists they knew by reputation as well as launching two open submissions – one to artists from the North-West and the other to those specifically from Cheshire. The result is a wide range of projects that Kaplan refers to as “experiments”.

The Austin Allegro that smells like a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud is being devised by Glasgow-based Clara Ursitti, who is creating a special synthetic scent that will be released inside the vehicle in short puffs.

The lump of ice has been thought up by former Tate Liverpool artist -in-residence Neville Gabie, who will be cutting it from a iceberg in Greenland. He will then bring it by boat to Liverpool Docks, documenting its journey through film and a blog.

“One of the reasons we’re so fond of this is that it’s actually quite a troublesome piece of work,” says Kaplan. “It’s not particularly green. He’s going to extraordinary lengths when it’s very questionable whether he should take a piece of ice from what’s left in the Arctic.

“It’s really a commentary on the way each of us in the developed world is willing to acknowledge climate change but it becomes very difficult when we have to change our behaviours.”

Not all commissions have turned out as expected, even at this relatively early stage, she adds.

Serbian-born Breda Beban has decided to move away from her usual medium of film to create a giant dollhouse and a book.

“We’re not particularly interested in working with big names, we’re interested in working with big ideas,” says Kaplan.

“The form it takes isn’t necessarily as important as the ideas behind it.”