Incommunicado in Liverpool, Street Art and Scouse Humour

I have just returned from Liverpool and am reclining in a prone position after three days of hectic culture ( it is the City of Culture after all for 2008). Loved the city but glad to be home as have mountains of work to do on the novel edits. The Tate at Albert Dock had a couple of good exhibitions on. The most moving piece I found was an installation piece by the Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum called Incommunicado. It involved an old fashioned metal hospital cot which had the mesh wire support for the mattress replaced by parallel lines of razor sharp cheese wire.

Somehow the image of an icon of institutionalised care and the presence of such potential harm and damage yelled at me from across the gallery and as they have postcards you are invited to write on to say which piece ‘spoke to you’ I left my thoughts on what the dialogue was between this piece and I, for what they are worth.No doubt I will return to this in my head via a poem or something else in due course. You can only put some things in the pending tray for so long before they get lost, others, even if you file them away in the basement archives still manage to keep nagging at you through six flights of stairs and fireproof doors until you address them.I think Incommunicado may be an example of the latter.

Liverpool is bursting with street art at the best of times, both official and unofficial, so for the rest of this blog I will just give you some photographs I took whilst there. A picture is worth a thousand words, or so they say; of course they may have shares in digital camera batteries which cost a fortune and last the heartbeat of a small scared rodent.

Of course the scouse wit was ever present, the prize goes to the small Irish/Scouse workman at the bus stop who, as I passed by, offered up the comment. " Jesus yer Ma must have been frightened by a ladder when she was carrying you, that or you've swallowed a giraffe, either way you's have a great long pair of legs on you, no offence mind luv." None taken.

I and friends are on Youtube now by the way. Scary to see myself thrown into the bearpit of new media culture. Somehow I don't think I will get as many hits as either that kid having his finger bitten by his brother, the chimp washing a cat in a sink or the ahhh moment of those lads meeting back up with the lion they once kept in their flat (they must have been very posh and rich, I could only afford a rat when I was living in London flatland and even that came free courtesy of the Rachman type landlord).I have not given you the links to those, go hunt for yourself dear reader using key words like chimp, cat, sink, boy, brother bite, lion, reunion, posh boys with seventies hair cuts.