Not Turner – but it’s far more disturbing
Dec 3 2007 by Phil Key, Liverpool Daily Post

WHILE the art world prepares for the Turner Prize award tonight at the Tate Liverpool, Merseyside has already staged its own alternative event.

A number of galleries around the city have been showing exhibitions of what is cheekily titled The alTURNERtive Prize 07.

They have been put together by the Merseyside Stop the War Coalition and the exhibitions have a simple theme, “art against war and occupation”.

One of the major shows is at the View Two Gallery, in Mathew Street, where the owner, architect Ken Martin, confessed that he was going to stage the show in one of his smaller rooms.

“But when I saw the quality, I realised it required our largest space.”

He even considers the exhibition more important than the official Turner show at the Tate. “This is more serious art,” he said.

While the View Two show does have a serious message, there are artists who use some unexpected material – including Lego bricks.

The artist Lego Festo – not a real name but one selected to secure anonymity – uses Lego and Lego figures to create a piece titled Ghosts of Abu Ghraib.

The figures are all in little Lego cells undergoing torture with buckets on their heads, chained or beaten. The use of a toy building block as material adds an unsettling touch. Jamie Andrews also used a toy – toy soldiers in his case – to create 10,000 men, the result looking like a bush but actually made up of tiny (dead?) soldiers. It was based on the rhyme of the Grand Old Duke of York.

Rather grimmer is Peter Offord’s Mission Accomplished, basically a distorted skull with a headphone.

West Kirby artist Marko Muller uses burnt driftwood, rusty chains and bits of glass to create his assemblage titled Out of the Strong Came Forth Sweetness.

Leon Khan has some of the largest and strongest images, distorted photo-collages including Market Madness full of bodies and War Drive, more men with tanks and horses.

Jai Redman’s History 2003 uses more toy soldiers battling in an open book, apparently created from “lead and dust”. Another Wirral artist, Christine O’Reilly Wilson, has a tall striped abstract Fight for Freedom while Sharon Bentley’s Verboten Gedachtnis is a triptych slightly covered by net through which appear to be dead bodies.

It is a disturbing exhibition which demands attention. There are other shows in the series at The People’s Centre Gallery, Mount Pleasant; Pushka restaurant, Rodney Street; Domino Gallery, Upper Newington; and The Quarter Restaurant, Falkner Street.