Let's say goodbye to the white rooms of gallery exhibitions!

The visit to the 'This is Sculpture' exhibition at the Liverpool Tate was a completely new gallery experience for me. Instead of white walls and a very minimal interior, I was presented with disco balls, a dance floor and headphones which blasted funky tunes. This changed the way I saw the work in the room as the lighting varied from the dancing lights and it was presented in a lively, loud environment, unlike a normal gallery experience.


Many of the sculptures were marvelous and really inspiring as the style in which they were made varied from artist to artist. For example, Ron Muecks life like 'Ghost' towered over you immediately as you entered the room. I couldn't help but be fascinated at how real the sculpture appeared. To me, it actually felt more like a dead body instead of a ghost. It was lifeless but looked as if there was emotion which I found strange. Another sculpture which I really liked was Reg Butler's 'Girl', whilst nothing particularly original, I just liked how the body was represented with no real effort on correct proportions and weight distribution through the body. The thin limbs could represent the gentle nature of the girl, or could represent malnourishment. What I found particular interesting is the pose. Unlike a normal stance, the girl appeared to be taking off a top but as to its meaning im uncertain.

I was happy to see a piece by Anthony Gormley as this was my third encounter with his work. 'Mould, Hole & Passage' was definitely an interesting piece, and like many of his other works showed the body in some unusual and some what disturbing poses. I did like how the body appeared to be much thicker than it is. One of the sculptures that caught my eye from this piece was that of, who I'd imagine to be is him, curled up into a ball on his back. To me this shows the idea of being a closed person who likes to keep to themselves.


As well as the Tate, I visited numerous other places around Liverpool. Even though the city is only half an hour away from Manchester, it felt as if I was in a different country. I'm not exactly sure why, but it just didn't feel like my home city, almost as if their way of life was different. I did, however, like seeing the banksy-esque graffiti plastered on some walls down the smaller side streets and would love to see more of that type of graffiti around Manchester.