THE THRILL OF IT ALL

About

Any exhibition of work by Peter Liversidge (born Lincoln, 1973) can reliably be predicted to present the unpredictable. Liversidge makes work in almost every conceivable medium: painting & drawing, photography, performance and sculpture all play their part. The tone of his work shifts from the playful to the poignant but is always underpinned by a generosity that unifies and characterises his distinct and varied approach. Given the uncertainty that a Liversidge exhibition presents, there is always a dependably reassuring starting point: the artist sitting alone at his kitchen table with an old manual typewriter writing Proposals. These hand-typed pages, presenting suggestions for performances and artworks alongside incidental thoughts and ideas, are then mailed to the curator or gallery director and present an array of possibilities for the ensuing exhibition. Over the past few years Liversidge has worked in this way with an increasingly diverse body of people and places including: Proposals for Liverpool (Tate Gallery, 2008), Proposals for Barcelona (Centre d'art Santa Monica, 2007), Proposals for Brussels (with the British Council for the Europalia Festival, 2007), Proposals for Miami (Art Basel Miami 2009) and Jupiter Proposals (the newly opened sculpture park Jupiter Artland, May 2009). Forthcoming projects include 50 Proposals to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (which will be presented at the 2010 Edinburgh Art Festival), a major new work that will be unveiled at Jupiter Artland on 1st May, 2010. All 160 Ingleby Proposals will collated into an artist's book (the book, in common with all Liversidge's projects, becoming the first realized artwork) and will be available from 15th February.