NAVIGATOR

About

Peter Ainsworth / Dave Ball / Milo Brennan / Adam Humphries / Tim Machin / Townley & Bradby The inaugural exhibition in the Royal Standard's new home draws on the organisation's relocation to the periphery of the city centre. Set against Liverpool's rapidly changing urban and cultural landscape, NAVIGATOR reflects a process of re-mapping and re-routing through familiar and unfamiliar territories. Drawing, photography, sculpture, collage, video and intervention feature in an exhibition that looks beyond the gallery walls, to engage with space and context as The Royal Standard negotiates a new position within the city. Seven UK-based artists have been invited to develop new work for NAVIGATOR, extending the themes and introducing new perspectives. In Peter Ainsworth's Gabe standing on a pile of rubble, Bramley Moore Dock (A5036), 2008, a lone figure stands atop a mound of building debris looking onto a vista of Liverpool, the skyline dominated by new builds that exemplify the changes in the city's recent history. Tim Machin's subtle intervention into the gallery space plays with ideas of landscape and its use in everyday production, while Townley and Bradby's Tennis Opportunities, 2008, invites a participatory exploration of the routines and rituals of the city's public spaces. NAVIGATOR proposes a contentious relationship between Art, place and the public, and in many respects this capacity to engage debate appears to be at the forefront of the Royal Standards ongoing mission. This is crucial if our engagement with the activity of artists comes about through its potential to confound our expectations and not through its capacity to fulfil a predetermined need."