The Liverpool Mountain

Does the luminosity of the latest contemporary public art form in Liverpool turn you on or off?

Ugo Rondinone, the Swiss-born, New York-based artist has gifted his work to the Royal Albert Dock in Liverpool.

The multi-coloured stack of rocks finished off with a T section had been sited on the waterfront, nestled beside the Tate Liverpool for almost four weeks now. The sculpture was commissioned to mark ten years since the Capital of Culture, twenty years of the Biennial and thirty years of Tate Liverpool.

Other works by the artist have included seven mountains, simpler luminous rock stacking forms, located just outside Vegas. Initially unpopular, Sixteen million visitors later its safe to say it has won over the public. Will the Liverpool mountain win the hearts of the art-loving Scouse city dwellers? Will it become an icon of the city like the initially revered Superlambanana?

The form is said to be based on a combination of ancient totem poles, medieval rock balancing and hoodoos. Hoodoos being rock spirals formed from weathering over centuries, commonplace in the desert of the United States. So do the seven mountains in Nevada seem fitting in their location in ways the Liverpool Mountain does not?

Do the aesthetics of the colour choice resemble the artistry of a primary school pupil first being given luminous paint in the eighties then deciding all the colours must be used at once?

The verdict: It certainly does brighten up a drizzly day on the docks. Let’s wait and see if the luminosity of the Liverpool mountain turns on the cities art lovers.

Photos Credits to Jamie Pickering.

Ugo Rondino

Liverpool Biennial

Tate Liverpool

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Re-coil

Re-coil ia a flash fiction works written by Alison Little, the events and people are not based on real life.

Tired and exhausted I sit beside a woman munching crisps loudly as she crumples the cheap multi-pack packet, it has been a really long day and it is only just after one in the afternoon. Awaiting a local train after paying a ridiculous fair, strike action being declared through the screen projections. Surrounded, everyone else seems to be inhaling nicotine, the friends of the Station flower planter devoid of sprays of colour or foliage, omitted of community attention. Quite simply a large soil filled communal ashtray, the only real benefit being after a downpour the soil retails the water and distinguishes the cigarettes quickly. A gruelling wait, the tin block modular train jerks its way along the platform, the others and I enter choosing between the front and back carriage. I select a seat convenient to the door to save walking further, away it pulls then crawls snail’s pace towards its destined city. As my rear end settles into the lump filled, once public sector owned upholstery, I gaze out at the former mill and mining towns.

Night previous spent sleeplessly tossing from edge to edge, flipping over and returning while checking the timer on my phone to repeatedly determine that only a further half an hour had passed. Mind anxious as it worked its way through lists of debts, teeth grinding back and forth as I tried to decline from vomiting over the bedroom floor a stain still present from an earlier regurgitation. Eventually, I managed twenty minutes of shut-eye only to be awoken sharply by my alarm as ‘Hello Moto’ consumes to the deadly silence of the pre-day brake.

No time to lye in, or catch up on sleep missed, a day filled to the brim from start to finish. Backpack loaded, breakfast wrapped, onto the bike, to the Central station. On time, thank you, no hold ups.

To follow a morning of adjoining crammed local journeys, short distances taking long periods of time. At last at the meeting and only ten minutes late, appearing to be on time. Only marginally behind over the three and a half hours the distance of under one hundred miles had taken with local trains.

My thoughts gallop stringently toward the thought that I simply don’t want to do anything today, but then I know I will be back on form in a few days, I will push off this tiredness, this drench on my enthusiasm.

The train screeches into a midway town, jerking in full motion against the platform. I look around the station, a girl on the other platform tries to calm her boyfriend as he angary pull his shirt from his torso repeatedly. As the journey progresses my eyes glance around the passengers in my carriage. Bleach blond but too old, bald head but too young, child loving but downtrodden by bad behaviour. An assortment of motleys joining my journey as my thoughts contradict the artistry of my heart.

I visualise my intentions from the meeting, piece and my interventions. I will want to function again, contact and respond, direct and decipher, moderate and deliver, but not till tomorrow.

Simply re-coil home.