Turning FACT Inside Out, Liverpool

This summer FACT, Liverpool, combines art and politics in Turning FACT inside Out. Running 13 June until 25 August the exhibition explores aspects of environment, architecture, capitalism and augmented reality. Showcasing a selection of provocative international artists, Turning FACT inside Out tackles some of the most pressing, controversial and literally ground-breaking political issues of today. The works take over the entire building and beyond, including recreating an indoor fracking site complete with earth tremors and flames.

FACT is currently celebrating the first decade as one of the UK’s primary centres for new media art. Inline with this event, the gallery has commissioned an artists’ take over, featuring bold, new or never before seen in the UK works from emerging and established artists, including HeHe, Nina Edge, Katarzyna Krakowiak, Steve Lambert, Manifest.AR, and Uncoded Collective. The exhibition is also a continuation of FACT’s tradition of staging risky and exciting immersive installations such as Kurt Hentschläger’s ZEE (2011) and Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson’s indoor fireworks (At 25 Metres, 2007).

HeHe (pronounced “hay hay”) are turning the main gallery space into an industrial landscape in their new piece Fracking Futures, a playful and provocative commentary on crises of global economy, threats of environmental catastrophe and struggles of public institutions in times of austerity.

Also included within the show are American art collective Manifest.AR. They present a series of playful augmented reality games to change the landscape of the FACT building and city. Examining the borders of the physical and the virtual, they will use AR to enable visitors to write in the sky, see personal forests growing among the concrete and even delete cars and buildings from the landscape.

Acclaimed Polish artist Katarzyna Krakowiak transforms the space into a listening device, eavesdropping on itself and revealing the inner life of the gallery. Drawing words into the picture too, American artist Steve Lambert – known for his NY Times Special Edition made with Andy Bichlbaum of The Yes Men, a spoof newspaper that fooled many when it was distributed around New York in 2009 – will bring his work Capitalism Works for Me! True/ False to the UK for the first time. The interactive, carnival-style signage will be installed outside FACT on Ropewalks Square and the public will be encouraged to vote “true” or “false” in response to the question.

With a variety of political perspectives, and artists, Turning FACT Inside Out provotactively asks some big questions and represents why FACT has been a centre for contemporary art for the last 10 years.

Turning FACT Inside Out, 13 June – 25 August, FACT, 88 Wood Street, Liverpool, L14DQ.

Credits
1. Capitalism Works for Me! True/ False, Andy Bichlbaum, courtesy of the artist and FACT.