There's a huge amount of variation in this exhibition.
I was immediately taken by the curious picture by Danish collective, Superflex, of paintstakingly painted signs.
I couldn't help but wonder what it was all for. But then I was struck by the amount of empty office and commercial space in Liverpool.
It's a good idea, but also pretty bleak and boring.
Angela Lizón
The small size of the canvas was the thing that interested me. Doll's house work.
Pat O'Connor
The patchwork montage and use of different mediums – gouache, acrylic, pencil, ink, watercolour, collage – and the seeming lack of connection between the images; and yet the images seemed to work, somehow. Need to think more about this.
Jarik Jongman
This was the piece that interested me most – partly because of my own work in this are. I think Waiting Room, bleak, dark and uninviting, was also a very impressive and rich composition. I was reminded of Henry Moore's Tube Shelter paintings.
The loneliness and bleakness of the place has been further enhanced by the way Jongman has damaged the work with white spirit and scrubbing, to make the image thin on one side.
The destruction of the paint and canvas made me think hard about my own work. I am always so precise and careful and don't move on until I am absolutely certain that everything is right. The effects that Jongman has achieved, the cracking of the canvas, reminds me of the work of Old Masters.
A picture that really did impress me, part of the gallery's permanent collection, was Gustave Doré's Flower Sellers, London. It seems at first sight a slightly sentimental image, in a standard Victorian style.
