STOCKHOLM.- The artistic practice of Peter Liversidge unfolds from his Proposals. At the end of December 2017, the artist addressed 45 proposals to
Bonniers Konsthall, presented in the exhibition Working Title 2018. The proposals challenge and invite, but the potential realization is left open-ended, akin to a score or a script. During the year, some of them were brought to life, often with the help from visitors or from employees at the konsthall. The collaborative aspect of the works questions the myth of the artist as a lone genius.
In Working Title II the artist returns. The proposals, framed single sheets of A4 paper, form the hub of the exhibition. Documentations and new works unfolding from the proposals are presented alongside, some more explicit in their becoming than other.
The realization process also takes place at external sites. In Notes on Protesting, Liversidge works together with 110 students from Farsta around issues regarding freedom of speech and the right to make ones voice heard, a highly acute topic in a time when the free word is not only challenged, but also threatened in parts of Europe as well as the in rest of the world. The work will be presented as a performance, a protest rally, at Bonniers Konsthall and in Farsta Centre.
Meanwhile social media hosts the work @FoundFacesProposal, in which Liversidge collaborates with the public to explore the psychological phenomenon of pareidolia to see images and faces appear in inanimate objects, such as cloud formations. The phenomenon can be read as an attempt to create meaning in what appears to be meaningless.
In the exhibition, the artist revisits his interest in faces. With the simplest modifications Liversidge creates some kind of archetype effigies from found materials. Shape of masks and stone depictions are presented here as something akin to a museum collection. The found or slightly altered objects are, like his Proposals and Found Faces, something that potentially anyone could find or create if one attempts to see the world from an alternative viewpoint.