We’re in a former industrial space, now the A Foundation’s gallery, on
Greenland Street, Liverpool. Before us are two large objects: one a
cylinder, open at both ends, the other a kidney-shaped hollow, like a
swimming pool. Both are finely crafted in wood – by Simparch, an
American artists’ collective – and are proving popular with the
skateboarders who’ve been invited to make the most of these perfect,
skate-friendly structures (skateboarding having begun with Californian kids
having fun in empty swimming pools).
And fun it certainly is. The skaters are enjoying themselves. The audience –
local arty types and others from further afield, as this is the night of
Liverpool’s Turner Prize do as well as the A Foundation’s private view
and after-party – are enjoying watching them. So, it’s win-win, this moment.
But, as the cliché goes, is it art? James Moores is head of the A Foundation
– and the reason why all of us, skaters and punters alike, are here – but he
doesn’t answer my question so much as bat it away as an irrelevance.
“There is a great problem in contemporary art,” Moores declares, “in that the
conceptual process has almost turned into a litigation about meaning. A
piece of art can’t be appreciated without the script that goes with it. I’m
drawn much more to art that communicates directly with the senses or the
consciousness, without some sort of clerical intermediary. So, the question
about whether it’s art or not is less important than whether it’s beautiful
or a pleasure.” Which is where Simparch and the skateboarders come in.
James Moores comes from what you might call a big Liverpool family. Hugely
wealthy from the profits (and eventual sale) of the Littlewoods Pools and department-store
empire, over the years the Moores have owned chunks of both Liverpool FC and
Everton (where James’s cousin David was chairman until earlier this year).
When Liverpool Poly was renamed in 1992, it became Liverpool John Moores
University, after the philanthropic paterfamilias and founder of the family
fortune – estimated to be more than £1 billion last year.
To his grandfather’s chagrin, young James opted to go to art college – first
Camberwell School of Art, then Goldsmiths – rather than joining the family
business. He still paints today, when he has the time. “It’s very much my
intention to get back into some studio practice,” he says, sounding as if
that might not happen any time soon. That’s partly down to having four
children. But even more than the family life he enjoys with his partner,
Diana, it is his work with the A Foundation – the organisation that now
channels his charitable money into the arts, most especially in Liverpool –
that looks likely to get in the way of Moores’ painting ambitions for now.
He quashes any idea of dutiful philanthropy, though he does cite one of the
city’s disadvantages during its postwar decline as the fact that “those
who’d made their fortunes here had got titles or stately homes by this time.
They didn’t want to be associated with the dirty hands of industry or trade
– and certainly not slavery. So Liverpool was deprived of civic
leaders, such as the Gladstones, Walkers or Levers, in its hour of need.”
The Moores, sprung from a later generation of local grandees, have never
really left – James lives between Liverpool, London and Stroud – but he
characterises his initial involvement with the city more as a desire to have
a good time than to do paternalistic good works. “I left Liverpool when I
was 13 or 14, when my parents split up and moved south with my mother. Part
of my getting involved was a desire to reconnect – and have fun.” That
reconnection began with James joining the board awarding the John Moores
Award for painting, begun by his grandfather.
Next came the Biennial, the international festival of contemporary art he
launched in 1999, which he describes as a “frantic” moment in his life,
“dragging together different parties to try to make it happen and running
round trying to persuade, cajole or bully people into releasing buildings
for exhibition space”. In the middle of all that, he also bought, on a whim,
the former Rochelle School in Shoreditch, East London – now a gallery and
studio space for artists and designers like former squeeze Luella Bartley
and Gareth Pugh.
But it is Liverpool where Moores has truly made a difference, beginning with
the Biennial, from which he withdrew when its success was assured and one of
its most controversial projects, Antony Gormley’s sculptures on Formby beach
(shown on page 75), became a much-loved local landmark. “The initial impetus
was that, while the city had great galleries – the best outside London –
they were very short of money and had become inward-looking,” rather like
Liverpool itself, during its decline. “They were not appreciating that there
was a bigger world out there that they should be engaging with, and that
with the proper engagement with that world, the resources would surely
follow.”
Public servants, toiling away in cash-starved institutions back in the
Nineties, could be forgiven for feeling a moment’s resentment at the can-do
attitude of a rich man whose very name opens doors (and, yes, exhibition
space) in Liverpool. But both the Biennial (which helped secure Capital of
Culture status) and the A Foundation demonstrate the role private patronage
can play in the sphere of public culture. Institutions “have a hard time
moving forward in a dynamic fashion,” Moores declares, “because everything
has to be decided by committee or according to political correctness”. In
contrast, at A Foundation, “the buck stops with three trustees: my sister,
Portia Kennaway, and my mother, Jenny Moores”.
So, when Liverpool won its Capital of Culture bid, the powers that be at A
Foundation “decided it would get on and do things”, buying the buildings on
Greenland Street as “a cornerstone” for an Artists’ Quarter, where the
city’s artists and others lured in from around the world could work, as well
as spend time in local schools, “so children can see that creative practice
is a viable life choice”.
As with the Biennial, Moores’s aim here is “to enable this to be
self-generating”. He’s not, he is keen to explain, a one-man band. “A lot of
people in Liverpool have invested a lot of effort, both emotionally and
financially.” He is ambitious for his home town, though. He’d like it to be
a great cultural hub, just as it was once a great port. “Liverpool connects
with Ireland, Scotland and Wales in a way that no other city in England
can.” For these countries to use it “as a conduit, a communication node to
connect globally is my dream”. A believer in the power of art to transform
the individual, he is also keen for the city to have the kind of impact on
the art world that it has long enjoyed in music and literature. “The
Liverpool temperament is well suited to contemporary art,” he argues. “It
plays with ideas, flips things over and never takes things at face value.
When the Liverpool intelligence is applied to art, it’ll do great things.”
Drum’n’basin, Simparch’s commission for A Foundation, and
three other new commissions are at the Greenland Street space until April 20
James Moores might be well advised to ask the regional Arts Council why they think *his* credibility is a luxury they can do without.
Artists knew there were problems in the past and responded with tactful silence in the belief that everyone was on the same side.
The Arts Council have abused this courtesy by compounding problems.
Why should any philanthropists help out if the Arts Council are going to make them look, as here, like buffoons?
Looking forward to James Moores' further involvement in the city ...
but get things sorted (the Arts Council in particular) for Christ's sake!
Peter K, Liverpool,
Well, this is such a self proclaiming article. The A Foundation has not come without a price to the city of Liverpool and significantly to the artists based here in the city. Political games afoot, artists used as pawns and more and all centralised to the abuse of power and funds within the whole institutional infrastructure of not only the city, but the Northwest and expounds to every cultural quarter, including the Arts Council in the region. The article is titled ‘Visionary’ and maybe so, but such was done in conjunction with Jayne Casey before the change over in management. The new management which has perpetuated the political games experienced and any tactic permissible. Reference made to acquisition of Greenland Street, indeed such was noted in 2004 when it was first brought under the premise of the A Foundation and it objectives highlighted as: “What is art and what is not ... increasingly life and art buff up against other ... independent artists taking over industrial disused parts of the city ... buildings that house art which is interesting ... the buildings themselves initially for the biennial and now places in which artists can now make and display their work all year round ... art being a force for urban regenerationâ€. Tim Marlowe, Liverpool Biennial, Channel 5 (England), 2004. Marlowe would only have uttered such in this documentary on the Biennial and particularly the Independents strand by which he was informed by those directly involved. Since this though and the change of management how many artists actually from the city have been extended opportunities other than token gestures that tally with that of a funded outside interest brought in. Greenland Street in its inaugural year was titled the Independents district, not that it is such, because the Independents strand since the deconstruction of the A Foundation in late 2004 and reformation by 2005 has disowned that particularly strand, due to the deterioration of in-house management and directorship relations and indeed political games afoot. It is and was the strand that artists, independent, could enter under the premise of the Biennial, the Independents strand born at the same time as the Internationals. This though disowned. However, to be honest, the trouble and political games played I would rather be autonomous and they stick any funding if it meant rubbing shoulders with those of complicit intent and to aspire to bourgeoisie socialite ideals. No, thank you very much!
Lucia, Liverpool, England