Sleep of Ulro.(The Furnace)

Goshka Macuga, The Furnace, Greenland Street, Liverpool, UK

A goal of the Liverpool Biennial is to assert to the art world that the city should be selected by the European Union as the European Capital of Culture in 2008. To mark the occasion, the A Foundation, the driving force behind the Biennial since its conception in 1989, stepped out of the shadows, simultaneously opening three large warehouse spaces at Greenland Street in the old port area of the city.

The Furnace, a gallery located in one of these spaces, opened with London-based, Polish-born artist Goshka Macuga's expansive new work, Sleep of Ulro (2006), pieced together from a multitude of collaborations. These pieces added up to a concise, interwoven narrative that unravelled itself around the idea of insanity--through a diverse range of references and source material and extensive architectural invention. The title of the work was taken from the first line of William Blake's epic poem Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Great Albion (1804), the poet's attempt to decipher the points at which the inside of the mind meets the outside. The nature of Macuga's practice, a mediation between artist, collector and curator, allows her to neatly exploit the dark edges to which Blake's work alludes.

A series of architectural interventions (or "elements," as they were titled) dominated the gallery, punctuating the spaces in and around its existing fixtures, its painted brick walls, a furnace turret and various remote and readymade buildings. The architectural reworking of the space created both complementary appendages and independent structures. A set of seven steps, Element 2, led up to a platform that surrounded the prominent furnace tower on two sides. Marking a point where event and performance were absent, this minimal element appeared to offer a footnote to the exhibition, denoting simultaneously its conceptual refinement and its emphasis on narration.

A large sloped and geometrically angled wall occupied what was roughly the central area of the gallery. At its left edge, steps led up to a platform level, situated at about half the height of the full space. Cubes on the top of the platform allowed visitors to pause and look across the obtusely angled constructions dispersed within the space. Cutting through this upper level was a narrow walkway, Element ix. Hanging into the space, its two sections crossed like the blades of a pair of scissors. One was tapered to a single tip, which meant that it was impossible to traverse beyond a certain point; moreover, it directed gallery-goers' gaze to a single spot of pictorial perspective, perpetuating the sense of drawing that permeated the large structure.