So – tonight is the eve of the Al and Al exhibition. It is very exciting! The whole of the interior of FACT has been doused in the electric buzzing light of the chroma key blue. The two artists, both called Alan James Edwards, have been working in Liverpool for over 18 months now – they upped-sticks and moved here to develop their commission. Using computer generated imagery they are master craftsmen of their tools – sculpting a three-dimensional world made of pixels into which they perform and play the characters of the narratives they weave. With an obsessive attention to detail, they construct fantasy playgrounds which fluctuate between the iconographic and the anonymous – and the painful intersection as the two worlds meet. Celebrity, personified by the powerful and emotive (fictional) Winston Glory and Anonymity, represented by the infamous hoodie. Glory’s sound is replete with references to both wrapper tupac – and the imaginary interior world of the lost boys of the forgotten backwaters of the inner-city fringes of contemporary urban jungles – boys who are angry, desperate for a voice but who are wrestling with the grappling reality that they have nothing to say. What emerges is a story of anger, action and redemption. The aesthetic of the new film Eternal Youth is a clear development of their practice to date – it is itself the aesthetic of teenage boys – referencing the visuals of grand theft auto and the suburban landscapes of XBox shoot’em-ups – the visual material is at once popular in its appeal and heavy in its layering.
