Free exhibition at FACT Liverpool by three North West artists that treats the internet as an inhabitable environment and questions whether we can step away from it.
BRB opened at FACT Liverpool on Friday 18 September and runs until Sunday 6 December. The title comes from the old messaging shorthand 'be right back', that little signal you'd drop when stepping away from the screen for a bit—a kind of distance that's become a lot harder to find now that the line between online and offline has pretty much vanished. The exhibition asks if stepping away is even possible anymore, in an age of endless notifications and algorithmically generated feeds.
It brings together three North West-based artists, all members of FACT's Studio/Lab—the production and research space that supports artists working with emerging technologies. Together they treat the internet not just as a tool, but as an inhabitable environment, and they work across film, animation, sculpture and playable pieces. Livi Wilmore turns addictive digital platforms into an ominous adult soft-play centre, with 1990s software interfaces as the starting point. Mrs Luva-Luva's Tap Tap Tippety Tap fills the gallery with singing, identical lumps, a critique of how platforms reduce identity to branding and data. And Ellie Hoskins brings a towering rollercoaster, Alive in a world of car parks, armed with an air fryer and a fake baby, which captures the mania and the mundanity of contemporary existence.
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It's a good look at how we're living with the web these days, and since the three artists are all based in the North West, it's local work on a local stage. FACT is at 88 Wood Street, L1 4DQ, and admission is free. It's open Wednesday to Sunday, 11am to 6pm, so you've got plenty of time to wander through it before it closes on 6 December.
