Keywords

Tate Liverpool

4 Stars

Class. Art. Culture. Equality. Democracy. We all know how slippery, contested and ideologically loaded are the shifting meanings of these words. That's partly thanks to the socialist critic and theorist Raymond Williams who wrote the very influential book Keywords which was first published in 1976.

A series of short essays on a number of words which crop up repeatedly in discussions of culture, politics and society, it contains illuminating insights into their origins, usage and the range of meanings they carry.

We can thank Williams too for developing what he termed "cultural materialism," a historical and political approach to language, art and culture which showed how important and relatively autonomous they can be in shaping society.

He thus helped refine some of the cruder notions which were then more common on the left, which tended to downplay or ignore the cultural struggle in favour of a narrowly conceived economic one.

Williams expressed the wish that some other way of presenting the subtle and penetrating insights of Keywords could be devised. His wish has now been granted in this imaginatively curated exhibition of leftist artistic practice.

On show on the Tate's walls are some of the words from Williams's book, mainly those he considered particularly relevant to 20th-century discourses. Grouped nearby are various artworks - paintings, photographs, sculpture, film and installations.

The connections between the words and artworks are varied and imaginative, just as the Keywords project was in terms of connecting political and cultural concepts.

A rich and shifting collage of multiple meanings are generated by the juxtaposition of artworks with the words, and with each other.

Referencing the word Violence, Peter Kennard's Haywain With Cruise Missile is a version of Constable's iconic painting with cruise missiles on the hay cart. Beneath it is Visceral Canker, which presents the coats of arms of the slave trader John Hawkins behind a collection of glass tubing through which a red liquid circulates. And nearby is Paul Graham's photograph of Republican Coloured Kerbstones, Crumlin Road, Belfast.

The 60-odd artworks chosen from the Tate's collection - nearly all British and made between 1976 and 1996 - have a particular focus on the '80s. This gives the exhibition, particularly the films, a historical value, with many dealing with the miners' strike, the insurgency in Northern Ireland, the peace camp at Greenham Common, riots in Toxteth and Brixton and the struggle against Murdoch and the police at Wapping.

It is almost an archive of committed artistic involvement in oppositional politics in that decade and it is striking and not a little saddening to see how passionate and confident artistic practice was back then.

Occasionally, some of the individual artworks are weak and a number of the links, juxtapositions and meanings fail to convince or seem forced. It's hard to see how Hockney's painting of Parents belongs with the keywords "private": or "structuralism" although it's a great painting to look at.

And given that we are seeing artworks already owned by the Tate, there is an unwelcome link between the £8 entrance charge and Commercialism, one of the keywords which has not been chosen. But overall most of the connections established and meanings generated are creative and stimulating, enriching text and image.

The close clustering of the artworks and the words also allow for a kind of democratic, suggestive openness and ambiguity which itself embodies Williams's cultural and political project. It also makes a refreshing change from the curatorial elitism of more traditional museums and galleries, where meanings are often dictated to the observer through carefully supervised layouts and explanations of the artworks displayed.

In the best Brechtian tradition, it is at once enjoyable, challenging and thought provoking. It's a many-layered exhibition of words, images and ideas which will work for anyone interested in art, politics, history, culture and language. As Williams might say, it provides education, stimulation, inspiration - and pleasure.

Runs until May 11. Box office: (0151) 702-7400.