As I step away from Liverpool’s Wood Street, with its assemblage of spinning air vents, fire doors, and passages to the back of unknown premises, and into FACT, I wasn’t prepared for something so uncanny. The ground floor gallery is home to a simulacra, where under a hazy sodium streetlamp glow, artist R.I.P. Germain has constructed a shady backstreet comprising a bright but anonymous shopfront next door to a closed-down and locked-up nightclub. It's a scene littered with urban detritus and malaise, the pavement continuing around a dark corner, somewhat uninvitingly.
Bright lights beckon me into the open shop. Large screens loop glossy rap videos; as I pass an oversized golden chain hangs around the neck of rapper Meekz as he rides a helicopter past glistening London skyscrapers. Deeper inside, a second door reveals a carpeted room with pleated curtains, a display case of glittering jewellery, and an office desk with an open laptop – it’s showing live security footage of the spaces I just passed through. An open congratulations card is ‘from your new neighbours, X’.
