Alec Finlay's Propagator (the artwork I have seen recently that I liked the most)

Propagator, a work by Alec Finlay that highlights the poetic nature of art, life and sculpture, sits unobtrusively next to the high, curved brick lines of a walled garden at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Contemplating a willow tree, the work is housed in a greenhouse overlooking a lawn that stretches towards the undulating hills of the West Yorkshire countryside, striped with wavy lines as though someone has drawn a comb across them.

In the greenhouse – a place designed to concentrate light and warmth where time and its effects take on a different, accelerated quality – sit a series of artworks based around the art form of mesoteric poems. This way of writing takes its inspiration from a basic structure of nature, the tree, with the poem's name comprising the stem or trunk and words extending outwards like branches. Named after plants, and thereby reducing the essential nature of plants to poetry, Finlay's poems are succinct enough to fit on plaques similar to those used to distinguish between seedlings in cottage gardens: easy to miss but warranting a closer look.

Propagator was undertaken during Finlay's residency 'Avant-garde English landscape' at Yorkshire Sculpture Park and offers a new take on his work in the field of publishing, where he explores ways of finding and communicating meaning. In Propagator meaning is both textual and visual, threaded through the stem and around the name of each poem to conjure a recognisable sense of the plant and its context from the combination of constituent letters which make up its title. Plants are both described literally and by their metaphoric qualities, with the poems taking on the characteristics of the plants they are describing. In the neat conciseness of Tansy, no letter is out of place: 'Threads And buttoNs Sewn neatlY'. Others are humorous, as in the knowing onomatopoeia of wheat, 'Where tHe aliEns leAve signaTures'; humour is also used to great effect when Hop is described as 'Heads cOuld drooP'. Sometimes the plant's natural qualities are united with manmade, common experience. Sea kale is visually linked with 'dereK jArman's shingLe gardEn', a place of pilgrimage for fans of Jarman's art and films, and the soporific properties of Valeriana gain a new association with bedtime listening and the unobtrusive background company of 'Vague rAdio pLays'.

Finlay's mesoteric poems also exhort gentle suggestions and instructions about how these flowers can be encountered and experienced, subverting our expectations and casting these common plants in a new light. The reader is told that 'WinDs cArry the cottoN threaDs' of dandelions, making the viewer turn their head to the sky in the hope that they can 'pIck One Now'. Lichen, it is suggested, 'greyLy Clings Hold thE skyliNe', a poetic juxtaposition which elevates the plant from its lowly reputation. Propagator is a humble installation, but one that fits closely with its environment and effectively brings out the simple beauty and meaning in what is around it, and around us, every day.

"They grew down the river, all bloody and wild" - Where the Wild Roses Grow (Ancoats)

It's finally summer. The goslings that patrol the the canal with their parents seem to become less like yellow balls of fluff everyday, getting bigger and more gooselike before my eyes and taking more and more confident steps, and the sunshine is ever bringing new flowers in different colours.

On a sunny Sunday afternoon walk along the Ashton Canal to see what destruction had been done to B of the Bang (more on this vandalism of Thomas Heatherwick's sculpture later!) I spied these wild roses, a few spots of bright colour growing out of a tangle of weeds, an unlikely sign of life against the backdrop of one of the many rows of boarded up houses in this area.

Naturally, I walked the rest of the way home with this song in my head: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8srgfw7GDkM

St Luke's Church - If you're ever in Liverpool, go here

One of the most striking sights on Liverpool's skyline is the shell of St Luke's Church at the top of Bold Street, where Berry Street and Leece Street meet. It's also one of Liverpool's most interesting art spaces, hosting the group Urban Strawberry Lunch and holding open air film screenings (including a 1939 version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame), theatre and gigs.

I first visited during the Liverpool Biennial, when Yoko Ono transformed St Luke's into a growing forest of stepladders, donated by the public as part of her installation Skyladders (when I mentioned this to the woman on the door last week, she said "Don't talk to me about stepladders!") . These added to its derelict building site feel.

St Luke's is a well known local landmark, referred to as the 'bombed out church' or, on Urban Strawberry Lunch's website, rather sweetly, as Bombdie.

The church was bombed in 1941, leaving only the clock tower in tact, with its heavy wooden door. It's still imposing and ornate, even with Liverpool's solid Anglican Cathedral looming in the background. Peer into the corners of its windows and you can still make out stained glass figures, tiny lights adding unexpected colours to the church's bleak frame, muted brickwork and blackened beams. Defiant stone faces still stare sternly from its walls. Weeds grow round its Gothic window frames like something from a fairytale, the church's solemnity muffled by a carpet of grass. It's open to the elements, but also to the residents of the city as a community space.Just behind the main shopping hub, and the dereliction of Duke Street, it's a quiet refuge from which to look out over the city, a walled garden in the middle of a metropolis, a water feature in the centre, like an enclosed park with its own pond. It's a place of reflection, housing a memorial to the victims of the Irish Famine.

On the pleasant Friday afternoon I spent wandering around Liverpool in the sunshine last week, St Luke's was inviting people to take part in Urban Gardening, which takes place every Friday. Inside, last year's bulbs are now blazing with colour, something growing alive out of the ruins.

The church is also delicately decorated with red wool, hanging from twigs and wrapped around doors and stonework. The lady in charge said this was the work of the Chinese community during Chinese New Year celebrations - Chinatown is just across the road, and St Luke's aims to be a space for local communities.

She rolled up her coat sleeve and showed me red wool tied around her wrist like a fragile friendship bracelet, saying they decorated her too and she couldn't take it off as it signifies good luck.

St Luke's definitely needs some good luck - I was also told that, although it's Grade II listed, the group pay rent to the council, who want to knock it down to build flats. Like so many things, it's difficult to secure funding.

So, if you're ever in Liverpool, visit, donate, to keep St Luke's open.

http://www.usl.org.uk/

To find out what's on, visit:
http://www.myspace.com/lunchatstlukes

http://www.finest-hour.net/