Ghostie! – Rob Chavasse @ The Royal Standard, Liverpool

The Royal Standard (TRS) have split their Biennial exhibition between two spaces this year: the regular ‘back building’ and a new space on the floor above Cactus gallery. Five weeks of carpet ripping and prettifying have turned an office-block shell into a slick projection room with (surprisingly comfortable) hay bale chairs and a massive screen on which to view the excellent Recreationals from Peckham-based artist Rob Chavasse.

Before you even trek up to TRS’s part of town, your first port of call should be the calmer, cooler TRS website which features a rather gorgeous trailer specially made for Ghostie! A man skates alone around the endless courtyard of the Salk Institute, California, to a melancholic soundtrack. This is Nathaniel Kahn, the son of famous architect Louis Kahn who died when Nathaniel was 11. At 26, Nathaniel went in search of his estranged father, travelling the world visiting his buildings and making the film My Architect. It’s a clip, sure, from a film that will be familiar to almost every art student but it's damn good, drawing you back to the website for another look again and again.

Chavasse has been spending time with RC-Car enthusiasts in North Wales and the Wirral, an area which apparently has a high number of clubs and societies dedicated to their racing. In the film he has produced, a little RC-Car careers around Liverpool, demented. It’s unclear whether the car is on a journey of exploration or is completely lost, a notion which is expanded by a soundtrack either of sad mermaids or ill-willed sirens, calling or warning. As the viewer follows this little fellow past the Catholic Cathedral, we see him spinning out on a pint-sized psychedelic trip from the stained-glass rainbows. The film shifts between his child-like perspective, full of enthusiasm for the colour of his environment, the sky and the textures of his improvised city race-track. Life seems pretty brilliant if you’re an RC-Car. TRS’s ‘back building’ is taken over by a group of sculptures set out in an RC racing playground (during the opening an actual race was held in the gallery). The materials are those of landscaping and industry – bitumen, metal, spray cement, scale shell and pebble dash. Most look like props but when the sculpture gets (properly) sculptural it is a great success, with a larger work, Private Dancer, made from polystyrene and spray cement rendered as a semi-abstract Aztec Henry Moore with a super-ugly but pleasingly 80s aesthetic.

Between the moreish Recreationals, the brackish sculptures, the philosophical ramble about ants on the press release and the lonely romantic skating around the website, Ghostie! leaves you wanting more. Much, much more. This is definitely a Biennial highlight this year but you’ll have to be quick as TRS have three exhibitions on over the Biennial months: Chavasse closes on 10 August to make way for Australian Sam Smith, open from 22 August. Expect pointy sculptures to the sound of a jazz cymbal (perhaps).