The Liverpool Collection 2024

The Liverpool Collection 2024

28th November 2024 – 8th February 2025

An exhibition featuring dot-art Members.

The heart and the history of Liverpool comes to dot-art. Closing out 2024 and welcoming in the new year; this exhibition features art that reflects the beauty and diversity of the city and it’s surrounding region.

Offering art that is both rooted in history and alive with modern perspectives and practices, highlighting the well-loved and hidden gems alike, this exhibition reveals Liverpool through the eyes of 25 dot-art Artist Members. This is a unique opportunity to showcase their Artist Members; while their group shows often feature a select few, this exhibition highlights a diverse cross-section of artists they support — local, affordable, and committed to developing and showcasing their work in their home city.

Longstanding member Susan Finch is a storyteller through her art, she uses motifs that create drama and nostalgia against the backdrop of her home city. New member Joao Coelho who is St. Helens based, creates detailed dioramas inspired by the history and architecture around him, capturing time worn facades and the rust, graffiti and urban decay that comes with them.

Frank Leung is an extremely skilled portraitist and has developed a series of street scenes of buskers and residents of Liverpool. The city’s landmarks are hidden in the background, while these bright and lively characters entertain you in the foreground.

Joseph Venning recently completed a live painting for the Beyond Van Gogh experience at ACC Liverpool. Utilising the iconic modern artist’s style, he created a portrait of Van Gogh painting the Liverpool skyline. From this exhibition, Joseph has developed an incredible painted collage of Liverpool landmarks with a twist of Van Gogh’s infamous blue swirling sky, suspended stars and crescent moon.

Ali Barker is showing work from her dot-art x Everyman Artist Residency last year. Over 6 months Barker spent time with the staff, watched productions and toured the Everyman and Playhouse Theatres. Here, she shows the façade of the iconic Hope Street based Everyman theatre as well as the interior of the Playhouse, looking up to the Radio City Tower.

They want to enable everyone to enrich their lives through art, whether that is through our Art Classes, Artist Membership or buying affordable art. You can help us with this goal by giving the gift of art! Prints start from £35, and we have vouchers for any budget available to gift for the art lover in your life.

Their longstanding Creative Courses are live now with fantastic venues and amazing artist tutors. Art Course Vouchers make thoughtful gifts for those looking to give creative experiences rather than material items that may go unused.

All artworks are for sale.

Join them for the Private View of the exhibition on Thursday 21st November from 5pm-7pm.

All welcome, but please register here: theliverpoolcollection24.eventbrite.co.uk

The dot-art Gallery can be found at 14 Queen Avenue, Castle Street, Liverpool, L2 4TX (just 5 minutes’ walk from Liverpool One).

Opening times: Tuesday – Saturday, 10am-6pm

The exhibition runs 28th November 2024 – 8th February 2025.

Sound and Vision: A night of art and m...

CERT presents Sound and Vision, an art exhibition taking place on 21st November, 2024, at Elevator Studios, Liverpool. Featuring artists like Kelly Irvine, Stuart Harrison, and Mark Wigan, the show explores the relationship between sound and visual art.

Sound and Vision explores the ways artists interpret the world of sound, its rhythms, moods, and emotions, through visual mediums. Using varied styles and approaches, the artists create visual experiences that evoke the essence of music, voice, and silence, transforming the intangible quality of sound into a rich visual landscape.

Johnny V, Community Engagement Marketing Manager at CERT and the exhibition’s curator, shared his vision for the event: “Sound and Vision isn’t just an art exhibition; it’s a sensory exploration. We wanted to give artists a platform to interpret what sound means to them and translate it into visuals that viewers can feel. This show is all about pushing boundaries and blending artistic senses in a new way.”

CERT strives to create opportunities for local communities, turning the vacant space at its music and tech hub Elevator Studios into an opportunity to support under-represented talents.  

Howard Lord, Managing Director of CERT, comments on the event, saying, “Sound and Vision is part of our commitment to giving back to the community. By opening up spaces like Elevator Studios with free events that bring local people together, we’re not only showcasing incredible talent from the region, we’re also contributing to meaningful causes that matter in our communities.”

All the donations from the exhibition will benefit Music in Mind’s Voices of Hope and Peace project, an initiative dedicated to sharing the experiences of Ukrainian communities displaced by conflict and now living across the North West. Their stories will culminate in a multimedia performance by Ukrainian musicians and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, streaming across Britain and internationally on February 24, 2025, the third anniversary of Ukraine’s invasion, to share messages of resilience and hope.

CERT invites the public to join Sound and Vision at Elevator Studios for a night of art that celebrates Liverpool’s creative spirit while supporting a project that honours the strength of displaced communities.

The event tickets are FREE via Eventbrite, but donations to the charity are strongly encouraged. Please visit  CERT’s Sound and Vision Fundraising Page to contribute.

Southport Contemporary Arts Members’...

A seasonal sack full of artwork will soon be gracing the walls of the ArtHouse in Eastbank Street as part of Southport Contemporary Arts Members’ Christmas Exhibition.

This eagerly anticipated show has established itself as a key event in the region’s arts calendar and provides an opportunity for savvy shoppers to snap up unique gifts from an eclectic mix of local creatives keen to reveal their latest artworks.

Norrie Beswick Calvert, one of the Southport Contemporary Arts directors, enthusiastically points out that: “The ‘SCA Christmas Collection’ represents over 30 different artists and makers and is always an exciting mix of hand produced pieces that our members have been busy creating. Imbued with the love and passion they have for making unique items, each piece has real integrity.”

She adds: “Christmas is a lovely time to buy something that bit different, beautiful and useful and visitors are sure to find something just right for that special person. By shopping locally for locally made things, you are not only gifting someone something they can’t find elsewhere, but also, supporting our community economically, ethically and sustainably.”

Originally from Hull, local artist, Henrietta Ackah Joyce, will be showing a range of festive items from her current portfolio including some more examples of her ‘fluid art’ that proved such a success with visitors at her solo show at the ArtHouse earlier this year. She explains: “This technique involves the use of a pouring medium mixed with acrylic paint or mica pigments or inks. The acrylic paints react with each other when combined to make interesting and visually organic motifs.“

Henrietta will be featuring examples of her decorative ‘fluid’ art on glassware and the face of a wall clock.

Also on show will be the tactile work of Southport based artist, Serah Stringer Grech, who’s love of rhythm and pattern will be well to the fore in the artwork for sale: “I enjoy exploring the intersection of the natural with the manufactured. My work tends to vary immensely in the ways they are experienced and through which senses they are enjoyed. For this show I have used varied materials, from pressed flowers, gold leaf and shells to ceramics.”

With his own personal take on ceramic art, self-taught Southport potter, Mervyn Thomas, will also be presenting more of his own unique creations: “The dishes are pressed out of porcelain clay using old Indian wood blocks previously used for block printing textiles. I utilise the texture and a variety of glazes to produce the abstract decoration. The small bowls, decorated with stamped and extruded motifs, were made to encourage me to have smaller portions at breakfast!”

Also on show will be watercolours from Angela Birchall, who spent her formative years in Central Africa where she admits to playing more with big cats than she did domesticated felines and a personal selection of framed prints taken from professional Ainsdale artist, Neil Prior’s original oil paintings.

Guaranteed to provide more than a sprinkle of Christmas magic, this latest showing by members of SCA is certainly not one to be missed.

This year’s Members’ Christmas Exhibition will be on display at the ArtHouse, Eastbank Street, Southport from 19th November – 24th December 2024. The gallery is open Tuesday – Friday 10.00-15.00. Saturday 11.00-16.00.

Sweet: The Taveners Story

Mojos, Traffic Light lollipops, the Candy Queen contest and annual picnics were all part of everyday life at the Liverpool confectionary company Taveners.

Discover the history of this beloved local company in their display. Founded in 1885 Taveners originally produced pickles and sauces but quickly became famous for its boiled sweets sold in glass jars.

By 1931 they had created the original chocolate Eclair and other classics like Bovril Caramels and Fruit Drops. Even Mickey Mouse and Liverpool Football Club legends Emlyn Hughes and John Toshack visited the factory to promote the brand!

The annual staff picnic, with seaside trips and the Candy Queen contest, was a highlight for employees. This display at the Museum of Liverpool showcases Taveners’ remarkable legacy.

Gingerbread Party People Trail

Blue Room artists have created a mischievous troupe of gingerbread characters inspired by Kayleigh Murray’s Gingerbread Party design for LUSH’s festive gift collection.

Pick up a free trail sheet from Children’s Corner and visit their garden to see how many you can spot.

From Sat 30 Nov
Open 11am-5pm, Tue-Sun
Free entry

The Year That Was

The Year That Was is an end of year celebration of the exhibitions and public artworks shown at the Bluecoat in 2024. The exhibition features limited edition prints, posters and original artworks from our gallery programme and cultural legacies programme. Throughout December, the Bluecoat will transform into a space where visitors can not only see art but buy it to enjoy in their homes or gift to friends and family.

Tue 3 – Sat 21 Dec, 11am-5pm

Their main display features artists such as Michelle Williams-Gamaker, Roxy Topia and Paddy Gould, Babak Ganjei, Tess Gilmartin, Joshua Clague and more. Our end of year display is also an opportunity to reflect back on a year that has explored who artists are, how the future will be shaped, and how we might connect with our histories.

Each weekend of December galleries will be transformed into a bustling marketplace, beginning with Bluecoat Art Fair which will host stalls from Bluecoat’s creative community, print studio members and beyond. Later in the month, Bloom Makers Market and still Out-of-Print book fair will bring their fairs to the space.

Free entry.

Tomorrow’s Music Yesterday

Selected from the Bluecoat archive, this display of posters reflects some of the music presented at the venue over the decades, with a focus on the experimental and eclectic, including jazz, improvised, electronic, ‘world’ and contemporary classical from the likes of the Philip Glass Ensemble, John Zorn, Pierre Henry, Carla Bley, Imrat Khan and Philip Jeck.

Located in their upstairs Gallery.

From Fri 15 Nov
Open 11am-5pm, Tue-Sun
Free entry

Cosmotechnics

This winter, you are invited to explore the worlds of Cosmotechnics, a new exhibition that delves into the relationship between culture and technology through the lens of four Latin American artists and collectives. Atractor Studio + Semantica, Patricia Domínguez and Rebeca Romero challenge the idea that technology is the same everywhere and across all cultures. Using sculpture, video, and sound to create immersive installations, their works reveal how local ways of thinking and sensing can lead to new ways of embracing art and culture and offer multiple perspectives of technology.

Curated by FACT’s 2024 Curator-in-Residence, Beatrice Zaidenberg, each artwork becomes a portal to rethink our relationship with technology, using plants as a guide.

Atractor Studio + Semantica present their award-winning video and sound works, A Tale of Two Seeds, On Vegetal Politics and Botánica Transgénica. Based in Colombia and the UK, both collectives create artworks to visualise natural events and scientific ideas. These works focus on the problems caused by industrial farming: specifically, how companies change plant genes (genetic modification) and take control of seeds and land in Colombia, leading to colonisation and exploitation of native plants and local knowledge. In 2023, the presented works received the coveted Golden Nica at The Prix Ars Electronica, the world’s longest-running media art competition.

Patricia Domínguez, born and based in Chile, combines her research on plants, resource extraction, and healing practices to create sculptures, videos, and writings that imagine more sustainable and compassionate ways of living. In Cosmotechnics, Patricia presents two works side by side for the first time, developed during her dual residency between CERN in Switzerland and the European Southern Observatory (ESO) astronomy facilities in Chile. Tres Lunas Más Abajo (Three Moons Below) (2024) and Matrix Vegetal (2022) reflect Patricia’s ongoing exploration of the energy that connects all living things and objects on Earth.

Rebeca Romero presents a newly commissioned installation for Cosmotechnics. Born in Peru and based in London, her work blends pre-Columbian iconography with modern technology to ask how new technologies can revive ancient belief systems erased from history. In Rebeca’s futuristic sculpture, Chrysalis (2024), she combines ancient wisdom with video mapping, 3D scanning and printing to form a speculative allyship between plants and humans. Rebeca was selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2021. More recently, she was awarded the OGR Award for effectively conveying complex relationships between art, technology, and innovation.

Winter Display 2024

Bluecoat Display Centre’s annual Winter Display features high quality, beautifully made, unique and meaningful pieces, in which skilful making and craftsmanship are essential elements, and which can be gifted to be used and loved for years to come.

With this in mind they have curated a range of contemporary jewellery, functional ceramics and tableware, wood and homewares, beautiful wearable textiles, eye-catching prints and festive decorations. All made by studio based makers from across the UK, who employ traditional techniques, often using sustainable materials and practices.

Makers include:

Jewellery by Rachel Butlin X Keeley Traae, Factory Floor Jewels, Bronwen Gwillim, Catherine Hills, Grant McCaig, Rentaro Nishimura, Tom Pigeon & Adele Taylor
Ceramics by Maree and Paul Allitt, Guy Holder, Tim Lake, Katie Pruden & Jean White
Textiles by Georgia Boniface, Charlie Ann Buxton, Vanessa Bullick, Nawal Gebreel, Kate Jones & Margo Selby
Wood by Matthew Green
Prints & Ceramics by Dom Marshall
Prints by Hannah Farthing
Homewares by David Mellor
Decorations by David Mayne, Ella McIntosh & Keeley Traae

Exhibition Opening: Thursday 7 November 2024, 4pm – 7pm

Join them for a special opening event on Thursday 7 November 2024, from 4pm – 7pm. Refreshments will be served and Friends of the Bdc will receive a 10% discount on all purchases during the evening.

INNSiDE dot-art Exhibition

INNSiDE Liverpool, part of Meliá Hotels International, is excited to present a new dot-art art exhibition featuring the work of Claire Western, an artist inspired by both nature and the emotional impact of music.

The exhibition, Echoes of Emotion, showcases Claire Western’s abstract interpretations of landscapes, exploring the interplay between colours, textures, and emotions. A graduate of Margaret Street School of Art in Birmingham, Claire’s creative process is deeply influenced by the natural world and the musical rhythms she listens to while painting. Her work combines layered, vibrant expanses of colour with strong, textured line work, creating a unique tension between playfulness and structure.

The abstract landscapes in the exhibition are designed to be intentionally unrecognisable, encouraging viewers to engage with the artwork in a personal way. Claire’s compositions are shaped by her experiences in nature—drawing inspiration from the textures of rock formations, weathered surfaces, and natural elements—while music influences the way she applies expressive brushstrokes and adds small embellishments. The combination of these influences brings a sense of ambiguity and curiosity to her work.

Event

Echoes of Emotion is part of INNSiDE Liverpool’s commitment to its ‘Stay Curious’ philosophy, which aims to create enriched guest experiences through art, music, and culture. By showcasing local talent, the hotel fosters a deeper connection between the community, visitors, and the creative energy of the city.