Event type: Exhibition

Worst Record Covers

From the unintentionally funny to the completely bizarre, Steve Goldman’s collection of more than 500 record covers are something to behold. Collected over a seven-year period from charity shops and online marketplaces, Goldman’s selection criteria is stringent: Is this one of the worst record covers in the world?

Visitors to Birkenhead’s Williamson Art Gallery & Museum will be able to make up their own minds when they go on display in November. Worst Record Covers is a unique celebration of some of the most questionable design choice in music history.

Goldman explains that to get into his collection, a cover “has to make me laugh! There are plenty of covers which are bad for the wrong reasons – sexist, homophobic, racist, gory et c- you won’t find any of these. I want records where the designers have tried to do something that’s gone horribly wrong”.

Visitors will have the opportunity to have their say on which is the best – or worst – via a public vote to select a favourite. This is an exhibition which can be enjoyed by the whole family, and younger visitors can enjoy games and activities, including designing their own worst record covers.

Goldman is a stroke survivor and is staging the exhibition in aid of Different Strokes, a charity helping younger stroke survivors.

The exhibition’s opening will also mark the publication of Goldman’s book “The Art Of The Bizarre Vinyl Sleeve”, published by Easy On The Eye Books. The text is written by Simon Robinson at Easy On The Eye, who has produced many sleeve designs himself (happily none of which feature in Steve’s collection!) with a foreword written by comedian Stewart Lee.

The exhibition is open November 15th 2023 – January 27th 2024 at Williamson Art Gallery.

On Friday 15th December they’ll be holding a very special Worst Records Christmas Party! In the spirit of the show, the team from Birkenhead’s own Skeleton Records will be spinning the best, worst and most unexpected records to get you in the festive spirit, with a bar by Homebrew Bottle Shop, Oxton. Free tickets are available to book through the Williamson’s website.

The Arcade Showcase

Join them for the Arcade Showcase where you can see the culmination of the work between Roll Model Arcade, Roll Model CIC and Mako Create, funded by the St Helens Borough of Culture Grant.

Children and young people from across St Helens came together for a series of workshops to design digital artwork inspired by the landscape history of the town. These designs have been applied to custom designed arcade machines built by Roll Model Arcade and will be on display at the showcase for you to enjoy and relive some childhood nostalgia!

This is a free event to celebrate the town of St Helens and their Borough of Culture status.

Autumn Alchemy

AUTUMN ALCHEMY EXHIBITION
ANGELICA VANASSE & SQUASH CREATIVES

11AM – 3PM SATURDAY 28TH & SUNDAY 29TH OCTOBER
& 12-4 PM WEDNESDAY 1ST NOVEMBER (SAMHAIN)

Squash, 112-114 Windsor Street, Liverpool L8 8EQ
For more information visit their website – squashliverpool.co.uk

Free pop-up exhibition for all ages

A pop-up exhibition sharing what has grown & been gathered throughout this 8-fold year*, celebrating local land-based rituals, artworks, produce and creativity. Coming together, we will make time and space to nourish ourselves through connecting to our creativity, the natural world and seasonal change in a welcoming and contemplative space. We will activate our space through making, sharing, cooking, engaging our senses and intention setting. Participate and celebrate with us by cooking on the fire, exploring the L8 apothecary, mark making with autumnal inks, and concocting natural balms and salves.

*The 8-fold year is a celebration of the Earth’s yearly cycle of change – life, death, growth and transformation. At Squash we have celebrated the 8-fold year for over 10 years through marking the Quarter points – Winter and Summer Solstices & Spring and Autumn Equinoxes and the Cross Quarter Points that fall at seasonal peaks (the Four Great Fire Festivals) of Imbolc, Beltane, Lammas/Lughnasadh and Samhain. These 8 chapters create the Wheel of the Year that connects us to the continuous cycles and changes in nature and ourselves. To us at Squash and our Windsor Street community this has become the ‘L8-Fold Year.’

This exhibition weaves together marking the ongoing L8-Fold Year with the creative processes and practices rooted in the Grapes Garden through the work of the Grapes Gardeners and artists rooted in this space. In 2022, artist Angelica Vanasse created and facilitated a series of land-based sessions working with nature and community in the garden that have become a part of our seasonal cycle. Autumn Alchemy is a collaboration with artist Angelica Vanasse to share what has grown and been gathered throughout this 8-fold year, celebrating land-based rituals, artworks, produce and creativity through activations, rituals and conversation. It brings together ritual, intention, land-based processes that are aligned with the 8-fold year in a contemplative space to be experienced.

This exhibition builds on her playful series of art-making sessions with community gardeners last year, exploring human identity and place in urban nature. In the front room at Squash you will be able to explore and experience the learning and outputs from a year of land-based, featuring activations and creative contributions from gardeners and artists Hellen Songa, Jackie Swanson & Jason Hughes and the Grapes Community Gardeners.

Event

Designed & produced in collaboration with Clare Owens and Becky Vipond, social artists & Squash Co-directors.

Long Life, Low Energy: Designing for a...

An exhibition from the Royal Institute of British Architects about the climate emergency and its relation to architecture.

Tate Liverpool and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) are forming a new partnership on Liverpool’s waterfront. Tate Liverpool will move into RIBA North, Mann Island from 27 October 2023 to coincide with the temporary closure of the gallery at the Royal Albert Dock for redevelopment.

The two organisations will collaborate to deliver a programme of temporary exhibitions, family activity, public talks and other events inspired by the unique collections held by RIBA and Tate. The programme will focus on art, architecture and ecology.

The first exhibition in Tate Liverpool’s new home, Long Life, Low Energy: Designing for a Circular Economy draws from RIBAs collection and considers how the design, construction, maintenance, and demolition of buildings is vital in the journey towards a global reduction of carbon emissions.

Event

As Tate Liverpool undergoes a transformation to its Victorian warehouse home, Long Life, Low Energy reveals how architects and designers are innovating to reuse and repurpose anything from small materials to whole buildings and how we might look to the technologies of the future to navigate the climate emergency today.

Marc Davenant: Outsiders

Birkenhead’s Williamson Art Gallery & Museum are proud to host Outsiders, a documentary photography project by Marc Davenant.

With Outsiders, Davenant aimed to capture a snapshot of homelessness in modern Britain over a six-year period. The project was done in partnership with the charity Shelter and included environmental portraiture together with personal testimony from participants. The national project covered locations in London, Manchester, Glasgow, Newcastle, Brighton, Kent, Hertfordshire and Norwich.

This exhibition displays a selection of the resulting photographs, alongside this personal testimony. All of the participants taken by Davenant gave informed consent.

“Though the images are beautiful, shot in black and white, they are intentionally provocative, sometimes haunting, and shockingly revealing of how people in marginalised communities are treated and expected to live” – Creative Boom.

Outsiders will run 18th October – 23rd December 2023. Williamson Art Gallery is open Wednesday-Saturday.

re-think, re-design, re-present

Liverpool John Moores University Library has joined forces with their Graphic Design students to embark on an awe-inspiring journey into the depths of the university’s rich and vibrant design history to create an exhibition of new work inspired by its rich and varied archives.

2023 marks 200 years since the opening of The Liverpool Mechanics’ and Apprentices’ Library, the earliest of LJMU’s founding organisations.

First year Graphic Design Students visited the University’s Special Collections and Archives to learn about the history of LJMU, its links to the city, and the expansion of education in Liverpool.

Through further research and development, the students created new designs inspired by the stories and artefacts they had discovered.

The work of 14 students will be shown alongside archive materials in an exhibition during October 2023 held at the Atrium Gallery in LJMU’s John Lennon Art and Design Building.

Works on show include posters, booklets, and models, relating to people, buildings and activities from LJMU’s past, as well as its present and its possible future. A range of items from the University’s archives, including photographs, documents and artefacts, will also be on display.

Exhibition Opening Times:
Monday – Thursday 9am-9pm
Friday 9am – 6pm

Shore, Sea, Sky

Shore, Sea, Sky – the North Wales coast project

In this exciting collaborative exhibition, three artists explore the spaces where the shore, sea and sky meet, responding both to the land and seascape of the North Wales coast and to each other’s work. With contemporary artist Jon Clayton, painter David Kereszeny-Lewis and glass artist Helen Smith

Preview evening is Thursday 19th October, 6 – 8pm, all welcome.

Opening Times: Thursday – Saturday, 10am – 4pm

The LAKE gallery is located in the heart of West Kirby, 2 minutes walk from the train station, opposite the Concourse.

To accompany the exhibition, the gallery will be hosting an artists talk on Saturday 4th November, 2.30 – 4pm. Free admission but please reserve your place via the gallery website.

Jon Clayton

Jon’s art is about places, they can be recognisable, detailed representational images but also, looser, abstract impressions, responses informed by connections present and in memory. Many of his paintings depict places of personal significance where he has spent time, often a lot of time. He particularly loves the landscape of Britain. The same small localities he continually returns to. Their familiarity is their strength – it’s what holds and moves him. Revisiting them – walking, running, drawing and photographing – he feels part of something already known. And yet, still, there is always something new, a fresh source of surprise.

David Kereszeny-Lewis

The son of a miner and part time game keeper, David Kereszteny-Lewis’s work is an autobiographical visualisation of his experiences in the landscapes he has come to know and understand intimately.

‘My work is fundamentally about places I know, the emotional connection I have with them and the physical effect that society has had upon them, especially in mining and agriculture. I look for the physical scars our actions have, such as paths, fields and fences.”

David’s work is mostly based in Cheshire, Cornwall, Yorkshire and north Wales and he has painted landscapes in every season of the year. His work has a constant theme of rain and water that adds its own specific atmosphere. Music also plays an influence in his work, most of the titles of the work start life in the lyrics of songs that resonate with both his practice as an artist and atmosphere created within an aural musical landscape.

Helen Smith

Created from kiln-formed glass, Helen’s tactile glass curves are strongly influenced by place. However, rather than depicting the landscape directly her focus is always on the interpretation of found textures within the landscape in combination with a sense of the atmosphere of a place.

“I was delighted when David and Jon asked me to join their North Wales coast project. The pieces I have created for this collection developed from the initial sketches made by David and Jon on their trips to the coast in combination with observations made on my own visits.”

Helen has been working with glass since completing her degree in Applied Arts specialising in glass in 2013 and regularly exhibits both locally and further afield. She is a co-founder of the LAKE gallery.

The Daniel Meakin Show

Presenting a variety of paintings, ranging from abstract to abstract-figurative by artist Daniel Meakin.

Event

Delighting in showcasing his art in public venues and theatres e.g. Unity Theatre, Liverpool, conjuring whimsical and fun elements in his artistic working process.

Black History Month 23: Leroy Through ...

Creative Writing Sessions with Levi Tafari.

Leroy Cooper’s photography exhibition, Liverpool Through the Lens, currently on display in The Museum of Liverpool, is a love letter to the city and an evocative and insightful depiction of life in the Liverpool 8 community.

In July 1981, just 20 years old, Leroy was arrested in Liverpool 8. The incident provided a spark to the growing discontent at police discrimination and violence against the black community in the area, which led to the first Toxteth uprising. Following his arrest, Leroy pursued a career in photography to counteract the negative depictions of Toxteth and the L8 community after 1981, amassing a collection of over a quarter of a million images that documented Liverpool’s people and culture. Beyond photography, he was a talented performance poet, DJ on Toxteth Community Radio, and a graffiti artist, known for repainting Toxteth street name signs in the vibrant colours of Rastafari. Cooper’s creative spirit remained undeterred, inspiring us all.

Amidst all the trials and tribulations of the Liverpool 8 community, Leroy’s lens always focused on the people and the community, revealing their strengths and vulnerabilities, through both happy and sadder times. Leroy was a guest of Writing on the Wall’s festival many, many times. We were proud to be invited to the opening of this exhibition in early 2023. In tribute to Leroy’s life and 40-year career WoW and NML are launching ‘Leroy Through the Lens’, a project that turns the focus on Leroy and his work, through a range of monthly workshops inviting participants to respond to Leroy’s powerful photography through a creative writing. The first session will be led by Leroy’s cousin and internationally renowned dub poet and performer, Levi Tafari.

Event

We are proud to present this co-hosted event with National Museums Liverpool, as part of our Black History Month programme. This is the first of a series of four workshops. Participants are welcome to come to this as a stand alone event or book for all four.

Hell Bus at The Black-E

Adfree Cities to invite you to come down and see the Hell Bus as part of The World Transformed at the Black-E on Great George Street, L1 5EW on the 7th & 8th of October 2023.

Adfree Cities are taking Darren Cullen’s ‘Hell Bus’, a mobile exhibition with artwork dissecting greenwashing tactics, on tour to university towns and cities across the UK, in collaboration with Switch It Green. The Hell Bus is a public climate art exhibition to raise awareness around high carbon advertising and demonstrate positive, democratic, and creative use of city space.