Do They Owe Us A Living?

Organised in collaboration with the Art of Management & Organisation conference, co-hosted by the Bluecoat and the University of Liverpool, the group exhibition Do They Owe Us A Living? brings together twelve artists and artist collaborations and takes as its point of departure the conference theme ‘art-as-activism’.

Each artist was asked to respond to the theme of activism within the broader context of the conference. The exhibition features a diverse range of practice: from community-focused projects engaging with care in the workplace and council-approved regeneration programmes; through to artworks directed at the histories of prejudice surrounding different communities; as well as work that questions the efficacy of art to function as an act of political resistance in its vulnerability to political co-option; ‘activism’ proposed less as a given than a complex
proposition.

Crosby Camera Club photography exhibit...

An exhibition of photography from Crosby Camera Club will open to the public at Mencap Cottage House on Mariners Road, Crosby in late August.

The prints, which will be on display around the house, represent a cross-section of recent work created by the camera club’s members, with a variety of subjects depicted.

The exhibition will open on Saturday, August 27th and run for just over a month, closing on Friday, September 30th, 2022.

Members of the public can visit this exhibition of work from local photographers, free of charge, between 9am until 4.30pm while the exhibition runs. Please note, the exhibition is not open on Mondays or Tuesdays.

Newly-elected president of Crosby Camera Club, June Poston, said:

I do hope as many people as possible will visit our photo exhibition and help support both our club and Mencap Liverpool & Sefton.

Mounted prints on display will be on sale at a very reasonable price, with 50% of each sale donated to Mencap Cottage House.

While you’re visiting you can also grab refreshments from the venue’s new coffee shop with delicious cakes, scones, and hot and cold drinks available.”

The exhibition opens just 11 days before the start of a new season for Crosby Camera Club, with new members very welcome to join.

William Roscoe Exhibition

Want to know more about William Roscoe Esq?

ArtsGroupie have been working with their friends at Palm House, Sefton Park to co-create a mini exhibition display about the famous Liverpudlian from Sunday 21st Aug – Weds 24th.

The launch on Sunday 21st Aug at 11 am, will feature:

– Butterfly shadow puppetry activity sessions
– A talk about Roscoe
– Live poetry

NO NEED TO BOOK JUST TURN UP

William Roscoe is one exceptional individual in Liverpool’s rich history. A self-made man who realised the importance of self-education and to respect nature.

His ideals about art, activism, and horticulture have had a massive influence on Artsgroupie. They strive to promote the arts to all and instill civic pride through their heritage projects.

‘It has been a delight to work with the enthusiastic and passionate like-minded team at the Palm House, Sefton Park. To co-create an exhibition celebrating William Roscoe and to introduce people to his life and times’.

John Maguire – Creative Director, ArtsGroupie CIC

Images for this event are kindly provided by Liverpool Central Library and Archives and The Athenaeum

Return of the Gods: Zeus, Athena, Herc...

Return of the Gods: Zeus, Athena, Hercules will open at World Museum on 28 April 2023 and will run until 25 February 2024.

Featuring a stunning collection of sculpture and antiquities, the exhibition will immerse you in the ancient world through the words of poets, music and drama.

Exploring the legends of the gods, goddesses and mortals from Ancient Greece and Rome, and including some of the most well-known characters such as the king of the gods Zeus, Athena the goddess of wisdom and war and the hero, Hercules, the exhibition will draw you into a fascinating world where the ancient gods were an important part of everyday life.

Follow the stories of birth, love and rivalry of the Olympian gods, and explore their characters and powers. The exhibition will explain how the Greek gods were adopted by the Romans and how they were worshipped publicly and in private.

Visitors can enter a Roman villa to discover how Emperors and the Imperial families were immortalised after death, before entering a dark and ethereal space to explore the underworld in a theatrical display featuring the three-headed dog, Cerberus, guardian of the gates of Hades.

If visitors enjoy The Return of the Gods: Zeus, Athena, Hercules, they’re asking them to pay what they think is appropriate, to support their museums and art galleries. Visitor contributions enable them to offer a rich programme of exhibitions and events, supports us in caring for our internationally known collections and reaching thousands of young people each year.

Pure Brilliance: The Boodles Story

Pure Brilliance: The Boodles Story will open at the Lady Lever Art Gallery on 22 October 2022 and will run throughout the gallery’s 100th anniversary year, until 5 March 2023.

The exhibition will showcase the jewellery brand’s 225-year story and show how Liverpool has helped shape the company’s growth, from much-loved family jeweller to purveyors of some of the most stunning jewels in the world.

See how the heritage of Liverpool’s vibrant and creative jewellery industry in the late 19th century created a market for quality jewellery and metalwork, for which Boodles soon acquired a reputation.

Stunning pieces of historic jewellery from Liverpool makers and racing trophies made by Boodles will illustrate the early years of the firm. The company’s rise from city jeweller to the pinnacle of high-end design and manufacture will be shown through the dazzling and contemporary jewellery on display.

The Bluecoat’s Looked After Chil...

Discover the history of the Bluecoat building as a charity school and the unheard voices of the children it housed.

This exhibition brings archival material relating to the school together with contemporary art, including documentation of past Bluecoat exhibitions and performances that have interrogated this history.

The Bluecoat has worked directly with a group of adults with experience of the modern care system, along with creatives, to research some of the individual children identified in the school’s archive. Under the guidance of Liverpool writer Margy McShane the participants have creatively reimagined the lost voices of these children.

The work produced by this adult group will be featured in a new installation commission from interactive design studio Stand + Stare, which will form the centrepiece of the exhibition, and bring to life some of the stories of the children from the Bluecoat’s past.

Jupiter’s Song

The second in a series of pop-ups, Jupiter’s Song is a creative intervention exploring perspectives and experiences inspired by the Earle Collection of documents at the International Slavery Museum.

Focussing on these documents, international artist Khaleb Brooks, hopes to bring a new perspective and greater visibility of the Liverpool history archive. The installation will explore perspectives, exchange and humanising experiences, confronting narratives to consider identity and how the experiences of the past manifest today.

Khaleb Brooks is an artist, researcher and writer exploring blackness, transness and collective memory. Through sculpture, printmaking, painting and performance, his work melds together memories of the middle passage, emancipation and disrupted identities, offering spaces of healing and mourning through surrealism.

This pop-up series is designed to explore new ways of working, collaborations and representation of different voices, as part of the redevelopment of the International Slavery Museum and wider transformation programme across National Museums Liverpool.

This installation is at the Dr Martin Luther King Jr Building on the Royal Albert Dock. Free entry from Tuesday-Sunday 10am-6pm.

For more information visit https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/jupiterssong

JMW Turner with Lamin Fofana: Dark Wat...

Take a fresh look at JMW Turner in new exhibition Dark Waters. For the first time, Turner’s work will be presented within an immersive sound environment created by artist and musician, Lamin Fofana.

Tate Liverpool’s location on the waterfront, combined with Liverpool’s maritime history, provides the perfect context for us to consider Turner afresh. The exhibition features some of Turner’s most celebrated seascapes alongside his sketchbooks and works on paper.

Although creating work centuries apart, both artists convey the power and politics of the ocean and explore its relationship to capitalism and colonialism. Turner’s paintings focus on the dangers of the waters around the British coast and Fofana’s sound work looks across the Atlantic.

The Interior

The Interior exhibition features two contrasting Liverpool artists; Ali Hunter with her inky and illustrative works on paper and Lorna Morris who creates immense realism in her tranquil oil paintings.

Both artists, though different in style, do share one thing: their subject matter of “The Interior”. Highlighting sanctuaries, reading nooks and often overlooked spots in our own abodes, these art works celebrate the ordinary and moments of stillness in a room of one’s own.

Lincolnshire born Illustrator Ali Hunter now lives and works in Liverpool. Taking inspiration from fashion, interiors and home decor; Hunter’s work captures intimate spaces, fashionable characters and pets. Graduating from Manchester School of Art in Illustration, Ali Hunter uses pen and ink to create portraits and interior scenes.

Lorna Morris graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a Masters Degree in Fine Art . She has exhibited solo and with fellow artists. Her work is in private collections in the USA, Canada, Germany and the UK. Interiors are for her places of retreat, solitude and silence. In her paintings she hopes to create shortcuts to tranquillity. Each painting represents weeks of stillness and solitude due to the nature of her slow, oil-painting technique. You can step into them at will or set aside a time each day to escape with your painting into distilled peace.

Morris says – “With the outside world shut off in March 2020, I found myself in my studio with no distractions, free to create. I began painting the silent tranquil interiors of my home. By June I was longing to return to our art galleries and see again the brush strokes, decisions, colours and mystery of the masters.

More portraits have followed by studying the portrait painters of the past – particularly Sargent – striving to achieve that physical presence, seeing the layers of translucent and opaque colours, the spirit of the sitter and the moment of the paint being placed. I have been fulfilling my longing to see the art of centuries past by creating these pieces and I hope in turn they bring you that joy of living with real art in your own home.”

Ali’s interiors go between the home and local coffee shops, sleepy chic bars and highly fashionable flats, expanding more on who we are in the spaces we socialise in and relax in. With hints of fashion illustration Ali places characters and close friends in these settings, with their mood and clothing matching perfectly to their environment.

All artworks are for sale.

Join them for the Private View of the exhibition on Thursday 28th July from 5pm-7pm.

All welcome, but you must register here: https://TheInteriorPrivateView.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 29th July – 17th September 2022.

Ellie Hoskins – EVERYTHING! IS! ...

Artist and writer Ellie Hoskins is currently working in-situ at OUTPUT on her first solo exhibition, a large-scale sculptural installation.

Ellie Hoskins (b. 1995) is a multi-disciplinary artist and writer from Cumbria, now based in Liverpool. Her work is diaristic, frank and funny, combining slapstick millennial nihilism with an immersion in the rituals and details of everyday working life. OUTPUT is delighted to welcome Ellie for her first solo presentation Everything! Is! Futile! for which she is currently working in-situ in the gallery, creating an installation of text works and sculpture around a family of papier-mâché homunculi.

Hoskins’ work combines lineages of contemporary art and culture – sad, lumpy figures reminiscent of Maria Lassnig or Louise Bourgeois sup cans of lager, while inspirational Instagram quotes are replaced by seedy confessions or suburban existential angst.

The artist explains; “I think what I’m mostly inspired by is content that comes from a very human place, like proper gut-level feelings expressed successfully enough to be gut-wrenching when communicated to someone else. And so when it’s consumed you feel less alone”. Hoskins captures moments of private absurdity with self-deprecating clarity, emphasising their universality as she brings them out into the light.

This search for communality led Hoskins to create and lead the one-year unofficial online art school Phlegm, which culminated in an exhibition at The Royal Standard in 2021. Other recent projects include a text installation on the exterior of Bluecoat and Broken Little Things, a collection of short text fragments for Montez Press.

Ellie Hoskins – Everything! Is Futile! will have a launch event from 6pm – 8pm on Thursday, 21st July. The exhibition continues until August 7th.