Event type: Exhibition

Spirit(s) of Dreams @ Garston

Explore the history of Garston on a family art trail this summer! Let the Garston Ghosties take you on a journey from Garstons distant past to the community’s hopes for the areas’ future – all seen through the eyes of children.

Spirit(s) of Dreams is the culmination of a two-year project between experimental photographer and multi-media artist Miriam Flüchter, children from the Venny (Garston Adventure Playground) and a few Garston grown-ups. 

The exhibition consists of a 7 stop trail that will take you along St. Mary’s Road, Garstons High Street, beginning at the Village Motors building and culminating at the old Garston Empire. Along the way you can have fun with family activities at the Coffee Vault and look out for “Garston Ghosties” – little characters that the children at the Venny have dreamt up, that represent the life spirit of their neighbourhood. Can you find them all?

The project looks at how architecture and infrastructure affect communities and encourages visitors to appreciate and celebrate the beauty of Garston and it’s working class history while using their imagination to dream up a colourful future for the area.

The exhibition will be accompanied by the children’s own illustrations, as well as illustrations, graphics and digital art by artist Evyn Seaton-Mooney.

Spirit(s) of Dreams Activity Book (pdf) – an activity book created by Miriam Flüchter and Evyn Seaton-Mooney, with photography, original concept and original artwork all by the children at Garston Adventure Play.

Ghostie Street Map (pdf) – a guide to the Spirit(s) of Dreams exhibition by Evyn Seaton-Mooney and the children of Garston Adventure Play

Miriam Flüchter is a film photographer and mixed-media artist from Germany. She has lived in Liverpool for 7 years and has recently moved to the Midlands. Her favourite mode of transport is the train, because you can see lots of cool animals on your journey. She loves the blondies at the Coffee Vault and her favourite place in Garston is the art room in the Venny.

Evyn Seaton-Mooney is a multidisciplinary artist  (that means they like making art in lots of different ways) who has lived in Liverpool for 7 years! 4 of those years have been spent living in South Liverpool which Evyn now calls their home. They love drawing and writing the most and you can usually find them making mini magazines called “Zines” about what it’s like to be Disabled, making linocut prints or writing plays. Their favourite mode of transport is boat/ferry because they like pretending to be a pirate out on the deck. Their favourite place in Garston is the Speke and Garston Coastal Reserve where they spend their summers sitting by the river doodling the view.

The children at the Venny. The kids are a creative bunch and know their way around an analogue camera like any experienced film photographer. They are great at helping each other with their projects, and always come up with fantastic ideas, like the ghosties. No creative challenge is too big for them, be that making sculptures out of masking tape or developing their own film.

Garston residency part of the Culture Liverpool’s Creative Neighbourhoods programme; an ongoing collaborative project for communities throughout Liverpool. It is a series of creative interventions in wards across the city, taking the form of artistic residencies, development of public art, events and creative engagement workshops. This work uses co-creative practices to address the needs of each community at neighbourhood level. This programme is about creative place-making while platforming local voices and stories.

John Moores Painting Prize 2025

One of the UK’s most prestigious contemporary painting exhibitions returns to the Walker Art Gallery in September 2025.

Supporting artists from all over the UK – whether they’re undiscovered, emerging or established in their careers – the Prize provides a platform for artists to inspire, disrupt and challenge the British painting scene today. Showcasing the very latest in painting across the UK, the competition culminates in a major exhibition every two years in Liverpool. 

First held in 1957, the competition was named after its founding sponsor Sir John Moores. The prize is open to all artists working with paint, who are aged 18 years or over and live or are professionally based in the UK. 

Past prizewinners have included Peter Doig, Rose Wylie, David Hockney, Mary Martin and Sir Peter Blake, who became the first patron of the John Moores Painting Prize in 2011, after winning the Junior section of John Moores 3 with his painting ‘Self Portrait with Badges’ in 1961. 

The winner of the Prize is also awarded a solo exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery the following year. The 2023 Prizewinner was Graham Crowley with his painting ‘Light Industry’. His subsequent exhibition – Graham Crowley: I paint shadows – was on display at the Walker until 13 July 2025.

Lou Miller: We Dream of Our Freedom

Manchester-based artist and activist Lou Miller has collaborated with children from St Vincent de Paul Catholic Primary School in L1 to explore their vision of freedom. The resulting exhibition transforms the voices of the children, aged 8-11, into a series of textile banners, clay, and print works for adults and children alike. Miller’s practice has a strong collaborative focus, exploring themes of community, work, health, and social change. For We Dream of Our Freedom, the gallery will become a community studio, inviting audiences to share their own ideas of freedom and respond to the children’s vision.

We Dream of Our Freedom is part of Our Freedom: Then and Now, a UK-wide, locally-led arts and creative programme from Future Arts Centres, which is producing 60 new pieces of work reflecting on what ‘Our Freedom’ means to local people and their communities, following the 80th anniversary of VE/VJ Day.

The themes of the project resonate deeply with the Bluecoat’s own history. Not only was the building severely damaged during the Blitz, but for the last 100 years as an arts centre, the Bluecoat has championed creativity, and the freedom for artists, and everyone, to express themselves freely through their art.

Free entry

Just Browsing

Just Browsing is a group exhibition that allows audiences to browse tactile works of art. The exhibition borrows from the retail area around Bluecoat’s gallery to offer an experience of art that can be touched, worn and bought to take home. Artists in the exhibition use textiles, ceramics, and scent to connect with audiences in a variety of ways.

The exhibition features works and products from artists Bruce Asbestos, Ffion Evans, Garth Gratrix, Ivy Kalungi, Lou Miller, Sufea Mohamad Noor, Lewis Prosser, Ben Saunders, Daniel Sean Kelly, Chester Tenneson, and Carla Wright.

This exhibition is part of our season Felt, which features a programme of exhibitions and events that allow audiences to go beyond looking, but also to touch, wear, hold, and take part, and experience art in new, hands-on ways.

Join us for a first look at the exhibitions and free creative activities in the gallery on Sat 25 Oct from 11am.

Helen Anna Flanagan ‘Burnt Toast’ & Gavin Gayagoy ‘Doomscroll_1’

This exhibition brings together two artists exploring the complexities of human existence in the modern world. Through their artworks, Helen Anna Flanagan and Gavin Gayagoy navigate experiences of alienation through societal neglect and digital isolation. Both works were created during artist residencies at FACT and developed in Studio/Lab, our dedicated space for nurturing and supporting artistic practice.

Burnt Toast is a contemporary ghost story by Helen Anna Flanagan. The film resurrects legendary British comedian Tommy Cooper, who famously died mid-performance in 1984. Combining machine learning, analogue technologies, archival materials and a trained impersonator, the film follows a failed magician trapped in his decaying home. Unemployed and struggling with mental health and social isolation, he recites memories and anecdotes haunted by the past. Through his story, Helen asks us to question how hidden structures —such as class, culture and capitalism— can shape our lives, control our actions, and leave us feeling alienated.

Read the film transcription here – Burnt Toast (2025) Transcript.

Gavin Gayagoy’s work, Doomscroll_1, explores our relationship with smartphones, focusing on the sensation of ‘doom-scrolling’ – compulsively consuming digital content, often to the detriment of mental health. Doom-scrolling often leaves people feeling trapped in an endless loop as they mindlessly switch between apps, losing track of time. Gavin utilises game design to examine how digital environments impact our emotions and, ultimately, our understanding of ourselves. His work addresses the paradox of being online – that it holds the potential to thrill and fear, offering freedom while also holding us back.

Our homes are full of ghosts – from our memories to digital presences that haunt us from our screens, drawing us into their spectral worlds and slowly building a sense of disconnection from those physically around us. In this exhibition, both artists use the domestic setting as a way to think about the technologies, social conditions and societal structures that create this strange loneliness in being connected.

Feature Image: Gavin Gayagoy, Doomscroll_1 (2025). Photograph, courtesy the artist.

 

Latin American Artist Exhibition: La Feria

Presented as part of La Feria 2025, this exhibition showcases powerful and original works from Latin American artists based across the UK. Hosted in the elegant surroundings of the Stable Gallery at St George’s Hall, the exhibition is a unique opportunity to explore a broad spectrum of Latinx identity and creative expression.Featuring a diverse mix of mediums and approaches, highlighting the innovative and multifaceted nature of Latin American visual storytelling. With artists of heritage from across the Latin American continent, the exhibition reveals the multiplicity of lived experience within LatinX communities in the UK.

The Tree of Authenticity

Nestled in Africa’s largest rainforest lies one of the many graves of the West’s efforts to control nations and nature – one of the world’s largest tropical agricultural research centres. Located on the banks of the Congo River, the Yangambi INERA Research Station was a booming scientific centre in its heyday. Today, it is a mix of jungle and ruin, where questions of knowledge, power over it, and access to it linger.

The Tree of Authenticity is a film by Tate collection artist Sammy Baloji. It recounts the story of two scientists, Paul Panda Farnana and Abiron Beirnaert, who worked at Yangambi between 1910 and 1950. Through their voices, the film looks at how colonialism harmed both people and the environment, and how that damage is still felt today.

Please note that this film screening is at FACT Liverpool.

Doors open at 17.00. The screening starts promptly at 17.30 and will be followed by a Q&A with the artist.

Biography

Artist Sammy Baloji (b. 1978, Lubumbashi, DR Congo) lives and works between Lubumbashi and Brussels. Since 2005 he has been exploring the memory and history of the Democratic Republic of Congo. His work is an ongoing investigation into the cultural, architectural and industrial heritage of the Katanga region, as well as questioning the impact of Belgian colonisation. His critical view of contemporary societies serves as a warning of the ways in which cultural clichés continue to shape collective memory, allowing social and political power games to continue to dictate human behaviour.

Film details

Spoken languages: French, Dutch

Subtitles: English

Length: 89 minutes

Completion: February 2025

Congo-Liverpool Routes Project

This event is part of a research and engagement project called Congo-Liverpool Routes developed through a collaboration between Tate Liverpool and the International Slavery Museum. The project engaged with museum collections and archival material that attest to the historical and present-day connections between Congo and Liverpool. It was developed with Congolese communities in Liverpool in rethinking the legacies of past exploitation while imagining roadmaps for different futures.

50 Years of The Whitechapel Centre @ Atrium Exhibition

The Whitechapel Centre, a leading homelessness and housing charity for the Liverpool region, is 50 this year.

To mark the occasion, a free public exhibition is held this autumn at the Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool, offering visitors an inspiring journey through the charity’s history and its vital role in tackling homelessness across five decades.

The exhibition traces the evolving face of homelessness, showing how economic, social, and political influences have shaped people’s experiences and the services provided. A central timeline charts major events alongside the charity’s responses, revealing how its work has adapted to meet changing needs.

Visitors can explore personal stories of transformation, a memories board and a spotlight on services – including the importance of creativity and self-expression for those experiencing homelessness.

Thanks to funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, made possible by National Lottery players, the exhibition has been curated by a co-creation team, including people with lived experience of homelessness. 

Helen Featherstone, Director, England, North at The National Lottery Heritage Fund, said:

“The Whitechapel Centre has been doing important work for many years related to homelessness in Liverpool. We are delighted to be supporting the charity, thanks to money raised by National Lottery players, to explore and share the history of homelessness in the city, and how it has changed throughout the 50 years the charity has been in operation.”

 

Local Nature Recovery Strategy – School Nature Map Exhibition @ Atrium exhibition

Celebration: Monday 1 September / 4pm–6pm / Open Eye Gallery / RSVP
An extraordinary collaborative project brings together young voices from across Liverpool City Region to reimagine our natural world.

The Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, appointed by DEFRA, has developed a comprehensive Local Nature Recovery Strategy (LNRS) for the area. This ambitious spatial strategy is designed to identify opportunities to restore and enhance our region’s natural environments, supporting biodiversity and creating healthier ecosystems for future generations.

To make this strategy accessible and engaging for younger audiences, they commissioned local art organisation dot-art and artist Joe Venning to work with six schools – one from each borough of the Liverpool City Region:

Liverpool: St Julie’s Catholic High School
Wirral: Weatherhead High School
Sefton: Peterhouse Schools
Knowsley: Prescot School
St Helens: The Sutton Academy
Halton: Ormiston Bolingbroke

Together, they created beautiful nature maps highlighting the diverse and rich species found in each area. These artistic interpretations of our natural heritage are being exhibited here for the first time, connecting young people with the importance of protecting and enhancing our local environment.

Emergence @ Victoria Park Butterfly House And Garden

Launch: Thursday 4 September / 4.30pm–6.30pm / Victoria Park Butterfly House
Emergence is the outcome of a socially engaged project between volunteers at Victoria Park Butterfly House and visual artist Anna Wijnhoven. 

Through a series of photographs and collaborative work, Emergence celebrates the often unseen efforts of those who sustain this unique urban sanctuary. The project highlights the value of volunteering, the power of community, and the role small green spaces play in supporting urban sustainability.

Entirely volunteer-run, the butterfly house and gardens are a community-led space where people come together to care for both nature and one another. 

Anna Wijnhoven, artist in residence, said: “Working alongside the volunteers at the butterfly house and gardens was more than just a creative celebration of space, I have been witness to the quiet power of kindness in action.

Throughout the project, I feel I have become part of something special. The kind of something that lifts you up and turns moments of care into something a whole community can feel. Because of this, the space hums with a quiet magic. A kind of place where from the moment you step through the front door, it feels like poetry in motion”.

Lady Fern, project participant, said: “In a world where life and news can be unsettling, often even chaotic, leaving us confused and worried, I found a secret garden within a park. The glass building that day glistened. I entered as it seemed to call me in. A place of real peace, much beauty, true calmness and many glimpses of magic that give hope of boundless possibilities and it was that something special that drew me in. 

I love nothing more than nature and its energy. I felt like it was right there from the people who welcomed me into the many plants and the wonder of new life beginning to burst forth. Butterflies opened up their wings to set flight, a sign of new beginnings, a reason for hope and rest. 

This journey we wish to share with you, I hope. Our pictures capture such magic.”

 

Emergence is part of Photo Here, a programme of socially engaged photographic residencies and exhibitions commissioned by Liverpool City Region Combined Authority as part of this year’s Cultural Events Programme. Developed by Open Eye Gallery in collaboration with each of six local authorities: Halton, Knowsley, Liverpool, Sefton, St Helens and Wirral.