Event type: Exhibition

Art of the Terraces

The Walker Art Gallery has announced a ground-breaking new exhibition combining fashion, football and art, as told from the terraces of the stadiums. Art of the Terraces is the first major exhibition to tell the story of a movement that defined sports culture of the 1970s, 80s and 90s.

This pioneering exhibition considers the culture of football ‘casuals’, which began on Britain’s football terraces in the late 1970s. Through the medium of art, it highlights the clothing brands and sports footwear, music and encounters between rival groups of football supporters which defined an era and generation.

In a fusion of art, fashion and popular culture, Art of the Terraces explores the work of a generation of contemporary artists and designers who have been influenced by this movement over the last 40 years. It celebrates a cultural scene that has been overlooked by the mainstream art world, but which has created its own dynamic art forms and which is now credited with the mass popularisation of sportswear as leisurewear – a worldwide phenomenon.

Visitors will see artwork by leading contemporary artists such as Leo Fitzmaurice, Turner Prize winners Mark Leckey and Mark Wallinger, Pete McKee, Lucy McKenzie, Ross Muir and Dave White.

Pauline Rushton, Head of Decorative Arts at National Museums Liverpool, said: “It’s been our ambition for a long time to hold an exhibition of this kind at the Walker. Terrace culture originated among football fans here in the North West in the 1970s, and it’s difficult to overemphasise quite how far-reaching its influence has become.

“We’ll consider the highs and lows of going to the match, and the sense of identity and belonging that could be discovered and signalled to others through wearing a certain pair of trainers or branded sports top.”

The story of the movement, its wider significance in British and European popular culture and its artistic legacy will be told through more than 100 paintings, graphic designs and fashion items, as well as video and installation art.

This movement created a whole new approach to fashion, which still inspires brand loyalty today, and has attracted a new generation of fans of retro and classic sportswear and footwear. National Museums Liverpool is the first British museum to present the story of this sub-culture, which has had significant and far-reaching influence.

Dave Hewitson, exhibition partner and creator of the 80sCasuals website and clothing brand, said: “This wasn’t just a group of kids following fashion and wearing the latest trends, these kids were creating their own trends and style. The clothes, the attitude and ultimately the match defined the culture.”

Art of the Terraces is led by National Museums Liverpool in collaboration with four external partners: Dave Hewitson, creator of the 80sCasuals website and clothing brand; Hamburg-based artist Jens Wagner; illustrator Peter O’Toole and brand designer Adam Gill of Grammar Studio, Huddersfield. Staff and students of the Fashion: Design & Communication BA (Hons) course at Liverpool’s John Moores University are also collaborating on the exhibition. It is supported by Scotts Menswear and Tessuti.

If visitors enjoy Art of the Terraces, we’re asking them to pay what they think is appropriate, to support our museums and art galleries. Visitor contributions enable us to offer a rich programme of exhibitions and events, and support us in caring for our internationally known collections and reaching thousands of young people each year.

liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/artoftheterraces 

 

The Bluecoat’s Looked After Children

This summer the Bluecoat will open a new heritage exhibition The Bluecoat’s Looked After Children, examining the history of the 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.

Liverpool-based dance artist Paula Hampson has collaborated with a second group of participants, young people from Kinship Carers, to further explore the day to day life of a nineteenth-century Blue Coat pupil. Kinship Carers are an organisation supporting children looked after by family members and friends.

The Bluecoat building was originally a school, known as the Blue Coat Hospital or simply The Charity School. Founded in 1708, it then occupied larger, purpose-built premises – the current Bluecoat building  – dedicated in 1717 to ‘train destitute children in the principles of the Anglican church’.

The Bluecoat was a boarding school for boys and girls, many of whom had been orphaned. The pupils led a harsh life, working in a ‘manufactory’ – making pins, spinning cotton and picking oakum – alongside their lessons. At the age of 14 or 15, many of the boys were apprenticed to merchants for a further seven years, while girls often were employed in domestic service. Some girls stayed on at the school, employed as assistant teachers for younger girls, or as laundry assistants.

After nearly two centuries, the school moved to larger premises in Wavertree, where it continues today, and the Bluecoat building became an arts centre, the UK’s first.

Looked After Children is part of the Bluecoat’s Echoes and Origins project, exploring the eighteenth-century origins of the building through an engagement with local people. The first strand of this project, ‘Colonial Legacies’, involved young people interrogating the contemporary ramifications of the transatlantic slave trade that many Liverpool merchants who funded the school, notably its founder Bryan Blundell and his sons, were involved in.

A Family Day on Sunday 17 July from 11am-4pm will celebrate the opening weekend of the exhibition. This event will feature spoken word performances in the Bluecoat’s garden, craft activities and a special performance from young participants working with dance artist Paula Hampson.

A full programme of events will accompany this exhibition in September. Details will be announced nearer the time on the Bluecoat website.

LOOK Photo Biennial 2022: Climate

Open Eye Gallery opens up all three galleries from July to September 2022 to a host of work that follows on from the LOOK Climate Lab 2022.

In Gallery 1, there will be the ongoing photography projects On The Ground: The Story of Trans-Nzoia Through the Trees and Tree Story – A History of Liverpool City Region Through Its Trees, two projects which explore the importance of trees and community in both Kitale, Kenya and Liverpool, UK.

On The Ground is the work of a two month residency in the Kitale forest by photographer Frederick Dharshie Wissah, depicting food and water insecurity alongside the local communities aiding in preservation and conservation.

Tree Story is a collaboration between Open Eye Gallery, dot-art, and Mersey Forest, who invited the public to create a history of Liverpool through its trees using personal stories and photography.

The work has been created in collaboration with photographer Andy Yates. Gallery 2 presents Other Lines, stills and moving image work by David Kendall using thermal imaging and SMART phones to visually research air emissions produced by industrial landscapes, such as oil refineries,  in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire.

There is also photographic work sourced through an open call which asked for images responding to themes of energy, materials, transport, or non-human animals. LOOK will showcase Hellen Songa’s Mwalula, a photography project produced while Hellen visited their father Chileshe’s home country of Zambia after 23 years of separation.

Despite the differences in location and culture, both reconnected on their similar interests in farming; in particular, Mwalula Green-Life Farm, a plant-based, organic farm bought and ran by Chileshe and directed with Hellen. Mwulula will be facilitated by Groundworks to show in several public settings –  Faiths4Change, Hope Community Garden, Friends of Everton Park and John Archer Hall.

Open Eye Gallery will also be showing Hellen’s Volunteer Voices: Liverpool Food Growers Network, which exhibited at the LOOK Climate Lab 2022 and exhibited in several public locations.

The portraits are a visual display of 100 volunteers involved in community food growing across Liverpool. Descriptions alongside the portraits highlight the positive benefits individuals get out of volunteering and that these projects have on local nature.

the door is on the latch

The door is on the latch is an installation-exhibition, organised by Elizabeth as part of a larger curatorial research project that explores collaborative curation and exhibitions-as-artwork/medium.

Over the last 10(ish) weeks, they have met regularly to discuss and explore the ideas and themes present within their individual practises, using this as a starting point to generate the exhibition.

The door is on the latch is a culmination of this body of work, primarily exploring the contrast between interiors and exteriors, and the visuals and textures that we associate with that, as well as the boundaries between indoor and outdoor space, and how this can transform the exhibition space into an immersive installation.

The exhibition will be open on Friday 17th June, 6-9pm.

The Wonderful World of the Ladybird Bo...

This summer, visitors to Williamson Art Gallery & Museum can uncover the story of the talented artists who illustrated Ladybird books for more than 30 years in The Wonderful World of the Ladybird Book Artists.

From 29th June until 9th September, this beautiful and colourful exhibition puts on display an unparalleled collection of books, original artworks and artefacts and shows how the numerous, talented Ladybird illustrators played such an enormous role in the extraordinary success of the company in the 20th century.

Tracing the interconnected work of these artists, the Ladybird story itself is recounted over its ‘golden years’ – 1940 to 1975. Visually rich and varied, the exhibition will evoke many memories of childhood. Hundreds of books are made available for visitors to browse through and share.

It is curated by Ladybird expert and enthusiast Helen Day, who has spent more than 20 years researching the company and collecting items.

“Ladybird Books, with their bright covers, sparkling text and vivid illustrations are instantly evocative and recognizable – especially for anyone who grew up in Britain in the 20th Century” comments Niall Hodson, Curator of the Williamson Art Gallery. “These little books and their pastel-tinted pictures shine a light into the culture, fashion, and social history of our country.”

“This exhibition at the Williamson is a rare opportunity to explore the imagination and ingenuity of the artists behind the illustrations.”

Are You Messin’?

This summer, the Bluecoat presents a group exhibition of artworks made by leading UK and Northern artists which are specifically aimed at children & their adults. Are You Messin’? has been designed to be touched and explored; to immerse and captivate audiences of all ages and to inspire and stimulate creative responses in young visitors.

During the summer holidays, the Bluecoat’s gallery will be animated by free, regular artist workshops, performances and storytelling events, all led by artists from the exhibition and invited guests.

In Gallery One, Gregory Herbert (Liverpool), collaborating with children from the Bluecoat’s Out of the Blue after-school art clubs, will present an immersive sensory room with stimulating visuals, soothing sounds and comfy spaces – this room will provide a calm and engaging place to dwell. Herbert is interested in the relationship between living organisms and their environments, particularly taking influence from models of collaboration and coexistence. Herbert has previously explored the movements of fungi, sea slugs, frogs, octopuses, sea anemones, gut flora and lichen in his practice, as well as incorporating food preparation and planting.

Herbert has been working with local children from Leamington Community Primary, Four Oaks Primary, Princes Primary and Smithdown Primary schools for nine weeks, collaboratively developing the artworks that will make up his sensory space. The children have been helping him to design the space as part of the Bluecoat’s ongoing commitment to making art accessible to all.

Across Gallery Two, Katie Schwab (London/Glasgow) will layer textures, touchable surfaces and sculptures to create two rooms that invite tactile engagement and learning through play for all ages. Katie Schwab is an artist with a special interest in early-mid twentieth-century design and craft; her practice is emphatically hands-on, collaborative and participatory. For her installations at the Bluecoat, Schwab takes inspiration from a number of twentieth century art & design reference points.

These include the iconic 1950s ceramic tile work produced by Carter of Poole that once decorated the Lewis’s department store public cafeteria in Liverpool city centre and ‘The Tactile Workshops’ book by Italian artist & designer Bruno Munari (1907-98). Munari’s book suggests making a touchable library for children – a collection of materials with different tactile qualities – which are reflected in Schwab’s installation which encourages children to experiment freely. This artwork is a joint commission in partnership with Collective (Edinburgh).

In Gallery Three, artists from the city and wider North present ‘inspiration works’ – prints, drawings and sculptures – as the starting point for creative responses, playfully displayed in a hands-on making artist studio specially designed and scaled for children. The space will feature artworks by Penny Davenport, Kate Hodgson, Aliyah Hussain, Fauziya Johnson, Josie Jenkins, Kohenoor Kamal, Emily Lansley, Millie Toyin Olateju, Niloo Sharifi, Linny Venables with furniture by Crown Building Studios. 

The children’s artist studio, complete with making resources, will be animated with regular free live and pre-recorded artist workshops. Bookable activities aimed at babies and toddlers (0-3) and children (4-11 years old) including story telling, demonstrations of techniques and sensory play sessions, will take place mid-week during the summer holidays. The full programme of workshops and events including dates and how to book will be publicly announced by July 2022.

Finally in Gallery Four, children and families can enjoy a contemplative library space with a specially selected reading list including dual language books focused on creativity and identity. The room will be embellished with a hanging mobile by Millie Toyin Olateju (Liverpool). Millie Toyin Olateju makes colourful abstract paintings and drawings that are the result of free play with her materials.

Spontaneous and process led, they are a means to connect to the present moment and joyfully explore colour, shape and texture. Her new artwork at the Bluecoat will take the abstract forms and shapes from her paintings and translate these into the form of a mobile. The artist has also designed an ice-cream cart and gazebo which will serve Cheshire Farm Ice-cream from the Bluecoat’s courtyard over the summer holidays.

Are You Messin’? follows on from recent commissions for children at the Bluecoat by Harold Offeh; Simon & Tom Bloor and Bruce Asbestos, as well as exhibitions for children including Rise Up! in 2019 and Abacus in 2017 which featured a major commission by Emily Speed. 

The Royal Standard Presents ‘Les fen...

Studio member Ryan Murphy presents ‘Les fenêtres’.

This is Murphy’s debut collection of work from the last three and a half years. From flowery, impressionist window studies, to minimal, abstract figurative works, ‘Les fenêtres’ offers a joyful viewing experience through the artists’ use of bright, bold colours, and simple, playful forms.

The exhibition also features a virtual reality installation, created by Murphy, which places the viewer inside the exhibited works. Using this technology, Murphy has begun to explore how traditional oil paintings can be expanded upon and experienced in a 3-dimensional, digital space.

PV – 10th June 6-9pm.

Open – 11th – 12th June 12-5pm.

South Liverpool Photographic Society &...

Interested in taking photos on your phone or camera? An opportunity to see over 100 prints and digital images created by members of South Liverpool Photographic Society.

Members will be on hand to chat about the work and about their “camera club”.

Website – www.slps.co.uk

Location – Wilkinson Cameras shop (upstairs), at the bottom of Bold Street, 2 mins walk from Central Station.

Two In One: Liverpool Book Art Fundrai...

1) ‘Summer Sale’ – A Fundraising Show for Liverpool Book Art

This is a show of paintings and prints curated by two local art collectors, Simon Ryder and Steve Walkinshaw. The works are all ones acquired for their personal collections over many years, but it is now time for them to move on to new owners. All funds raised will go to support the activities of Liverpool Book Art, helping to sustain local arts activity.

The pictures include the results of supporting the local art scene, through purchases at degree shows, open studios, fairs and galleries. Most of the works were purchased direct from the artist – though the names of several of the artists are now lost. In addition to a wide range of contemporary works, the show includes a selection of prints from the 17th to the 20th centuries. There are approximately 30 framed works and 40 unframed. Size range: from 1200x700mm to 50x50mm!

There will be bargains! Don’t miss out. Purchase and take away!

All works can be purchased through Editions Framing while the exhibition is on (and the dates may be extended).  Images of the works will be available to view on-line, via Liverpool Book Art’s website and Instagram, and to purchase using PayPal (via liverpoolbookart@gmail.com). However, framed works must be picked up by the purchaser. Unframed works may be shipped at extra cost.

2) Contemporary Book Art

Simon is the Director of Liverpool Book Art, and he has put together a select display of book art works to illustrate the quality and variety of work created in this field. These works come from Simon’s personal collection, so none of them are for sale!

My Garden, My Sanctuary

FACT’s Summer 2022 exhibition, My Garden, My Sanctuary, is a collection of new, immersive artworks by Yaloo and Sian Fan – two artists using creative technology to tell stories of ancestry and self-discovery in a hyperconnected world.

Rites of passage define key moments as we drift from one stage in life to the next. Our identities glitch and flow as the influences of media, culture and technology collide with our ancestry. In My Garden, My Sanctuary artists Sian Fan (UK) and Yaloo (South Korea) submerge us in watery worlds from which they reclaim their cultural identities and remake their coming-of-age stories.

The artists present a series of large-scale animated installations and interactive gaming environments using commodified symbols of East-Asian culture that have become commonplace globally. These symbols include K-pop dance routines, the use of seaweed in food and beauty products, hypersexualised female avatars and spiritual icons stripped of their religious significance. Yaloo and Sian Fan take these symbols and remix them to build playful new worlds.

Curated by Carrie Chan, FACT’s 2022 Curator-in-Residence, the exhibition challenges the conventional ways we define our backgrounds to embrace identities that are more fluid.

Yaloo presents a mystical underwater garden of seaweed: an immersive journey through ancient beliefs and family history. The installation explores how Korean rituals and traditions have been branded and repackaged as products for consumption. Yaloo reclaims these symbols and weaves them together with the experiences of three generations of her maternal family to forge her own path.

Above the water’s surface, Sian Fan’s world takes shape as a lotus flower-filled sanctuary. The interactive artwork challenges romanticised ideas of East-Asian culture and standards of femininity found in anime and fantasy games.

Together, the artists’ works create a space for discovery and dialogue. For them, the blossoming of new, fluid identities begins by exploring our roots and history. This passage to self-realisation can be hard, and at times painful, but ultimately enlightening and joyful.

For more information visit fact.co.uk/event/my-garden-my-sanctuary

Feature image: Sian Fan Spirit Corp 2019 – Courtesy of the artist.