Event type: Exhibition

Doctor Who: Worlds of Wonder

From epic monsters to costumes and props, science is brought to life exploring some of the Doctor’s many adventures and encounters through space and time.

This world premiere exhibition will see visitors engage with original artefacts, sets and much more – it’s a must-see for any fan of Doctor Who and science enthusiasts too.

Journeying through the world of Doctor Who, visitors will discover the science that weaves its way through the history of the longest-running sci-fi TV show in the world, which has been on our screens for almost 60 years.

Explore the past, present and future of the Earth and the vast reaches of the cosmos in this imaginative new exhibition, presented by Sarner International under license from BBC Studios.

Art in the Mansion: Suzanne Grace and ...

Suzanne Grace and Steve Bayley are local Liverpool artists who enjoy interacting with nature and specialise in fine art painting.

Their mutual interest in the natural world and conservation issues has inspired them into forming this collaboration. Whilst Steve works from Hub Studios and Gallery in the Baltic Triangle, Suzanne works from Wild Art Studio local to Calderstones.

Both artists’ works have included a large variety of contemporary and expressionistic styles whilst also venturing into more traditional practices like portraiture and landscape art.

Their art is a mixture of abstract and subjective works which involves many different processes of mark making. Both have exhibited locally and throughout the North West and have undertaken a number of commissions.

All works are for sale and can be purchased via The Reader Shop.

A Civic Role

A new documentary display at the Bluecoat looks at how the Liverpool arts venue has engaged with the city and participated in wider public debates.

In these challenging times, the function of the arts in society is becoming increasingly valued, as well as put under scrutiny. Publicly-funded arts organisations are being challenged to develop new ways to engage with their audiences, to become more relevant to local communities, and to grow their civic role.

As the first arts centre in the UK, constituted in 1927, the Bluecoat has long engaged with Liverpool’s cultural and civic life, providing a home for artists, cultural societies, creative retailers, festivals, and a place for public discourse and social interaction.

The new exhibition, A Civic Role, reflects some of the ways in which the Bluecoat has strived to be more than simply a venue that presents art in its spaces. The material selected to tell this story is drawn from the arts centre’s archive – photos, film, posters, publications and other documents – and offers a glimpse at some of the key strands of the Bluecoat’s civic engagement.

This has taken place both within and beyond the building, interacting with local people in a variety of ways, such as artists’ interventions into the public realm, residencies by artists and academics, leading on debates, and a wide-ranging participation programme with communities.

A range of topics is covered in the exhibition around four themes:

Bluecoat’s contribution to public debate, starting with the study it commissioned from John Willett in the early 1960s, which was published in 1967 as Art in A City, a seminal work that was the first sociological study of art in a single place. While the building was closed for its capital development in 2007, the Bluecoat went on the road to local neighbourhoods to promote the Liverpool Debates, inviting local people to discuss hot topics of the day. And in 2011 it devised a programme, Liverpool, City of Radicals that interrogated the city’s radical credentials.

Bluecoat engaging with the city, through artists’ interventions in the public realm, taking art out into the city in performances and installations in busy city shopping streets or on public monuments. Projects like Peter McRae’ Avenue of Heroes on the steps of St George’s Hall, Mandy Romero’s Queen of Culture during the construction upheaval of Liverpool One, or Richard Dedomenici impersonating Boris Johnson apologising to Liverpool, are represented in photos. While, at the arts centre, Bed-In at the Bluecoat recreated John & Yoko’s famous action for peace, restaged as a series of daily interventions by local people using a bed in the Bluecoat space.

The inclusive city focuses on the Bluecoat’s participation programmes with local communities, both onsite and as outreach, such as artist Humberto Velez’ The Welcoming, staged for the 2006 Liverpool Biennial and involving new migrants to the city welcomed by older established communities; and the Art Valley project with people in Alt Valley.

Global conversations are reflected in the Bluecoat’s engagement with the world through posters for exhibitions by artists from Senegal, China, France, Germany and elsewhere, including an exchange programme with Liverpool’s long-established twin city of Cologne, and the first UK visit by Pop Mechanica from Leningrad’s music and performance underground in a season in 1989 called Perestroika in the Avant Garde.

Though only a snapshot of these cultural programmes, the display indicates how they have aimed to draw attention to issues such as local democracy, housing, public space, the accessible city, sharing knowledge, pathways to creativity, contested histories, and global links.

This is the second in a series of archival displays in the Vide space, situated next to the Gallery, and it follows A Creative Community, which focussed on the Bluecoat as a centre for working artists. The third exhibition, starting in March 2022, focuses on Bluecoat’s colonial legacies.

Bluecoat’s civic role will be further discussed in an associated programme, see www.thebluecoat.org.uk where they invite you to contribute your ideas for a more civic role for the arts centre.

Wedding Open Day

Nestled among acres of beautiful parkland in South Liverpool’s Calderstones Park, their Grade II listed Mansion House could be the unique, magical setting you’re looking for on your big day.

A place unlike any other, the Mansion House is home to recently renovated indoor spaces including a stylish bar and events space – the perfect backdrop to make your wedding feel truly special.

Their events team will guide you around the facilities and catering options, plus, meet local, trusted independent wedding suppliers from photographers and florists to dressmakers and DJs, chosen by them to give your celebration that personal touch.

Book a free ticket to let them know you’ll be attending.

Art in the Mansion: Maggie Hilditch

The Reader is delighted to host exhibition from local artist Maggie Hilditch. This comes as part of The Reader’s work with dot-art to curate a rolling programme of exhibitions of local artists work within the Mansion at Calderstones Park.

The display areas are located within the reception area, hall & main corridor. Art work on display is available to buy via the shop.

About the Artist:

Maggie Hilditch is a painter, craftmaker & art trainer, based in Liverpool. Maggie works in acrylics and oils on paper and canvas, layering colour to form texture and depth. This series features abstracts, land & seascapes and flowers.

Maggie studied Fine Art at Manchester University and Glasgow School of Art, and Fashion & Textiles at Middlesex University (Cat Hill Arts Campus). She worked briefly as a fashion designer before returning to Middlesex University to complete a PGCE in Secondary Art Teaching with Special Needs Education, after which she worked in secondary teaching.

Maggie has been part of the JC2000 Millennium initiative and ‘cre8.ed’ teams (freelance artists, musicians, actors & dancers) teaching values, citizenship, and religious education through the creative arts. For many years Maggie has facilitated and led creative workshops in various settings, including schools, churches, theatres, health facilities and retreat centres. Most recently Maggie has ventured into leading art-based retreats.

http://www.maggiehilditch.net/

The exhibition:

trio: three seasons; three styles

trio: from the Latin ‘tres’, meaning a group of three

trio is a collection of artworks created over the past few years, reflecting three different styles of painting and corresponding life seasons.

Floor Plan: By Ellie Towers and Reece ...

Floor Plan in a brand new site specific installation created by Ellie Towers and Reece Griffiths for Convenience Gallery.

Floor Plan is an attempt to actualise a tangible visual representative of the way childhood memories and activities manifest themselves in the retrospective position of the present.

Rooted in the idea of ‘weekends’ spent as a child, it has grown into something which attempts to reclaim lost places and pivotal events by pushing them into a shape that subverts the absurd, the concrete material and the half-remembered into implicative-fiction and positive productivity.

It is the environmental stand-in of the challenging and questioning of how we choose to perceive and recontextualise the things done to and through us, and what we have brought forward into our contemporary experience.

All donation based tickets funds are reinvested back into their current and future creative programming. This will support them in creating more opportunities for both people in the creative industry and the wider community. All their “In Cahoots” core programming is free to attend and donations are optional.

Floor Plan: By Ellie Towers & Reece Griffiths @ Convenience Gallery

Opening Night and PV @ Bloom Building (CH41 5FQ)

A part of the “In Cahoots” 21/22 programme

Brigitte Jurack: What’s Left Beh...

Brigitte Jurack explores our relationship with animals and their inner lives. Her recent work considers issues around environmental adaptability by focussing on some of the scavengers with whom we share long cultural entanglements, such as crows, foxes and monkeys.

The Williamson is open Wednesday-Friday 10.30am – 5:00pm and Saturday 10am – 4.30pm

Aesop’s Fables have long fascinated Jurack in her artistic practice through their articulation of hybrid identities and the animal within. At a time when we can no longer deny the devasting effect of human activity on our environment, the ethical dimension of this animal turn and the urgency needed to change takes centre stage.

For this solo show, Jurack presents a series of new works in ceramics, watercolour, drawing and film, and “the focus on foxes, crows and monkeys is a reflection on the edges of society, on the clever scavengers who eke a living from the in-between spaces and leftovers from the rest of life” (Colin M. Simpson, Williamson Art Gallery).

A new colour monograph published by Williamson Art Gallery and Manchester School of Art will be available, with essays by Colin Simpson, Lauren Velvick and Dr Danielle Child.

“These works were begun pre-Covid, with the intricate watercolours and drawings all created within the stillness and silence of lockdowns spent in Alternator Studio and Project space, a converted bakery in Birkenhead and my studio and place of making since 2013.” – Brigitte Jurack

Is This It?

Three contemporary artists from Liverpool and Dublin to respond to the simple question ‘Is This It?’ in a new show by Robert Flynn, Margaret O’Brien and John Elcock at The Royal Standard.

Their response to possibly the ultimate question for human civilisation uses space and time as starting point for a joint exhibition of large scale works, featuring static electricity, found objects and video projection.

Margaret O’Brien: ‘Through a constructed repetition, my work explores the concept of tenselessness – a theory that states there is no privileged position in space-time; the same event can occur at different times for different observers in different frames of reference’.

Robert Flynn: ‘DARKMATTER is a series of photographs and installation that delves into the doctored nature of the images of space that we are exposed to and how it shapes our perception of the cosmic void. Due to our limited capabilities to actually see it most images of space that are released are altered and photoshopped, whether for publicity or to study them and to gain a deeper understanding of the data. Ultimately our perception of space is defined by our inability and attempts to perceive and comprehend it.’

John Elcock: ‘Studio-exploration of objects I found at an isolated pilgrimage site on the Isle of Bute emerged into ideas on a universal scale, suggesting answers to our show’s question might be found on a remote Scottish island, as much as a laboratory at CERN’.

A New Day – An exhibition by th...

JourneyMEN aim to save and rebuild men’s lives that would otherwise be lost in the mental health crisis.

Open Saturday 6th November to 21st November 2021, 10am-5pm Wednesday to Sunday.

The aim is to provide an early intervention service that not only works with all agencies and services in our community, but actively channels men to their network before reaching crisis point.

They can then plan a journey with more positive outcomes for each of them. Ultimately they have a vision of better outcomes for all.

Future Ages Will Wonder

From microcellular DNA to the proliferation of digital images, throughout all of time we have used science and technology to collect and share information about who we are. Discoveries have been made, patterns have been formed, and stories have been told, but always by those in power.

But who decides who belongs, and who writes our stories? How can we connect with our ancestry if it has been forgotten by history? To build fairer futures, we must question how the past has been controlled, and who (or what) has been left behind.

Future Ages Will Wonder presents an “alternative museum” of artworks that use science and technology to question our past and offer new ways of understanding who we are and where we belong.

The artworks on display bring together traditional mediums such as textiles, sculpture, and photography with virtual reality, computer algorithms and synthetic DNA to reimagine stories about our past, present and future. Through this wide range of materials and art-making, the exhibition refocuses where we place attention and what we value: reimagining stories about our past, present and future.

Turning attention to alternative histories, the political and ethical issues found in archaeology, botany, genetics and the use of technology in our daily lives, visitors are invited to behold and ‘wonder’ at the advancement of science and technology.

Future Ages Will Wonder will premier three new commissions by artists Larry Achiampong and David Blandy (UK), Yarli Allison (Canada/Hong Kong), Breakwater (South Korea/UK), a new work by Boedi Widjaja (Singapore/Indonesia) alongside works by Ai Hasegawa and Miku Aoki (Japan), and Trisha Baga (USA). The exhibition is curated by Annie Jael Kwan, an independent curator, researcher and educator, who has collaborated with FACT over the last year to develop the show.

This exhibition marks the launch of Radical Ancestry, FACT’s year long exploration into the sense of belonging. Over the next 12 months, a programme of exhibitions, projects, residencies and events at FACT will look at how history, geography, biology and culture shape our ancestral history and question how technology can help us to explore new ways of thinking and experimenting with who we are.