Event type: Exhibition

‘Earth Above, Sky Below’ Exhibition at the LAKE Gallery

A new exhibition at the LAKE gallery in West Kirby looks at the worlds around and above us, as seen through the eyes of three artists working in very different mediums.

Featuring contemporary landscape paintings by Bridget Greenwood, abstract prints and sculptures by Louisa Boyd and tactile glass pieces by Helen Smith.

The exhibition opens on Thursday 14^th August and runs until Saturday 13^th September. The gallery will be hosting a preview evening on Thursday 14^th August 6pm and 8pm and all are welcome to join us for a glass of wine and to meet the artists.

Opening times: Thurs – Sat, 10am – 4pm

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Bridget GreenwoodBridget Greenwood is a contemporary abstract landscape artist based in Cheshire. Having had a successful career in advertising in London, Bridget returned to painting in 2020 as a result of lockdown. Bridget’s paintings explore her fascination with the landscape. She sketches outside to record the moment, but her paintings are completed in the studio where they go through many stages of reducing the landscape to shapes and marks.

Colour has always been Bridget’s starting point and is central to her work. For Bridget, colour has the “wonderful ability to express emotion and helps to convey the landscape’s ability to heal”.

Louisa BoydLouisa Boyd’s work centres around the persistent human desire to belong. She considers environment in her pieces and how we connect with the natural world to navigate and to establish a sense of place. Her abstract prints and sculptures feature celestial symbols, sacred geometry and cartographic imagery. Louisa’s etching prints layer abstract, drawn imagery made with traditional drawing tools with more painterly marks; the map-like outcomes, symbolic of navigation, are a visual fusion of historic and contemporary ideas. Louisa’s prints are then often used alongside marbled papers to create three-dimensional works with structures based on sacred geometry; the elements of mathematics that underpin the fabric of the world we exist within. Central to this body of work is Plato’s idea that the five regular forms, the Platonic solids, connect to the five elements of nature: earth, fire, air, water and aether.

Helen SmithCreated from kiln-formed glass, Helen’s tactile glass pieces are strongly influenced by place. However, rather than depicting the landscape directly her focus is always on a sense of the atmosphere of a place in combination with the interpretation of found textures within the landscape.Each piece is initially worked flat, created by layering up glass powder, glass frit (small chunks) and sheet glass before being fired in the kiln. Once the glass has been fired and sandblasted to clean the surface another layer can be added. The pieces in this collection have all been through this process several times. In the final stage the piece is sandblasted to give the glass its tactile matt surface before being returned to the kiln one last time to be fired again at a lower temperature, either flat or over a former to create a sculptural form.

Four calling birds, three French hens, two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree! Flock together for crafty family fun, constructing multi-coloured replicas of your favourite birds. Play with print stamping blocks and collage to recreate intricate feathered patterns and textures. Using our easy-to-follow templates, make a 3-D model of your bird and dive into our pick ‘n’ mix recycled craft box to add finishing touches to personalise your bird.

Take inspiration from artworks in Tate’s collection, including David Shrigley’s Untitled 1998, Eileen Agar’s Sculpture of a Bird 1899–1991, Dame Elisabeth Frink’s Bird 1952, Jim Lambie’s Four to the Floor 2005 and Georges Braque’s The Bird 1949.

Our Learning Space is open every day for visiting families- a space to relax and create with art games, colouring-in, books, toys and more!

Share your experience with us on social media using @tateliverpool and #TLfamilies.

Accessibility

Tate Liverpool is temporarily located at RIBA North, Mann Island, a short distance (425m) along Liverpool’s iconic waterfront. There is step free access to the main entrance. There is a lift to the first floor gallery, or alternatively you can take the stairs.

• Toilets are located on the first floor
• The nearest Changing Places toilet is located at the Museum of Liverpool
• Ear defenders are available to borrow.

Please ask a Visitor Engagement Assistant Additional seating is also available. Please ask a member of staff if you require assistance.

To help plan your visit to Tate Liverpool + RIBA North, have a look at our visual story. It includes photographs and information of what you can expect from a visit to the gallery.

For more information before your visit: Email visiting.liverpool@tate.org.uk

Chila Kumari Burman MBE was born in Bootle and raised within the Punjabi Hindu culture of her parents amidst a backdrop of working class Liverpudlians. Her father, Bachan Singh Burman, was a tailor and magician in Calcutta (now Kolkata), India. He came to Britain in 1954 and was later followed by China’s mother, Kamala Devi and her two older siblings. Once settled in Britain the growing family welcomed Chila and two more children.

Chilaʼs experiences growing up in Sefton are key influences on her work. She has many fond memories of her father operating his ice-cream van on Freshfield beach and proudly recalls the striking life size Bengal Tiger that sat on top of his van. Within this exhibition you can see that the ice-cream van and its wares have become popular and familiar motifs in her work. Her mother opened a clothes shop in Waterloo, which further cemented the family’s place at the centre of their community.

After attending local grammar schools in Bootle and Waterloo, Chila achieved a foundation course at Southport School of Arts and Crafts which led to an art degree in printmaking at Leeds Polytechnic and masterʼs degree in fine art at the Slade art school in London. She has built a distinguished career that addresses themes such as cultural heritage, feminism and activism. As a key member of the Black British Art Movement Chila has constantly challenged stereotypes, fixed notions of British identity and institutional racism within her art. Chilaʼs work is collected and shown internationally, and her contributions to visual art were recognised when she was awarded an MBE in 2022.

Within this exhibition you can see some of Chilaʼs most recent work, showcasing new ideas as well as revisiting and reworking recurring motifs that she continues to elaborate and interrogate within her creative process. Chila uses a range of artistic approaches including printmaking, painting, photography, drawing, collage and sculpture to explore the relationship between popular culture and fine art.

Photo Credit: Dave Jones

Artists from Blue Room, the Bluecoat’s inclusive arts project present a new collection of works exploring the biodiversity of our urban garden.

Green spaces such as the Bluecoat garden have long been a source of inspiration for artists. The exhibition celebrates the often overlooked flora and fauna of urban spaces and the important role nature plays in creating a nurturing space for city dwellers.

The works in the exhibition depict commonly observed birds and insects found in the Bluecoat garden. In collaboration with ceramic artist Olivia Rowan from local studio Clay Workshop, the artists created 3D sculptures using recycled clay. Observational drawings of flora and fauna have been collaged into screen printed collaborative works created in the Bluecoat Print Studio.

Featuring works by Alfred Beesley, Amy Dykes, Susan King, Tracey Ledley, Andrew Mellor, Kayleigh Murray, William Richardson, John Rigby, Ottman Said, Jean Smith, John Steele, Jane Walsh, and Veronica Watson.

Returning after the success of 2024, Bread & Roses is an affordable annual exhibition at dot-art Gallery coinciding with Liverpool Art Fair, which we also organise. Spanning across the summer, this exhibition brings together an array of new works from our Artist Members and displays a snapshot of their exciting portfolios.

Every year, we put out an open call to our Artist Members to propose new exhibition ideas. Last year our very own Dorothy Benjamin, who paints British landscapes in oils, proposed this exhibition idea, as a way of responding to the cost-of-living crisis. All the artworks in ‘Bread & Roses’ are priced under £200 to make owning original an option for many.

James Oppenheim published his poem ‘Bread and Roses’ in the 1915 book ‘The Cry For Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest’. The poem is associated with the textile strike in Massachusetts during early 1912, now often known as the “Bread and Roses strike.” The strike, which united dozens of immigrant communities under the leadership of the Industrial Workers of the World, was led to a large extent by women.

Running in parallel to Liverpool Art Fair, the principles are the same; art is for everyone, for us all to enjoy and have access to. One of the ways we at dot-art fulfil our mission is by connecting art lovers with affordable, original works while providing vital support to the artists who create them.

Some highlights of this year’s selected artworks include our poster image artist Alex Russell who creates libraries of images with traditional media such as print, collage and mark making and then writes generative code to arrange them into artworks. Anthony Gribbin has developed a new approach to his line arrangements and geometric pop patterns, playing with tension between hard lines and organic drips. Madeleine Pires exhibits impressionistic style portraits of famous writers, expressing their personalities, characteristics and mood.

“Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew–Yes, bread we fight for–but we fight for Roses, too.” – James Oppenheim

All artworks are for sale.