Event type: Exhibition

I’ll Tell You Later: BSL Happy Snappers and Emma Case

NOW EXTENDED TO 1ST NOVEMBER

An inspiring exhibition showcasing the work of the Happy Snappers, a Wirral-based photography group made up of both Deaf and BSL users. 

I’ll Tell You Later explores the relationship between the Deaf experience and the hearing world. It sheds light on the barriers D/deaf individuals face, while showing the Happy Snappers as a powerful example of how inclusive, supportive communities can break down these obstacles. Through their work, the group highlights the importance of creating a more inclusive society that benefits everyone.

This exhibition is an opportunity to engage in meaningful conversation through the lens of photography.

Happy Snappers are a group of friends who are both Deaf and BSL users. They get together and enjoy life outside and explore some of the Wirral’s hidden locations and beautiful scenery, and capture these locations on camera. They are not a professional photography group but share the same love of meeting people, socialising and having fun. 

Emma Case is a socially engaged photographer working with local communities focusing on projects that often explore home, identity, memory and place. Emma is interested in building real relationships over time and working collectively, often looking at social issues and their impact but through the lens of changing the narrative through storytelling. Emma is fluent in British Sign Language and has worked with the Deaf community for over 20 years; from support worker with SignHealth to Actress with Deafinitely Theatre. Emma is extremely passionate about accessibility for Deaf audiences and artists within cultural spaces.

I’ll Tell You Later 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.

Albert Richards

March 2025 marked 80 years since the passing of Albert Richards, the youngest official war artist to be killed in action during WWII. The Williamson holds over two hundred of his works, spanning from his days at the Wallasey School of Art to the frontlines of France in 1944. These works show the incredible talent that Richards possessed, and his influences, from surrealism to Art Deco.

As well as displaying works by artists that inspired him and worked alongside him, such as Stanley Spencer and George Jardine, this exhibition will commemorate his life as a soldier, in which he served a key role in the D-Day landings. This incredible personal narrative, mixed with his unique style of painting, makes him one of the biggest “what ifs?” in twentieth century British art.

EVENTS:

Curator talks on Albert Richards & Philip Wilson Steer – dates throughout 2025

Info & Booking

Elizabeth Smolen: Trailblazer

NOW CLOSING 18TH OCTOBER 2025

Discover the life of local legend Elizabeth Smolen, a Polish refugee who settled in Birkenhead and became a champion scooter racer and successful businesswoman.

A keen motorcyclist and engineer, Smolen made a name for herself by repairing, dealing and racing scooters and became part of Wirral’s scooter scene. Elizabeth Smolen: Trailblazer explores Smolen’s early life against the backdrop of Soviet Poland, and how her daring escape to England allowed her to make a new home in Wirral.

Objects from Smolen’s life, including two Vespa scooters, will be on display, alongside information about Smolen’s rich life, and stories from those who remember her.

The exhibition also explores the broader Wirral scooter scene, featuring photos and memorabilia from Birkenhead-based Cloud 9 Scooter Club.

Produced in collaboration with Big Heritage.

 

Un/Earthed – A Retrospective by Landlines Studio

Digging into the land and lineage of historical sites for the past five years, collaborative artist duo, Angela Stringer and Nicky Perrin present their formative works in an exhibition which reveals the alchemical process of turning raw earth into vibrant expressions of story and place.

Harnessing natural materials such as sandstone, soil, clay and botanical matter from their local Wirral environment and beyond, they create paint and dyes to make work which transcends its origins, merging contemporary techniques with ancient traditions.

A reconstruction of the artists’ apothecary style studio will immerse visitors in their creative practice, showcasing the tools used to hand-process rock into fine pigment, before the time-honoured method of mulling it into paint.

Un/Earthed is the materialisation of journeying between the coasts of Anglesey and woodlands of Wirral. It is an exploration of identity, heritage and tales told through natural colour, reflecting on the deep connection between people and place.

EVENTS:

Film Screening: The Nettle Dress

Friday 23rd May, 6pm, £7

 

Book Now

Philip Wilson Steer: In Conversation

Born in Birkenhead, Philip Wilson Steer was a pioneer of impressionism in Britain during the late nineteenth century. Studying in Paris in the 1880s, he was exposed to this radical way of painting after seeing works by the likes of Degas and Manet. With his loose approach to painting and depictions of scenes that were seen as indecent for the time, Steer was widely ridiculed on his return to London, but eventually gained acclaim and prestige with the increasing influence of the New English Art Club and his teaching post at the Slade School of Art. Later in his career, Steer was inspired by masters of English landscape painting, such as Constable and Turner, with examples of these works being found in the exhibition.

As well as showcasing the Williamson’s collection of Steer, this exhibition will bring his work into conversation with both his contemporaries and local artists who followed in his footsteps. This will showcase his personal approach to colour and painting, but will also show the limitations of his radicalism, largely through his approach to depicting women.

The Williamson’s collection of works by Steer has long been considered a highlight of our collections, which we are delighted to be able to display a significant number of in this exhibition.

 

EVENTS:

Curator talks on Albert Richards & Philip Wilson Steer – dates throughout 2025

Info & Booking

Echoes of the Floating World

The Williamson possesses a small but notable collection of woodblock prints in the Japanese Ukiyo-e style.

These were made by some of the most important names in the period, from Hiroshige to Hokusai.

Their motifs of flat perspectives, high vantage points, and bold colour distinctions, were a radical influence across European art, including by artists from Wirral.

As such, this exhibition will show local artworks alongside Ukiyo-e prints, communicating how Wirral artists have been influenced by, and in dialogue with, artists from across the world.

Deep Listening: From Pauline Oliveros to Contemporary Practices

Join Liverpool Hope University and Tate Liverpool for their annual symposium. This year focuses on Deep Listening – a practice inspired by composer Pauline Oliveros.

Deep Listening offers a way to reflect on our relationship with the environment. Artists, specialists, and academics will explore listening as an act of care and ecological duty.

Speakers include Dr Silvia Battista, Associate Professor at the School of Creative and Performing Arts, Professor Steve Shakespeare, Professor of Philosophy at Liverpool Hope University and Professor Malcolm Miles is a Professor of Cultural Theory at the University of Plymouth.

Rachel Maclean: They’ve Got Your Eyes

Drawing parallels between today’s AI boom and Victorian invention, They’ve Got Your Eyes examines the motives driving advanced AI, and how fantasies of power shape its development. Featuring new sculptures and the premiere of a multi-channel film created using AI models trained on her own image and artistic archive, Rachel invites you into a vivid, uncanny world where authorship and identity begin to slip.

The exhibition unfolds as a 20 minute immersive film experience, presented across multiple screens throughout the gallery. You’re welcome to enter and explore at any time. A clock outside the gallery indicates when the film will begin again.

Rachel Maclean’s practice spans contemporary art, film, and emergent technologies, frequently starring her as the only actor in elaborate disguise. In this multi-channel exhibition, she swaps costumes for AI models trained on her image and archive, producing a new body of work that explores the tension between artistic authorship and machine agency. In this context, the phrase ‘they’ve got your eyes’ implies not just resemblance but theft – an AI running away with an artist’s way of seeing.

In her new short film, we follow ‘The Gentleman’, a contemporary tech-bro-come-Victorian engineer, who has invented a process for generating fairies. His pursuit of ‘progress’ curdles into jealousy when he realises he’s not alone; another Gentleman can summon fairies too, and with far greater aptitude. As the two men descend into rivalry, their shape-shifting creations flicker between flattery and mockery: at times disarmingly clumsy, at others unnervingly perceptive. Beneath The Gentleman’s mounting God-complex runs a quiet dread: that his fairies know more than he ever could.

Across fragmented screens, we see The Gentleman wrestle with his creations. He commands his fairy to build an aqueduct, but instead she vomits a towering “Aqua Duck.” He calls for a “parliament,” and a lurid green ice-cream cone rises above a shop named “ParlourMint.” AI-generated forms spill into the space as 3D-printed sculptures, dripping with slime and referencing the “AI slop” saturating contemporary visual culture.

They’ve Got Your Eyes is a response to the ongoing AI arms race, connecting it to the Industrial Revolution and the havoc wrought in the blind pursuit of ‘progress’. The work continues Rachel’s recent exploration of power in the age of AI. As ego shapes technological development, how do we disentangle scientific achievement from the darker side of AI’s relentless growth? 

Co-commissioned by FACT Liverpool and Sonica Glasgow with support from 1646, The Hague. Supported by the Scottish Government’s Festivals Expo Fund and Creative Scotland. Special thanks to Braid UK and Newcastle University NUAcT for their support.

Header image: Rachel Maclean, They’ve Got Your Eyes (2026). Installation view at FACT Liverpool. Photography by Rob Battersby

ONLY SLIME: AFTERLIFE

Storytelling, in all its forms, is woven across our collective histories. Myths and legends shape rituals and cultures, handed down through generations as tales of caution, hope and identity. Moving beyond spoken and written stories, AFTERLIFE simulates an allegorical experience of life, death, and reincarnation. It follows a group of familiar characters as they travel through various spiritual and mortal realms, asking questions and seeking the meaning of conscious existence.

ONLY SLIME, the artist duo of Claudia Cox and Tobi Pfeil, blend theatre, opera, digital art, and immersive technology to create fluid, cross-genre works. Following a near-death-experience that Claudia had in 2021, ONLY SLIME wanted to capture her resulting surreal feeling of bodily disconnection – one almost too strange to put into words. AFTERLIFE began as a live performance that captured the intensity of this experience through a mix of Greek mythology, internet and gaming culture, and operatic drama. 

Across history, many cultures have imagined the worlds that we might travel to or come from – such as the nine circles of hell in Dante’s Inferno or the shifting dimensions of the Half-Life video game series. Here, the gallery unfolds as overlapping realms, where the ‘overworld’ and ‘underworld’ coexist. 

Part neon-gamer bedroom, part retro dungeon-game aesthetic, you’re faced with the provocation “Know Thyself” emblazoned on the walls. A mini playable version of the AFTERLIFE game acts as an allegory for controlling agency, and it is here that we encounter one of the work’s main characters: the Ghost. A confrontational character, the Ghost guides and challenges us through questions and provocations as it guides us through a surreal maze of abandoned pop-culture symbolism.

Moving through a portal into the ‘earthly world’, we meet Axi and Zi. They live quiet, repetitive lives on a tropical island, until strange dreams—voiced by the Ghost—begin to unsettle them. Their conversations shift from calm routine to deep dissatisfaction as they question the emptiness of their world. Axi and Zi’s desire for something more sends them across different realms, where they encounter new characters who lead them toward their fate. ONLY SLIME has created a new version of the work, which we can interact with. Step into the portal to the realm  of Axi and Zi, and play with the motion capture sensors in the room to become part of their story.

As our lives stretch across physical and digital spaces, AFTERLIFE asks what ‘real life’ actually means. The dreamlike worlds we enter through digital play can continue the long tradition of storytelling and cosmology-making—forms that have shaped, and continue to shape, how we understand our shared reality.

Read the film script here: AFTERLIFE [Script]

Supported by the Office for Contemporary Art Norway.

Header image: ONLY SLIME, AFTERLIFE (2026). Installation view at FACT Liverpool. Photography by Rob Battersby

Melting Moments

Get snowed in, in our learning space this half-term holiday, as we dig deep into the loss of the historic ice age and our current arctic habitats. From melting glaciers to polar ice caps, this exploration of snowscapes in Tate’s collection is only the tip of the iceberg.

So, don’t be left out in the cold this half-term, let your imagination snowball into an avalanche of arctic inspired creations.

Take inspiration from artworks in Tate’s collection, including Anya Gallaccio’s White Ice, L.S. Lowry’s Winter in Broughton, Briton Riviere’s Beyond Man’s Footsteps, Ed Ruscha’s Pay Nothing Until April and John Brett’s Glacier of Rosenlaui.

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