The Atkinson in Southport is working with guest curator and artist Nahem Shoa to present The Unselfish Selfie.
Alongside historic self-portraits, the exhibition shines a light on self-portraits by contemporary artists, who traditionally have not been given an equal voice and remained largely invisible, particularly women artists and artists of colour.
Nahem Shoa explained his approach to the exhibition as follows:
“We live in an age where social media has taken over people’s everyday life. We ‘share’ our lives with ‘friends’, most of whom we have never met, knowing these ‘friends’ around the world only through their posts and carefully composed self-images.
The billions of selfies made every day reveal almost nothing about the person who has taken then, as each person uses a set of clichéd poses, copied from fashion, TV and gossip magazines. From America to China you will see people taking almost exactly the same kind of stylized photo of themselves. In fact the modern selfie is a form of group vanity that has never been seen on this scale in the history of the world.”
In contrast the artists in The Unselfish Selfie don’t use clichéd poses. They are caught in the process of self-examination, confronting their own frailties and their own mortality. Others use their own image to explore the big issues of today, such as identity, diversity and gender.
Throughout the history of art numerous artists have made self-portraits. Originally many of these represented the artist in the act of painting. They were a means of advertising the artist’s skill. The Unselfish Selfie charts the development of the self-portrait as a much more expressive medium, employed by artists to explore the human condition, painting themselves with unflattering honesty and creating images that evoke a sense of our shared humanity.
The Unselfish Selfie is supported by the Ruth Borchard Collection, a unique collection of 100 self-portraits.
Design and make your dream Tate Liverpool
Are you an avid architect or the next Bob the Builder? Tate Liverpool’s half term activity challenges you and your family to imagine and design a new Tate Liverpool building for the future.
Use their range of creative materials to draw, make and build your ideal gallery. Perhaps you’d like it to feature a giant inflatable animal on the roof or a water slide in the entrance – go wild with your ideas!
They’d love to see your designs and mini models of what you’d imagine the gallery to look like. Share photos of your creations with us on social media and tag @tateliverpool.
They also have free Explore and Draw sketchbooks available every day.
To help plan your visit to Tate Liverpool, have a look at their visual story. It includes photographs and information of what you can expect from a visit to the gallery.
Celebrate some of the UK’s most exciting art at Tate Liverpool’s late night event.
Join them after hours to celebrate the Turner Prize 2022 and its return to Liverpool.
Enjoy an evening of free live performances, artist workshops and talks in response to this year’s shortlisted Turner Prize artists: Heather Phillipson; Ingrid Pollard; Veronica Ryan and Sin Wai Kin.
The evening includes an In-Conversation event with photographer Johny Pitts and poet Roger Robinson. You’ll also have the chance to join free activities and workshops run by Young Homotopia with artist Ashleigh Owen, Greenhouse Young Event Producers with empathy artist Enni-Kukka Tuomala, Dingle Community Print and musician and performer Iceboy Violet with Venya Krutikov (The Kazimier) and Glacial Art.
The event will feature collaborations with Homotopia and a range of other exciting partners, all sound tracked by a DJ set from G33 and Hannah Lynch (founding members of Girls Don’t Sync).
For FACT’s winter season, the worlds of artists Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley and Josèfa Ntjam collide in a free immersive exhibition. Working across archives, maps and video games, the artists consider how acts of resistance, rebuilding and reimagining can lead to transformative new worlds.
Josèfa’s work reexamines history in the aftermath of colonialism and the Transatlantic slave trade. Her richly layered works reference counter-cultural movements and non-Western histories that symbolise ideas of resistance, transformation and freedom. Josèfa presents these symbols within an interstellar, underground cave filled with jellyfish, plankton and mushrooms. These natural life forms survive by communicating through networks and signals that they create amongst themselves. By drawing parallels between our human behaviour and natural processes, she demonstrates how spaces of solidarity, care and revolution can thrive in darkness.
Danielle opens access to new worlds designed with The Bandidos, a group of young people from Liverpool. When Danielle and the group first started working together, she asked: what doesn’t Liverpool have that you need? What does your world need? And, if you had everything you needed to live, what would you want? Danielle creates artworks that archive the experiences of Black Trans people and communities who can be otherwise underserved. Here, she brings to life The Bandidos’ imaginative visions, developing a video game that can be explored online and through four portals inside the gallery.
Both Danielle and Josèfa’s worlds play with time to shift our view on how the past impacts our present. If conflicting versions of history can exist, so can alternative possibilities for our future. Through their careful observations of archives and understanding of needs, they show us how acts of resistance, rebuilding and reimagining can lead to transformative new worlds.
This exhibition will be the final instalment of Radical Ancestry, FACT’s year-long exploration into the sense of belonging. This programme of exhibitions, projects, residencies and events 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.
A new exhibition at The Reader’s Mansion House featuring artists Rena Pearl and Sandra Hepworth.
Quirky images of Liverpool with textiles and embroidery, abstract acryllic paintings on canvas and photographs.
Held Mansion House, Calderstones Park, 10-23 October, free.
Liverpool Independent Art School’s excellent Life Drawing classes are back at Smithdown Social Arts Hub – Gallery 455.
Head along and draw with Liverpool Independent Art School. Everyone is welcome to join them for a few hours drawing and a cup of tea.
Tickets for all autumn term dates for the Wednesday sessions are available on the door or in advance by contacting the gallery here.
Life drawing from their brilliant model in a relaxed supportive environment in our favourite coffee shop, All levels of experience welcome.
The return of their much loved life drawing events at the excellent 92 Degrees Coffee on Hardman Street Liverpool. They aim to nurture a very relaxed and supportive playful approach to drawing.
Their models are brilliant and tuition is offered for any level of experience . Some basic materials are available but we advise the use of your own hard backed sketchbook to get the most out of the session . You can contact them with any questions.
The final event of the Liver Sketching Club’s 150th anniversary year will be an exhibition of the club’s history at the Williamson Art Gallery, Birkenhead.
The exhibition will open on Wednesday 9 November and events during the run of the exhibition include.
On Saturday 26 November, there will be an all-day drawing event at the gallery with models sitting from 10am to 4pm. Visitors to the gallery will be invited to try drawing in the setting of a ‘recreation’ of the club’s early studio being set up within the Williamson.
The Williamson holds regular Friday evening tours of the gallery, and club Archivist, David Brown, will lead the tour on Friday 2 December around the Liver Sketching Club’s exhibition for anyone who would like to head along. Starts at 6pm.
https://williamsonartgallery.org/portfolio_page/liver-sketching-club-150th-anniversary/
An exhibition of urban and rural landscapes by Paul Whitehouse at Cass Art, LIverpool.
An exhibition of paintings, mainly in oils on canvas and all framed. Paul’s work celebrates the urban and natural environment of Oxfordshire, Cornwall and Liverpool, and includes his submission for Sky Arts Landscape Artist of The Year, in which he took part in 2021.
Follow Paul on @whitehousepapm and @ten_22_defined.
Cass Art, 18 School Lane, Liverpool, L1, Sunday 6th November to Saturday 19th November.
A new exhibition at Williamson Art Gallery explores Wirral’s magical Hilbre Island and the psychological connections we make with landscape
Space is the Place Act 2: A Transfigured Movement in Time is the second collaborative exhibition from Merseyside-based artists Patric Rogers and Angelo Madonna.
In this multi-media art and film experience, the artists take the uninhabited archipelago of Hilbre Island in the Dee Estuary, as a jumping-off point to explore concepts of psychogeography and psycho-magic through a series of conceptual and symbolic artworks and film.
Space is the Place Act 2 encourages the viewer to consider the processes and practices through which we, as human beings, connect aspects of our conscience such as memories, associations, myth, and folklore to the landscapes we inhabit.
The ideas and concepts behind the exhibition will be further explored in a concurrent events programme. This includes film screenings and Q&A sessions with the artists and performers of the film A transfigured movement in time.There will also be a performative lecture and creative exploration with performance artist and lecturer at Liverpool Hope University. Dr Silvia Battista.
