Art in Liverpool Magazine, issue #29, April 2023 by Art in Liverpool

Issue #29 - April 2023

Helens

image Ean Flanders, the Descendants. Top row: Patrick Graham, Levi Tafari, Joanne Anderson; 2nd row: Maria O’Reilly, Marjorie H Morgan, George Williams; 3rd row: Jimi Jagne, Faith Bebbington, Ngunan Adamu; Bottom

Laurence Westgraph, Kahn Odita, Ashleigh Nugent

News, Reviews & Listings for visual art in Halton, Knowsley, Liverpool, Sefton, St

and Wirral. Cover

row:

Convenience is a not for profit, creative arts platform based in Birkenhead.

Our programmes aim to make arts & creativity a part of everyday life. Our work is shaped by and for the community here in Birkenhead alongside the national artistic and creative community.

We use our platform to promote and advocate for creative people nationally, and to inspire people. We run free and affordable events, exhibitions, installations, workshops, labs, creative courses, and artistic support.

We believe that anywhere can be a space for culture and run our programming across multiple venues and spaces in the area.

Check out our CRAFTBAR programme, monthly life drawing classes, Uncovering Birkenhead’s working class history project, as well future exhibitions, events and culture programmes.

Like the sound of what we do and want to get involved: Head to our website and social media.

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Editorial:

It’s been over a year since we printed, and it’s not just time we’ve lost. Since Art in Liverpool stopped printing last year, we’ve lost nearly all of our local independent print in this city. The challenges for small-scale, local, dedicated newspapers have risen.

We’re taking a risk in printing again, but we know the impact this paper has, and the impact our friends from other publications did have. For the readers who rely on print, or those who aren’t aware of our digital publications, Art in Liverpool is your window to the art world, and that matters.

It matters because the art world is wrapped up in self-facing audiences whose desire to widen participation is driven largely by their own moral guilt over decades of failing to engage the communities at their doorstep.

Whatever the driving force though, the impact in recent years has been huge, from inviting influencers to press launches, to taking galleries out into communities – particularly those who have hyper-local access challenges thanks to poor public transport and swathes of homes built without driveways. Merseyside residents in those spaces (huge parts of Knowsley, Halton and Sefton in particular) don’t have a

Art in Liverpool, issue #29, April 2023

simple physical route into the arts – so travelling galleries, ambitious public commissions, and genuinely connected community-facing projects can help, not just to widen participation in buildings-based projects, but in art for the people; art with a purpose.

Taking time away from Art in Liverpool, not through choice, has given me an opportunity to view the art world I work within as an audience member, and revisit more critical ways of assessing the value of art in the modern world.

Value has never been simple to assess, but it goes deeper than quality, audience reach, or outcomes. Value is based in the quality of the impact your work has, regardless of your medium, or your intention. For artists, 2023 should be a time to really stop and process what value their work has on the world around them. For audiences, it should be a time to seek it out.

In the mid-1800s, The PreRaphaelite Brotherhood took fine art to new places, geographically and critically. It elevated art into a mode of thinking, rather than a mode of representation, following the lead of their inspiration, the Renaissance – notably Raphael. The movement they sought to argue in favour of was perhaps the birth of true modern art

Art in Liverpool magazine is a monthly newspaper and calendar about visual art in the Liverpool City Region / To contribute, or submit your events and exhibitions, email: info@artinliverpool.com / We’re here to support galleries and creative spaces, so make sure to keep us up to date about your events at least two weeks in advance of each issue. / If you’d like even more of a presence in the magazine we have advertising available every month, and take bookings well in advance. For details on pricing and deadlines contact Patrick: patrick@artinliverpool.com

and interdisciplinary understanding.

In the early 1900s, Dadaism questioned the value of art, at all, and has continued to be the foundation of questioning when it comes to the commodification of art. In the mid1900s Andy Warhol used notions previously explored by the Arts and Crafts Movement, as to how high value could be translated to human experience. Keith Haring did the same thing much more successfully and continued to be a hero for his community throughout.

Since then, art has largely stagnated, and the question of value has been largely diminished to mean impact. Personally, I believe that this is down to the modern methods of funding, ensuring art is designed and planned around impacting subsections of communities. The result is that the artists best placed to add that type of value are pushed out, and the institutions reshape their programming to access those funds.

The patronage, purchase, and passion models of art that were problematic in the 1900s have now been put in competition with each other. 2023 is a time to dive into what art should actually mean in the modern world, and for artists to decide where they, personally, can add value.

Continued, Page 19

Issue #29, April 2023: Editor: Patrick Kirk-Smith

Contributors: Patrick Kirk-Smith + Kathryn Wainwright

All advertising, sponsorship, distribution & event enquiries should be sent to info@artinliverpool.com / Art in Liverpool C.I.C. / Company No. 10871320

Review: Ean Flanders’

The Descendants at the Victoria Gallery & Museum

I was gutted to miss the launch of The Descendants at the Victoria Gallery & Museum, but I’m glad I did. Popping in on an unimportant Wednesday, I had the chance to speak to Ean Flanders properly about his work, and the reasons behind the decisions within it. For all the glamour of private views, and the networking they offer, nothing ever quite matches up to serendipitous chats with artists about the work they know.

The Descendants is a modern archive of Black scousers and their contributions to the city, its residents, and its culture.

The key point from Ean Flanders though,

is less one of modern times, but one that seeks to reflect the rich history wrapped up Liverpool, which has the oldest established black community in Britain, helping to shape our culture and the identity of Liverpool since the 1710s.

The accompanying film runs somewhere between hopefully positive and candidly pessimistic. It focusses on the lived experience of Liverpool’s most influential Black residents, and their views on how living here has changed, or not, in their lifetime.

Subjects include Liverpool’s first Black, first female mayor, Joanne Anderson, and political figures like our first black lord mayor too. But they also seek to share the stories of local residents, without political means, who have made a difference to the way Liverpool recognises and understands either its need to change, or its history.

Beyond the formal politics though, this

exhibition explores the political and social impact of single-person activists, whose life’s work has focussed on racial equality, in this city and beyond. Community leaders like Maria O’Reilly and the impact she’s had through countless Black organisations.

Buster Nugent, ran a one man protest outside Princes Park in Toxteth following the death of George Floyd. His portrait is hung near prominent figures from the 1981 Toxteth Riots, including Jimi Jagne, whose history of the events, and activism since, continues to improve the lives of Black scousers. What sticks out for me is the ambition of these protests from then to now, and how our local protests related not simply to Liverpool, Merseyside or Britain, but to global injustice.

As well as city residents who are praised for their direct contributions, are those who have become synonymous with Liverpool’s cultural sector. Ash Nugent, Marjorie Morgan, and Faith Bebbington have all

Buster Nugent, by Ean Flanders Next page clockwise from left) Ashleigh Nugent, Anna Rothery & Marjorie H Morgan, by Ean Flanders

been vocal members of Merseyside’s arts scene for many years, and each has made their own unique contribution. Perhaps the most powerful though is merely their presence of mind, and presence of body to continue making waves in theatre, literature, and visual art.

The theme running through this issue as we relaunch, is of value. This exhibition does not just add value to its gallery, or to its subjects. Its subjects have added value to Liverpool. In some cases, they have significantly changed the face of Liverpool.

They have done this by representing themselves truthfully, in some cases over decades of tough work. Ean Flanders, as is the role of any good photographer, simply shares those stories and collates that information.

If that is where he stopped, this would still have been a powerful and important installation, but he doesn’t. He continues

to ensure his work is not simply dismissed as archive, by exploring the physicality of how he presents his photography.

Printed onto canvas, with textured borders and archival varnish, these images each stand with presence and power of their own, drawing on traditional portraiture both in their composition and setting, and their finish.

Having had the good fortune to bump into Ean on my visit, I’m sure there will be more from this project, and am certain that the significance of this archive will continue to educate and influence those who come across it.

The Descendants is open at the Victoria Gallery & Museum until 13th May 2023,

and is free to view. It is one of the strongest bodies of work I’ve seen for some time, both in its content and its output. If you find time or can make it, see this.

Words, Patrick Kirk-Smith

The Descendants is open at the VG&M until 13th May

Review: JMW Turner with Lamin Fofana: Dark

Waters, at Tate Liverpool

In what will likely be most visitors’ last memory of Tate Liverpool as itself, before Liverpool Biennial, and its major refurbishment this October, ‘JMW Turner with Lamin Fofana: Dark Waters’ is a stamp in time to recall the value of access this building has given us all to the art world, both living and dead.

Though it shouldn’t be forgotten, that their next major show selected by Liverpool Biennial is the legacy of a project which brought Lamin Fofana to the city in the first place, and that the festival is as much a part of the identity of Tate Liverpool as many of their own exhibitions. Still, Turner and Fofana feels quite final. For me, it’s an essential moment to stop and reflect on what the gallery

has done for us in its current state before a new era begins next year.

But, regardless of my fondness for Tate Liverpool, Dark Waters offers an essential opportunity to explore less attractive relationships between the Mersey and the Slave trade. Fofana’s audio installations provide the core content, but it is Turner’s work that sets its tone.

Turner’s work is presented more intimately than I have seen it until now, with flourishes of curatorial ambiance injected by Lamin Fofana. From sketchbooks and unfinished paintings to some of his most famous seascapes, there is a lot to take in, but all of it focussed on the thrashing and dramatic seas surrounding our isles – those same seas referenced in Lamin Fofana’s touching composition, ‘Life and Death by Sea’.

Neither work was made for this purpose, but with presence of mind on our (the audience’s) part, they

can both be elevated by the simple act of waiting. The curators have faced much of the seating away from the gallery, intimately gazing on a handful of sketches and a now iconic view over the mouth of the River Mersey.

Flopping back into the timber benches, flickering my gaze between Turner’s paintings and the grey, beating waves of the river at high tide, I was acutely aware of the audio and unable to escape the painful past that the room so eloquently taught.

One of the key inspirations that ties the work of this unlikely duo together is the Zong massacre. In 1781, the crew of the slave ship, Zong, threw 130 enslaved Africans overboard into stormy seas. The reason? The crew ran out of drinking water. As the slaves were listed as cargo, they could be claimed against on insurance when they reached land, and the crew were able to reach shore comfortably.

The Zong was owned by a group led by William Gregson, then Lord Mayor of Liverpool, and who remained responsible for over 150 slaving voyages, and the transportation of 58,000 Africans. 9,000 enslaved Africans died at sea on his ships but the massacres of The Zong, in part, began a trail of mass opposition to slavery, which eventually led to its abolition.

Turner and Fofana both use the Zong as inspiration for parts of their work, with Fofana’s more recent audio installations and Turner’s 1840 painting ‘Slave Ship (Slavers throwing Overboard the Dead and dying, Typhoon Coming On)’ both reflecting directly on the Zong massacre.

There are lazy, and largely inaccurate, comparisons to be made between Tate, its setting, the docks, and the beating sea in Turner’s work. And comparisons which are lazier still between the space and the lasting trauma of the slave trade.

Installation view, JMW Turner with Lamin Fofana at Tate Liverpool

But, taking Tate as a lighthouse for the estuary, and the sea beyond –it is natural and appropriate to use Fofana’s audio compositions as a vessel – one that puts us as present in that beating sea of his Life and Death by Water, as any previous experience of Turner I’ve had.

I do not, cannot, and may never grasp the pain, injustice tragedy or turmoil that the slave trade has had on the lives of centuries of Black people living in our city, but just as it did the last time I heard these traumad melodies of Lamin Fofana, I found myself stunned to emotional and guilty silence.

It can take a visitor to shine your truth back at you. Fofana does this for Liverpool, and Turner is a useful tool for that expression. The use of his historic paintings, regardless of their inspiration is powerful as simple imagery, but made more notable thanks to selectively curated works, and a draw on those that criticised the actions of slave traders.

If this is my last experience of Tate Liverpool in its own light, by its own curators, and its own selection, it is one I will cherish, and one I will live by.

Words, Patrick Kirk-Smith

JMW Turner with Lamin Fofana: Dark Waters is open at Tate Liverpool until 24th September

Installation view, JMW Turner with Lamin Fofana at Tate Liverpool

Review: Kathryn Maple’s Under The Hot Sun, at Walker Art Gallery

Kathryn Maple offers spaces to become lost in. If you are ever feeling disheartened by the state of British painting and seeking purpose in this vast medium, Kathryn Maple presents its purpose with clarity – by inviting us (me, at least) into her world, in moments packed with literary levels of self-reflective narrative, and self-questioning perspective.

‘Under a Hot Sun’ is Maple’s first solo exhibition and follows on from her John Moores Painting Prize win in 2020. For context, it’s worth visiting the accompanying John Moores archive exhibition in the adjoining room to see The Common, her 2020 painting which now hangs

alongside iconic paintings by Andy Warhol and David Hockney.

The title of Kathryn Maple’s first solo exhibition, Under a Hot Sun directly references her making process – one that shines through her work efficiently. Before making any paintings, which are a mix of oil and collage, she sits outdoors, in situ, observing and curating her thoughts into emotive and momentary sketches.

That focus on the present sings through her paintings, which she later develops from sketches, notes, and memory into human-filled landscapes ranging from packed buses to London graveyards.

These are not paintings to relax by, or paintings that Kathryn Maple feels will sit well in the homes of her patrons. They are paintings that allow her to express precisely what she felt in the moment she

observed them, treated with humane consideration. The result is a series that ties together, telling a story of a moment that we can’t know to be observed or interpreted.

But it’s that personal perspective on the world, backed with 1930’s semi-detached houses, and the dingy LED strip-lights of suburban night buses, that makes these paintings so worth seeing. At no point do you feel like you are meant to nod in approval. Instead, you’re drawn in, exploring the methods of making. All the while, accidentally growing to understand the world that Maple creates.

From preliminary sketches out under the hot sun, to finished mixed media canvases, we’re invited on a journey through the eyes of the maker, and taught to appreciate the paintings as places rather than commodities or crafts.

From March this year, 365 drawings made by Kathryn Maple from 1st January to 31st December 2022 went on display at London’s Lyndsey Ingram Gallery. I have been sceptical of the impact of the John Moores Painting Prize, perhaps due to an aversion to awards, but to see these paintings and this painter reaping its rewards shows that there is value in discovery when it isn’t through the normal channels.

Without the Walker’s biennial prize, I wouldn’t know these paintings or this artist, and I would be worse off for it.

Words, Kathryn Wainwright

Kathryn Maple, Under the Hot Sun is open at Walker Art Gallery until 30th April

Old Bones, 2022, Kathryn Maple

News

Display of climate related artwork, launches at railway stations between Liverpool and Manchester

Imagined by the 1.5 Degrees project team, Sweat the Small Stuff is a creative response to a warming world installed at railway stations along the 1830 Liverpool and Manchester line from Saturday 1 April until Sunday 14 May.

Scientists have been warning against the global temperature rise exceeding 1.5 degrees. At current warming levels, without drastic intervention, we are likely to reach this within the next 11 years. Sweat the Small Stuff invites us to consider how climate change might affect our communities, exploring how small changes can help us to collectively respond to this challenge. The display features an eclectic range of artworks from the 1.5 Degrees

project team, which is made up of Liverpool John Moores University’s (LJMU) Graphic Design and Illustration students and staff, who joined Metal as artists-in-residence to explore how creative climate communication can inspire action on climate change.

The exhibited work includes; ‘Where do we go from here?’, artwork using railway imagery to depict 27 different green organisations seen along the Liverpool and Manchester railway line, created by students Owen Rutland and Alyssia Thorburn; ‘Eat the Seasons’, protest campaign posters raising awareness of how we can act on climate change by eating seasonal fruit and vegetables, by students Kira Whyte and Puja Varia; ‘Room with an Ocean View’, a series of posters presenting seaside holiday advertisements of a future Liverpool affected by rising sea levels, by student Harry Urand; ‘Small actions, brighter future’, an artwork exploring the idea that small changes in our daily lives can add up to a huge impact in our collective response to climate change, by

student Ana Ortuño Floria; and ‘Weather Warning’, platform shelters which give a changed perspective to familiar surroundings, by providing a weather forecast, inviting us to explore climate extremes made more likely through climate change, by lecturer Chris Jackson.

The installation will be in stations along the old 1830 line and Old Cheshire Lines railways to Manchester (Huyton, Roby, Eccles, Patricroft, Irlam and Urmston). It is also the first project of a new Community Rail Partnership which is connecting the various Friends Of groups at these stations.

Metal’s base at Edge Hill Station is a site with a rich history of innovation and creativity. It is the first stop on the 1830 Liverpool and Manchester Railway, where George Stephenson’s Rocket ushered in a new age of passenger rail travel. The site was at the heart of the rapid expansion of industry. Edge Hill Station pioneered rail innovation, which acted as a catalyst for the Industrial Revolution, a moment

that rooted our reliance on the consumption of fossil fuels.

Facing the environmental impact of this expansion and overconsumption, the 1.5 Degrees project team have explored and responded to the station’s history, looking ahead to how innovation, creativity and creative climate communication might galvanise urgent action in the face of climate change.

The 1.5 Degrees project team also developed a website for Sweat the Small Stuff, to run in parallel to the exhibition. With sustainability at the heart of the design, the website has a low power mode which allows energy to be saved.

The artwork is at railway stations between Liverpool and Manchester from Saturday 1 April.

credit: Sweat The Small Stuff, Weather Warning, 2020

Transformation works to begin at Tate Liverpool in October

Tate Liverpool has announced that the gallery will temporarily close from Monday 16 October 2023 as the landmark building on Royal Albert Dock undergoes a major reimagining. The transformed gallery will reopen in 2025.

Ahead of the closure period, Tate Liverpool will be extending its popular exhibition JMW Turner with Lamin Fofana: Dark Waters until 24 September 2023. The exhibition focuses on the power of the sea through Turner’s paintings and sketches and through Fofana’s immersive sound environment.

Tate Liverpool will also be one of the venues across the city hosting exhibitions for the 12th edition of Liverpool Biennial, open from 10 June to 17 September 2023.

Tate Liverpool’s free displays of the national collection of modern and contemporary art will also be extended until 15 October 2023. On

level 2 of the gallery, The Port and Migrations and Global Encounters feature more than 80 works exploring themes of movement, migration and international exchange, including Hew Locke’s spectacular sculptural installation Armada 2019. On level 1, Democracies features artists from around the world who have responded in various ways to the theme of democracy.

Helen Legg, Director, Tate Liverpool, said: “Since Tate Liverpool opened 35 years ago, the experiences our audiences want to have, and the kind of work artists want to make, have both changed significantly. So now is the time for us to reimagine the gallery for the 21st century and strengthen the connection between art and people.

“Announcing this temporary closure gives everyone who loves Tate Liverpool a chance to return to the gallery before we begin the transformation process. It is also important to us that our audiences know they will still be able to engage with Tate Liverpool during the closure period through the high-

quality work we deliver within the city’s communities.”

While the building is closed, Tate Liverpool will continue to host events and one-off projects in collaboration with other spaces in the city. Following the success of the Mobile Museum in collaboration with Art Explora and MuMo, which is currently touring works from Tate’s collection around Liverpool City Region until April, the gallery’s off-site programme will ensure it retains a close connection to the local community. Plans for the programme for 2024 will be announced in the coming months.

Established in 1988, Tate Liverpool helped create a blueprint for a wave of new galleries across the UK, redefining the role of the museum in the life of a city. Following a grant from the Government’s Levelling Up Fund, Tate Liverpool is now working with 6a architects to reimagine the gallery spaces to meet the scale and ambition of today’s most exciting artists. They will also develop social spaces that better connect with the city and its communities, creating

an environment that is flexible and inviting and able to host people, art and ideas in equal measure.

Tate Exterior © Tate Liverpool, Rachel Ryan Photography

International Slavery Museum announces pop-up installation in collaboration with artist LR Vandy

Launching on 6 April 2023, artist LR Vandy, who is represented by October Gallery in London, will create a new outdoor sculpture, which will see audiences engaging with International Slavery Museum from outside of its traditional walls.

Providing a platform for multiple voices in developing the overall vision of the Waterfront Transformation Project, this installation, named ‘Dancing in Time: The Ties That Bind Us’ will feed into plans for the overall transformation of the new International Slavery Museum, exploring storytelling, interpretation, and the wider historic waterfront. Continuing in the same spirit as the first and second pop-ups, this intervention, and the placement of the sculpture on the Canning Dock quayside, echoes Vandy’s recent studio relocation to Chatham Historic Dock Yard, working with the Ropery, a 19C building which still makes rope in the traditional way.

Artist Lisa Vandy comments:

“Working with the team of Master Ropemakers has given me a new material to explore and express current themes in my practice. I am not interested in making something inert. I want movement, and movement often implies tensions, and what better material than the rope. What people might not appreciate is how much symbolism the rope holds.

Through this sculpture I also want to evoke the feeling of dance –movement. How people throughout times have used dance to break free from oppressive systems.”

The rope holds both symbolic and historic importance as it was used in ancient construction, the building of Colonisation and Empire through shipping, as well as its more sinister association with slavery and captivity. Vandy uses the materiality of the rope to create abstract female figures out of twists and turns, creating a new sculpture for the International Slavery Museum.

The sculpture is hand made by sewing sections of rope and binding the ends with twine. The end form of the rope speaks to the origins of dance in hunting rituals, carnival

masquerades and spirit dancers of the African diaspora, reflecting the title of ‘Dancing in Time.’ A source of inspiration for Lisa has been Barbara Ehrenreich’s book, an exploration of dance as a manifestation of the timeless human need for communal joy in Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy.

One of the overarching ambitions of the Waterfront Transformation Project is connecting people, outside the International Slavery Museum walls, to the heritage site the museum is surrounded by. Exploring how slavery and its legacies still influence the world today and how different art forms transform how we connect people with this heritage.

Nicola Selsby-Cunningham, Exhibitions lead at National Museums Liverpool said:

“I cannot think of a more appropriate artist to take the story of historic slavery and maritime history, out from our museum walls to the public. This sculpture is a visually striking artwork with a multilayered story, with powerful insights and perspectives on the compelling issues of our time.

Placing this sculpture on the Canning Dock quayside allows us to chart

new ways of confronting legacies of racism and celebrate cultures of resistance and affirmation. We are deeply grateful to Lisa and October Gallery for this wonderful opportunity to collaborate.”

Through her work, Vandy brings together both found and made objects to create new meaning. Using beautiful, precious objects while exploring painful subjects of migration, historically through the lens of the Transatlantic slave trade, and currently the many people making desperate, treacherous boat journeys in hopes of a safer life.

This final pop-up installation is part of the International Slavery Museums’ series of activations and will be located beside the dry dock in the public realm of Liverpool’s Waterfront. The National Heritage Lottery Fund Heritage Horizon Awards has supported us throughout this series of pop-up activation, and in helping us to re-imagine our ambitions for the newly transformed museum.

Lisa Vandy, credit Yanle Shen

Photie Man: First UK retrospective of Tom Wood’s work coming to Walker Art Gallery

Major new photographic exhibition to showcase 50 years of the artist’s work

Matchdays at Anfield and Goodison Park, trips to “Greatie” Homer Street Market and bus journeys through the streets of Liverpool all feature as part of the new exhibition Photie Man: 50 Years of Tom Wood, celebrating over half a century of work from the acclaimed Irish-born artist.

Known across Merseyside as “Photie Man”, Wood’s photographs evoke the spirit of Merseyside life from the 1970s to the present day. Together, they provide an insight into everyday life and culture in Liverpool – presenting people and places not usually represented in art, and creating an intimate, multilayered portrait of the city and its inhabitants.

Taking in over half a century’s work, the exhibition will move from

vintage photographs that Wood started collecting whilst still at school, alongside never-before-seen photographs from a wide range of formats. Additionally, some of the artist’s experimental film work will be included, from the 1980s to the present day.

A series of Wood’s most iconic photographs from the 80s and 90s will feature, including those from ‘Looking for Love’ (1989) – a portrait of New Brighton’s Chelsea Reach nightclub – to the well-known bus photographs of ‘All Zones Off Peak’ (1998). These will appear alongside rarely shown works from the Cammell Laird shipyard and around Liverpool’s two celebrated football grounds. The exhibition will also include Wood’s ‘Irish Work’, made since the 1970s, together with recent landscape photography made around his current home in North Wales.

Today, photography is an established fine art form, but this wasn’t always the case – particularly during the first half of Wood’s career. Tom Wood, who trained in painting in the early 1970s, first explored photography

through experimental film and ‘found’ postcards. His self-taught approach means he photographs in an open manner, shooting quickly yet precisely.

Wood’s work is not organised as a series of projects, each with a start and end date. Instead, he works daily on an unfolding, diary-like recording of his observations and encounters. He spends many years returning to particular places, to refine and distil the essence of the locations and the people in his photographs.

Tom Wood said: “I have had major retrospectives around the world – in China, France, London – but never in Liverpool, where I photographed every day for 25 years!

“I didn’t want a show for myself or my career, but rather to give the work back to the city where it belongs. I can’t think of a better venue for these photographs than the Walker Art Gallery. Many a time I would visit –after the markets, after the football – to walk around the galleries and unwind. The energy of Liverpool and its people has informed all this work – it was everywhere I went,

everywhere I looked. All I was doing was tapping into that. It has been a real labour of love.”

Charlotte Keenan, Head of Walker Art Gallery, said: “Through his photography in Liverpool and Merseyside, Tom Wood offers visitors from the local area the opportunity to revisit many recognisable people and places from our history. I’m thrilled to be hosting this exhibition at the Walker, which will be a celebration of Tom Wood’s career –offering followers and newcomers alike the opportunity to take a more in-depth look at his work.”

Tickets for Photie Man: 50 Years of Tom Wood are on sale now. Adult tickets cost £9, with concessions available – members of National Museums Liverpool can visit for free. On the first Sunday of every month, Liverpool City Region residents can visit the exhibition at the discounted rate of £4.50 for adults and concessions.

For further details and to book tickets, visit: liverpoolmuseums. org.uk/tomwood

Images (clockwise): Lads at Railings, Grimace Girl, Mirror Mersey. All © Tom Wood Archive, courtesy of National Museums Liverpool

Above:

Michelangelo, Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt…

Renaissance Rediscovered opens at the Walker Art Gallery

More than three years since their galleries closed for refurbishment, the Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque treasures of the Walker Art Gallery return to public display on 29 July 2023.

Renaissance Rediscovered presents the Walker’s renowned collection of Western European art from the 13th to the 18th century. Masterpieces such as Simone Martini’s Christ Discovered in the Temple, Holbein’s Portrait of Henry VIII, and Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait as a Young Man feature in the elegant new spaces.

New acquisitions join this spectacular collection for the first time, including Allegory of Painting and Music, the first painting by Giovanni Andrea Sirani to enter a UK public collection, and Flowers in a Glass Vase on a Marble Ledge by 17th-century Dutch artist, Willem van Aelst.

Other iconic artists represented include Titian, Lavinia Fontana, Peter Paul Rubens and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo.

Kate O’Donoghue, Curator of International Fine Art, said: “The opening of Renaissance Rediscovered marks an exciting chapter in the history of the Walker, creating beautiful spaces for some of the Gallery’s most magnificent treasures.

“Through remarkable paintings, prints, drawings, decorative art and sculpture, the galleries explore centuries of human creativity and expression. With fresh interpretation and thoughtful design, they will also explore stories that have been historically excluded in these spaces.

“We hope this transformation will allow visitors not only to marvel at the considerable skill and artistry on display but also to appreciate that however many centuries separate us, art will always find ways for us to connect with our past.”

The UK Government gave £4million towards this project and other works at National Museums Liverpool, to support

its collection’s care. Renaissance Rediscovered is also funded by Art Fund, Tavolozza Foundation, Henry Moore Foundation and Art Friends Merseyside.

The infrastructure work, combined with the interior fit-out, gives an overall project cost of around £4.5 million.

This distinguished collection has its origins with Liverpool collector and MP, William Roscoe (17531831). When facing bankruptcy in 1816, Roscoe sold his art collection and the Liverpool Royal Institution, made up of associates and friends of Roscoe, bought many of his paintings which went on to form a core part of the Walker’s collection. Many members and founders of the Liverpool Royal Institution made their fortunes through slavery and related businesses. Renaissance Rediscovered is part of the Walker’s ongoing work to address its links to slavery, colonialism and empire.

The galleries feature fresh interpretation and research, sharing previously underrepresented and diverse stories, including Black, LGBTQ+ and women’s histories. Although centuries old, the subject

Left: Painting conservator, working on The Nativity (1550-1600), Netherlandish School, ahead of the opening of Renaissance Rediscovered at the Walker Art Gallery in July 2023 © Gareth Jones

matter these works explore are powerful themes – faith, family, diversity, migration – that remain relevant to audiences today.

New environmental controls mean the Walker Art Gallery’s extraordinary collection of works on paper will have a dedicated gallery for the first time. The Walker holds a collection of more than 8,350 drawings, prints and watercolours by British and international artists, many of which have never been shown before. The Prints and Drawings Gallery will show a selection of these beautiful and delicate pieces, by artists including Peter Paul Rubens, Elisabetta Sirani, Domenichino and Guido Reni, for the opening of Renaissance Rediscovered.

Ceramics, ivory and alabaster carvings, glass, metalwork, jewellery, and textiles dating from 1200 to 1700 also feature. Many of these objects were among 14,000 pieces presented to Liverpool Museum in 1867 by local goldsmith, Joseph Mayer (1803-1867).

Painting conservator, working on Allegory of Painting and Music by Sirani, ahead of the opening of Renaissance Rediscovered at the Walker Art Gallery in July 2023 © Gareth Jones

Africa Oyé announce first wave of acts ahead of 2023 festival in Liverpool

Artists from Ghana, GuineaBissau and Cameroon make up the first wave of performers to be announced with plenty more still to come.

Following an incredible 30th anniversary year in 2022, one of Merseyside’s most picturesque green spaces will once again be filled with the music and culture of Africa, the Caribbean and the Diaspora, for two free days of live music, workshops, DJ stages, food stalls and a range of traders in the Oyé Village.

Kicking off the first wave of acts are Ghanian highlife stars, FRA!

FRA!’s energetic performance and infectious grooves are sure to get Liverpool audiences dancing this June with their hypnotising and catchy choruses and incredible showmanship.

Art Explora Mobile Museum takes Tate Masterpieces to Communities around Liverpool

Tate has joined forces with the international art foundation, Art Explora to launch the Mobile Museum in the UK, taking masterpieces from its collection

This ensemble from Accra take their name from the Akan word for “mix” and is a reference to the elements of the fusion which is found in their music. The band is set to be have a break-out year in 2023 with performances at festivals and venues across the world.

Joining them on the line-up will be Cameroonian soloist, Veeby.

A highly respected voice in the burgeoning afrosoul community, Veeby says that it is through her musicality that she transmits her pride and tells the story of her African roots. Her aim is to “connect the points” of music and history for her fellow Afro-descendants.

With hip-hop and RnB influences, Veeby’s soft yet powerful voice is set to soar through Sefton Park this summer.

Rounding off this first announcement is gifted guitarist, percussionist and balafón player, Kimi Djabaté.

On Djabaté’s new album Dindin, the multitalented musician from

Guinea-Bissau carries on the customs of his griot heritage, singing entrancingly about the complexity of life in modern Africa for a broad, international audience.

Blending traditional AfroPortuguese rhythms with Afrobeat grooves, electric desert blues and hints of Afro-Latin swing, Djabaté weaves a unique tapestry of smooth and intricate sounds, featuring intimate songs dedicated to family and friends, and undeniably universal in its themes of love, communication and human connection.Beginning over three decades ago in 1992 as a series of shows in the city centre, the Africa Oyé Festival has evolved into one of Liverpool’s most beloved annual events, attracting artists and attendees from across the world.

One of the most popular areas of festival, The Oyé Active Zone – which hosts free multi-arts workshops across the whole weekend – will return this summer, alongside a brand new Toddler Zone, catering for the youngest festival goers, and the acclaimed DJ stages Trenchtown

and Freetown.

More main stage artists are set to be revealed soon, along with news on our Oyé Introduces programme, which sees up-and-coming local talent showcased on the lineup alongside the international heavyweights.

Our commitment to being ‘free and open to all’ also means that the Access Tent, British Sign Language on-stage translators and Access Viewing Platform will also all return for this year’s extravaganza. Those wanting to support the festival and help keep the event free and open to all and can do so by donating via africaoye.com.

This year’s Africa Oyé Festival will take place on June 17th and 18th 2023, in Liverpool’s Sefton Park from 12:30pm til 9:30pm both days and entrance is FREE.

out of its store to communities across the Liverpool City Region on a 10-week tour until 29 April 2023.

The Art Explora Mobile Museum in collaboration with Tate and MuMo, aims to make great art accessible to everyone. The tour will bring works from Tate’s collection directly to communities in St Helens, Knowsley, Sefton, Wirral, Halton and Liverpool for the first time.

The Mobile Museum will tour a version of the exhibition Radical Landscapes, shown at Tate Liverpool in Summer 2022, featuring works by Turner, Constable, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, John Nash and Jeremy Deller. The exhibition will also include works by leading contemporary artists including this year’s Turner Prize winner Veronica Ryan and shortlisted artist Ingrid Pollard.

It is expected that this tour into communities will offer a first encounter with art to groups of school children and young people across the region as well as community groups, care home residents and adults from all backgrounds.

Groups will be given a tour around the exhibition and will then be invited to join creative workshops, to participate themselves in this artistic adventure and share a momento with their families. At the end of the week, families, neighbours and the local community will be invited to visit the exhibition of artworks made during the workshop sessions.

This tour of the Mobile Museum is brought to you by Art Explora, a non-profit arts organization, in collaboration with Tate and MuMo. MuMo (“Mobile Museum”) was founded by Ingrid Brochard, designed by matali crasset, with the support of the Fondation Daniel et Nina Carasso. This project is supported by Art Explora with public funding from the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

Image: The Art Explora Mobile Museum in collaboration with Tate and Mumo. Photo Peter Byrne PA Wire

Spectacular Moon mission photographs to be exhibited like never before at Williamson Art Gallery & Museum

Apollo Remastered at Birkenhead’s Williamson Art Gallery & Museum will showcase spectacular images from Andy Saunders’ extraordinary bestselling book on a never-beforeseen scale.

The original NASA photographic film from the Apollo missions is some of the most important and

Liverpool Biennial

announces the programme for its 12th edition

New venues announced include Tobacco Warehouse – the largest brick-built warehouse in the world – and the city’s historic Cotton Exchange building.

A series of ambitious outdoor works will be installed at locations across the city including Liverpool ONE, Stanley Dock, Princes Dock, St John’s Gardens and Liverpool Parish Church (St Nicholas’).

Taking over historic buildings, unexpected spaces and art galleries, Liverpool Biennial – the UK’s largest free festival of contemporary visual art – has been transforming the city through art for over two decades. New venues and sites

valuable film in existence. It is securely stored in a frozen vault at Johnson Space Center, Houston. It never leaves the building – in fact, the film rarely leaves the freezer. The images it contains include the most significant moments in our history, as humankind left the confines of our home planet for the first time and set foot on another world.

For half a century, almost every image of the Moon landings publicly available was produced from a lower-quality copy of these originals. Until now…

Apollo Remastered lands at Williamson Art Gallery & Museum

on April 28th 2023, showcasing images from Andy Saunders’ extraordinary book of the same name. Saunders invites viewers to explore the Moon landings in spectacular high definition for the very first time. By applying painstaking care and cutting-edge enhancement techniques, he has created the highest quality Apollo photographs ever produced.

The exhibition of these images at the Williamson will be the biggest staged anywhere in the world to date. It will present the photographs on a large scale, offering awe-inspiring insight into one of our greatest endeavours.

curator Niall Hodson added: “The grainy black and white images of the Apollo missions loom large in everyone’s imagination. These new high-definition photographs are a revelation. It is almost like you are there in the lunar module, you can see everything so clearly. I am delighted that people across Merseyside and the North West will have the chance to see these images from the Apollo missions at the Williamson in Birkenhead – the only place they’ll have been shown in England outside London.”

announced for the 12th edition include historic buildings Tobacco Warehouse and Cotton Exchange, andretail and leisure destination Liverpool ONE, which join leading arts venues such as Tate Liverpool, Bluecoat, FACT Liverpool, Open Eye Gallery, Victoria Gallery and Museum and World Museum. A dynamic programme of free exhibitions, performances, screenings, community and learning activities and fringe events unfolds over 14 weeks, shining a light on the city’s vibrant cultural scene.

‘uMoya: The Sacred Return of Lost Things’ addresses the history and temperament of the city of Liverpool and is a call for ancestral and indigenous forms of knowledge, wisdom and healing. In the isiZulu language, ‘uMoya’ means spirit, breath, air, climate and wind.

Edgar Calel, Guadalupe Maravilla,

and Lubaina Himid join the list of participating artists that includes Brook Andrew, Charmaine Watkiss, Gala Porras-Kim, Julien Creuzet, Raisa Kabir, Nicholas Galanin, Torkwase Dyson and Unmute Dance Theatre amongst others.

Khanyisile Mbongwa, Curator, Liverpool Biennial 2023, said:

“We invite visitors to surrender to the currents of uMoya, to lend themselves to its flow, allowing the artists’ work to be a compass, guiding them through the Biennial. To enter the city of Liverpool as a site where something productive can happen, as the port city opens itself up to be excavated – laying bare its history of colonialism, role in the trade of enslaved people and the making of the British Empire.

The artists unpack catastrophe by engaging with histories of extraction (people, resources, objects); they

re-read cartography by engaging with histories of mapping (trade, architecture, town planning, street naming, public sculptures and monuments); and propose healing by engaging with movements of undoing violence, ‘unholding’ the suffering and centering repair work. Finally, they turn to aliveness by engaging with the human right to be alive and live.”

Williamson Art Gallery & Museum Apollo 17, 13th December, 1972EVA-2, Hasselblad 70mm lens 60mm F/5.6 by Gene Cernan, NASA ID: AS17-137-21001 to 21013

EuroFestival announce 24 commissions due to take over Liverpool ahead of Eurovsion

Taking place from 1-14 May, EuroFestival, is a first for a Eurovision host city, as it presents 24 commissions – 19 of which are collaborative projects between UK and Ukrainian artists – to showcase the uniting power of music and art.

Liverpool BID Company launches Art & Culture Fund

Liverpool BID Company is launching a new Arts & Culture Fund for projects and events taking place in Liverpool city centre.

The new fund has two levels of grants; one for small grants of less than £5,000 which can cover 100% of the project, and a larger grant which can cover up to 50% of the total cost of the project.

Eligible projects should align with Liverpool BID’s objectives, including driving footfall to the city centre, improving the city perspective, showing innovation and helping to showcase Liverpool as a thriving city, ensure the arts have a future in the city, meet both sustainable and ESG objectives, identity a commitment to equality and diversity.

Applicants can be levy payers, or non Levy Payers. This can include charities, CICs and CIOs committed to increasing public access to the arts. Organisations can include, but are not limited to, museums, galleries, historic houses, archives, libraries, agencies and festivals.

Two funding rounds will take place, in Spring and Autumn. The first deadline is Friday 27 March at 5pm and the second is 23 September at 5pm.

Bill Addy is CEO of Liverpool BID Company, a not for profit private

company funded through 1,000 organisations in BID areas across the city centre who pay a levy.

“We have a long commitment to arts and culture in Liverpool and this fund is the next logical step, especially when the public purse is under so much pressure. Our desire with this fund is to bring animation to the city centre, to provide a gateway and access to the arts and to be part of the cultural landscape that makes Liverpool so vibrant.

Our Culture & Commerce BID Area is home to many of Liverpool’s major arts organisations, including National Museums Liverpool, Tate Liverpool, Open Eye Gallery and more. If our extended Retail and Leisure area is approved in its ballot, Liverpool Everyman theatre and the Philharmonic Hall will join the Playhouse Theatre and Royal Court Theatre as levy payers. Alongside the public art we have supported with Liverpool Biennial, the Liverpool Plinth and Open Culture, we hope that this fund can support those who want to bring even more colour and creativity to the city centre”.

To apply, organisations and individuals need to download the application form here: www. liverpoolbidcompany.com/ liverpool-bid-arts-culture-fund

One of the most ambitious projects,Soloveiko Songbirds, will see 12, large scale, light-up nightingales located around the city. Each songbird will be designed with unique plumage and accompanied by bespoke audio soundscapes to represent different regions of Ukraine. When viewed collectively, the Songbirds will make up a beautiful trail which can be followed by the public over the two-week festival.

Surrounded by thousands of sandbags to replicate the way statues in Ukraine are being protected from bombardment, the Nelson Monument, located in Exchange Flags, will host Protect the Beats. Within the structure will be screens premiering a new short documentary which highlights how live music and performance continued throughout last year, showing in one piece the protection of both physical and musical culture.

Working with 450 children from Ukraine and 450 children from across Merseyside, Land & Sky, Home & Dreams, will connect both

groups of children in a simultaneous mass participation event. The kites – which the children have designed and painted themselves – will be flown in New Brighton and in four locations across Ukraine.

Tapping into the Eurovision’s United by Music ethos will be Welcome to Eurotopia– a ‘Supergroup’ made up of Liverpool musicians collaborating with Ukrainian artists. The group will perform a mix of original and existing music, in off-the-charts Euro-typical costume and glamour. Highlights from the line-up include Natalie McCool, Stealing Sheep, She Drew The Gun’s Lou Roach and Ukrainian artists Krapka Koma, Iryna Muha and Helleroid among many more.

The commissions announced today join a string of exciting projects already announced for EuroFestival including The Blue and Yellow Submarine Parade by The Kazimier, English National Opera does Eurovision, Izyum to Liverpool by Ukrainian artist Katya Buchatska and Rave UKraine.

For full details about EuroFestival visit the official Visit Liverpool website: www.visitliverpool.com

image courtsey of Liverpool BID Company

Izyum to

Liverpool, credit Katya Buchatska

Review: Bluecoat Display Centre’s Spring Display

Exploring the purpose, use, and applications of materials is an urge most artists have throughout their life. That tactile need to explore the potential of every possible material is often what drives artists into their work.

Bluecoat Display Centre’s spring display is open until 8th April, and shares that passion for material in buckets.

Janine Partington’s gentle leather work has the intricacy of embroidery, the texture of woodcraft and the finish of linocut printing.

Graham Burrow’s WhittleBirds are an experiment in branding and product design as much as an experiment in craft. His background in logo design and packaging design shines through in this freeform development of his practice, creating

highly collectible sculptures, with bespoke packaging. Almost creating art for the sole intention of gifting.

Block colours and finely finished woodblock birds, of no particular species, are included in Bluecoat Display Centre’s spring display largely because they fit in, but they steal the show, cropping up on shelves as playful nods to the honest reasons these artists are making –because they can, and because it can pay.

What’s more, the inclusion of a Bluecoat Display Centre favourite, Emma Rodgers, and her immediately identifiable sculptures (accompanied for now by a window display dedicated to her recognisably textured sculpture) evidences that these crisply presented birds, and neatly framed leather work surrounding her sculpture don’t have a monopoly on saleable art.

Art can and should meet those needs. It can be functional or

even utilitarian, as is the case with Hugh Millers hand-crafted chairs (currently on display at Walker Art Gallery in their ‘New Works at the Walker’ display) or Sasha Wardell‘s delicate but useful ceramic cups.

Utility is a simple way to sales, but also highly competitive. Emma Rodgers steers clear of utility, and focusses on the representation of movement, highlighting the character of her human and animal subjects with equal weighting. Yet, without any utility, or usefulness, they are valued, and represent the same drive towards craft and material exploration as the precisely finished birds, prints, and ceramics that make up the rest of this show.

There is a short window to see this work, as the display changes over on 8th April to make way for Unity. The next exhibition explores the identity of Eurovision through jewellery exploring themes of music, identity, acceptance, and diversity, opening 14th April.

Words, Kathryn Wainwright Spring Display is open until 8th April at Bluecoat Display Centre Left: Janine Partington Below: Graham Burrows

Review: Fanchon

Fröhlich, the Wrong Sex at Exhibition Research Lab

The British Art & Design Association has been pushing for this exhibition for a long time, knowing the value of Fanchon Fröhlich, and seeking recognition in the city for her impact on it.

Fröhlich was, and remains a largely unknown artist in Liverpool, yet her work has had global recognition and become something of a critical mass when it comes to art theory and visual inspiration for other artists in her field.

Talking to Terry Duffy, the director of the British Art & Design Association, and a local artist himself, a few years ago, I was palpably excited

by the prospect of this show – not because I was a fan of Fröhlich, but because I wasn’t. Because I’d never come across this artist who he was so clearly passionate about, and who had, as I was to learn had such a large, but quiet, impact on the art scene we now know.

The exhibition itself is engaging, archival, and incredibly intimate. Its presentation as a studio complex allows us to explore Fröhlich’s work as I firmly believe art should be explored – by touch. Stacks of canvases and working drawings are strewn across shelves, and lent informally against the walls of the Exhibition Research Lab, with some of the more precious diary entries and proposals safely cased in shallow display tables.

The British Art & Design Association began just before the pandemic, so this exhibition will be most people’s

first tangible experience of them here in Liverpool. Their aim is to present and preserve these archives of artists whose work deserves recognition, but falls outside of the remit of major institutional collections.

For most grassroots artists, they offer a recognition for their work too, by archiving work which is significant to other artists, offering an opportunity to be recognised for your contribution to the art world, rather than simply recognised for recognition’s sake.

The choice of LJMU’s Exhibition Research Lab (the street-facing corner of the John Lennon Art & Design building) is useful too, perhaps more for the gallery than BADA, as it helps to solidify their intentions as a gallery by presenting work in more manageable, navigable ways, as opposed to static exhibitions.

Perhaps the gallery had an influence on BADA’s curatorial choices too, leading them to a more audience focussed presentation of Fröhlich’s posthumous work, which feels somehow still developmental.

Words, Patrick Kirk-Smith Fanchon Fröhlich, the Wrong Sex is open at Exhibition Research Lab until 4th May Installation view: Fanchon Fröhlich, The Wrong Sex

A Potted History of Value

Continued from Editorial, page 3

From my pedestal, writing about art rather than making it, it’s easy to jump to judgements and potentially unfair conclusions, but the art world we inhabit today isn’t the art world that inspired most of us to become part of it. Even at school, our experience of art was rarely defined by contemporary painters, sculptors, or crafters, and never performers or critical thinkers. We were indoctrinated by Picasso and cubism, or Dali and surrealism. For audiences, that is largely their defining introduction to the art world too.

So we’re starting, as members of this cultural community, from a skewed perception of what we do. When art is seen by audiences as not being valuable, it is the art of the 1900’s they are referring to, but also the contemporary art world that best fits that model.

For the artists making work to their own tune, engaging critically with their own communities or ideas, that work is often clumsily branded as ‘community art’, and not given the power it should. I believe that is largely down to galleries and museums presenting it in that light, rather than as the true modern art that it is.

We have yet to have a true new renaissance, but looking back to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’s attempts to create one, and balancing that with modern shifts in creative practice from artists like Keith Haring or Damien Hirst, whose works, in polarised ways, both sought to address the problems of monetary value and access. Because

the challenges we face in the arts are no longer secondary to the subjects we make work about.

Where art was once ahead of the game on thought, philosophy, and discovery, it is now a way to reflect it. Science and philosophy are now entirely separate fields, with artists exploring both labelled as interdisciplinary. Leonardo Da Vinci, as touched on in the Editorial, was the father of interdisciplinary thinking, but that way of working is so natural to artists that we have lost sight of the value of it.

Community art, as it is largely labelled, when done properly is just as interdisciplinary, and just as based in philosophy and social science as any renaissance work – we just tend not to recognise that. So perhaps we are already in the new renaissance.

While these ideas might seem beyond our remit in Merseyside, it’s important to see this small segment of the art world as a reflective body for at least the UK. We host the UK biennial, and we’re home to several major collections and internationally significant galleries, but we also have some of the oldest studio complexes in the country.

Add to that, that Liverpool was targeted by the Pre-Raphaelites as a city to share work outside of London and as an industrial power. This is a city, and a region that has always been at the heart of culture, and played a large part in both historic milestones and historic atrocities. As artists, whatever our medium, the value of our art is essential to its success – whether that value is only to ourselves and our hyperlocal

communities, or to the wider field of creative and cultural thinking.

And within that, particularly for independent galleries or grassroots artists, trying to remain true to your own ideas and shrugging off those who assess value in numbers is essential.

Your value, our value, and the value of the people we make work for and with, is what actually matters. But… we need to be paid. And assessing human value in ways that match or attract financial value is important, because the art world in the UK is primarily assessed on its returns.

A grassroots organisation, for example, is far more likely to attract repeat funding if it can prove that the funding it has already had added more value to the local economy in concrete, financial, terms. That might be by boosting audience numbers, or by encouraging people into work, or back out of personal hardship, mental, physical or otherwise.

Those projects are clearly valuable in all senses, but for those of us running studios and festivals, where the main outputs are based in one particular craft, that value is more about well-being, often in private settings. Patrons buy our paintings, illustrations, ceramics, or sculpture because it speaks to them. That value passes back to the art world by raising the profile of local artists, and ensuring they remain relevant to local audiences. It also has value within the art world by allowing artists the freedom to explore their medium, creating new ways of working that influence the world around them.

That type of value is much harder to be paid for without simply putting a price tag on your work once it’s finished.

For some, that theoretical, ideasbased, work (performance and audio in particular) can lead to significant commissions. Look at Lamin Fofana’s work at Tate Liverpool. An artist whose work has been valued by both Liverpool Biennial and Tate Liverpool with repeat commissions, and now sits in Liverpool’s most major gallery adding value to JMW Turner, whose work is amongst the most financially valuable of all British artists.

For others, those commissions are hard to come by. The patrons are nowhere to be seen. And we remain working as artists, who by all accounts earn (on average) under £6,000 a year from our practice.

If you are feeling undervalued, know that your presence is valued. And know that your voice is valued. Your place in the art world is significant, and how you choose to fund it is your choice. We are all here, trying to find a space that suits us, and we all form a conflicted but collective voice.

Words, Patrick Kirk-Smith

What’s On Exhibitions

Bridewell Studios & Gallery: Casey Lauren, Dimensions Variable until 3rd April

Dimensions Variable challenges traditional approaches to painting, and rejects pictorial illusion, in order to present a paintings’ underlying structure and stretched surface as the subject instead.

The LAKE Gallery: The Shape of Things until 6th May

Showcasing four exceptional contemporary abstract artists –Christine Evans, Derek King, Sherilyn Halligan and Annie Luke Turner

dot-art: Around The World In Black & White until 20th May

Daniel Meakin, Clare Wrench, Steve Bayley, Susan Brown and John Petch transport us ‘Around the World in Black & White’, stopping off in Spain, Greece, France and many more iconic destinations

The Atkinson: The Sefton Open 2023 until 13th May

The Sefton Open is an annual exhibition celebrating the creativity and artistic talent across the borough.

Williamson Art Gallery: Kathleen Guthrie and John Cecil Stephenson: Life in Abstraction until 8th April

Kathleen Guthrie and John Cecil Stephenson were key figures of 20th century British modernism. Married from 1942 until Stephenson’s death in 1965, this exhibition is the first time that their work has been exhibited side-by-side.

ArtHouse Gallery: Spring Open until 8th April

Profiling not only SCA members, the SCA Spring Open traditionally also offers the wider artistic community the opportunity to display their work in the gallery.

FACT: Danielle BrathwaiteShirley & Josèfa Ntjam until 9th April

Working across archives, maps and video games, the artists consider how acts of resistance, rebuilding and reimagining can lead to transformative new worlds.

FACT: Hope Strickland until 9th April

Discover artist-filmmaker, Hope Strickland’s short film I’ll be back! (2022), produced as part of her FACT Together residency.

FACT: Ashley Holmes until 19th April

As an outcome of his residency, Ashley presents a three-channel sound piece developed from field recordings and conversations taken in the city.

Editions: Cosmic Collective until 23rd April

The Cosmic Collective have collided their creative atoms, to bring you a visual feast of imagination and imagery.

Open Eye Gallery: 2023 Liverpool City Region Photo Awards Winners until 23rd April

The competition was announced in November, and in two months we received over 1900 images, proving that Liverpool City Region is truly a place for photographers!

Walker Art Gallery: Kathryn Maple until 30th April

Focussing on the extreme environmental situation the world is currently facing, Kathryn’s exhibition Under a Hot Sun is a collection of work created following the artist’s success in the John Moores Painting Prize.

Exhibition Research Lab: Fanchon Fröhlich: The Wrong Sex until 4th May

Much like the artist and her own way of working, the display will be dynamic and changing throughout the lifespan of the exhibition, in order to provide as much insight into the archive as possible.

Liverpool-Manchester: 1.5

Degrees: Sweat the Small Stuff until 7th May

Sweat the Small Stuff invites us to consider how climate change might affect our communities, exploring how small changes might help us to collectively respond to this challenge. (At Northern Line stations between Liverpool and Manchester).

Tate Liverpool: Candice Breitz: Love Story until 14th May

If a refugee’s story was told by a celebrity, would you pay more attention? Love Story 2016 considers whose voices we are willing to listen to in a mediasaturated world.

Tate Liverpool: JMW Turner with Lamin Fofana: Dark Waters until 4th June

The power and politics of the sea link JMW Turner and sound artist Lamin Fofana across the centuries at Tate Liverpool.

FACT: Chila Kumari Singh Burman until 18th June

Welcome to Chila Kumari Singh

Burman’s Merseyside Burman Empire, an experimental space filled with her eye-catching designs and artworks.

INNSiDE: Icons, Juliet Stockton until 15th July

‘Icons’ from the talented artist Juliet Stockton, celebrates the greatest pop-culture icons of our time.

Victoria Gallery & Museum: Travel in Style – Iconic Cunard Advertising in the 1920s and 1930s until December 2023

A selection of iconic posters used to promote Cunard Line’s services in the 1920s and 1930s.

St Helens: Heart of Glass: Sphere Of Nature until 31st December

Artists Faunagraphic and Liz Von Graevnitz have collaborated with SHAP to create a huge new mural on Tickle Avenue in Parr.

St Helens: Heart of Glass: Follow The Light / Keep Growing Keep Going until 31st December

In the heart of Parr, street art duo Nomad Clan’s murals are situated across the road from Derbyshire Hill Family Centre

St Helens: Heart of Glass: Grow Up until 31st December

Billy Colours has collaborated with artist Cathy Cross to deliver a series of workshops with Holy Spirit School in Parr. The mural is open on the Newton Road roundabout from March.

St Helens: Heart of Glass: Together in Love and Courage until 31st December

The Fandangoe Kid and Change

Grow Live, St Helens have worked together to create a large-scale floor mural for St Helens town centre.

Museum of Liverpool: Liverpool

8 Against Apartheid until 1st Feb 2024

The story of how Liverpool’s Black community supported the antiapartheid campaign in the 1980s.

International Slavery Museum: Challenging histories: Collecting new artworks

Ongoing

Contemporary artworks responding to the history of transatlantic slavery and its legacy.

International Slavery Museum: Lambeaux (scraps) by Gilles EliDit-Cosaque

Ongoing

A moving journal, filled with personal and historical photographs, it’s also a Creole diary – not in a geographical sense, but rather a state of mind, referring to the concept of creolisation.

Coming Soon

International Slavery Museum: Dancing in Time: The Ties That Bind Us

From 6th April

Lady Lever Art Gallery: Flower Fairies

15th April – 5th November Immerse yourself in the enchanting world of illustrations from the Flower Fairies books by Cicely Mary Barker (1895 – 1973). To mark the 100 year anniversary of her first book, Flower Fairies of the Spring, this exhibition will feature around 45 original illustrations, with digital projections and costumes inspired by the fairies, designed by Vin Burnham.

Victoria Gallery & Museum: LINDA STEIN: Gender Scrambling

22nd April – 2nd September Brand new exhibition of work by American artist Linda Stein investigates and inverts gender roles and gender stereotypes.

LINDA STEIN: Gender Scrambling exhibition features 26 prints from Linda Stein’s series of the same name plus one of her Knight Adagio sculptures and her film short Running.

Williamson Art Gallery: Apollo Remastered

28th April – 2nd September

Apollo Remastered at Birkenhead’s Williamson Art Gallery & Museum will showcase spectacular images from Andy Saunders’ extraordinary bestselling book on a never-beforeseen scale.

FACT: LuYang Arcade Liverpool

28th April – 17th September

LuYang Arcade Liverpool transforms the gallery into a retrofuturistic arcade composed of games, avatars and environments inspired by anime, sci-fi, Buddhism and neuroscience. Motorcycle racing simulators, Space Invader joy-con towers and dance mat stations transport you to entertaining and thought-provoking worlds.

Walker Art Gallery: Photie Man: 50 Years of Tom Wood

20th May – 7th January 2024

A new major photographic exhibition from Tom Wood, showcasing 50 years of the artist’s work. ‘Photie Man’ celebrates the internationally-acclaimed Irish artist Tom Wood (b. 1951), showcasing his iconic images of Liverpool and bringing together his work from across all decades, it will be the first major retrospective of Tom’s work in Liverpool.

To find out more about each of these events head to:

www.artinliverpool.com/currentexhibitions

Events & Workshops

Metal Liverpool (Online): TReasured, by Mandy Romero

From 1st April

TReasured is a collaborative online artwork inspired by Mandy Romero’s personal archive accumulated over 35 years. An anthology of short films, original writing, and photography will link together with collected ephemera from her numerous productions, projects and memories to create an interactive poetry of transgender.

VIEW: www.treasured.org.uk

World of Glass: The Art Club Saint Helens

Saturdays, 10am-12

Demonstrations and workshops, sometimes by group members, sometimes by guest demonstrators, and occasional trips out to venues decided by the members. We encourage artists to join us for two sessions free, to see if you would like to join us. Members pay £40 annual subscriptions, then £3 at each session attended.

Tate Liverpool: Make at Tate Liverpool: Wild Escape

1st-16th April

Free family activities during the Easter holidays. Produce your own animal habitat artworks inspired by artworks from the Tate collection. Your creations will become part of a nationally visible digital artwork, and a mass-participation event on Earth Day on 22 April 2023.

FACT: Liverpool Artists’

Network: LAN Slide Slam

12th April, 6:30pm

Next LAN meeting will be a Slide Slam at FACT, which we are really excited about as we’ve not had a LAN meeting there before and it is a great location in the middle of town. There is a limit on numbers so we’re managing that via FREE Eventbrite tickets.

BOOK: www. liverpoolartistsnetwork.org/ meetings

Tate Liverpool: Home from Home (Course)

18th April – 27th May

Using the art in Tate’s national collection as a starting point, we will connect local migrant communities to each other and the city-wide cultural offer. The project aims to improve the confidence and self-esteem of participants and help to reduce some of the isolation they may encounter, by developing new skills and widening their social infrastructure and networks.

BOOK: Alison.jones@tate.org.uk

Bluecoat: Liverpool Print Fair

22nd-23rd April, 11am-5pm

Liverpool Print Fair is a celebration of printmaking. They bring a colourful range of artists, designers and storytellers together to showcase their work in its many forms. The event is perfect place to find affordable art and handmade prints, with a dynamic mix of styles among the stalls.

Bluecoat: April Family Weekend

22nd-23rd April, 1-4pm

Join us for two days of free creative activities to inspire budding artists.

Cass Art: Squiggly Lines Print Workshop

23rd April, 1-3pm

Join our Squiggly Line Block Print Workshop and learn how to make your very own abstract squiggly line art print using laser-cut blocks. Using traditional relief printing methods and a laser cutter, you’ll get the chance to craft your own personalized wood block.

BOOK: www.vatelierstudio.co.uk

Make North Docks: Intro to Tie Dye

29th April, 11am-1pm

An introduction to tie dye is a perfect class for everyone, whether you’ve done it before or you’re a complete beginner.

BOOK: www.makecic.org/whatson

Make North Docks: Reworking Clothing: Paint & Decorate

29th April, 2-4pm

Join Bethan from Buy by Bethan at Make North Docks to learn a variety of techniques to give a new lease of life to your old items of clothing!

BOOK: www.makecic.org/whatson

FACT: Geek Bazaar

30th April, all day

Join us for an inclusive Geek Bazaar hosted by Empire Sector. This event is open to everyone and anyone who wants to experience a geeky event created by people who wear the geek badge with pride.

>> NEW VENUE: Make on the Corner (22 Derby Road, Huyton)

Make on the Corner: Getting Started on Instagram

21st April, 10am-12

Are you looking to set up an Instagram account to show off your artist practice or creative business? Have you tried Instagram out, but you’re not too sure how to use some of its functions? This session will cover all the basics to get you set up on Instagram.

BOOK: www.makecic.org/whatson

Make on the Corner: Selling your Online Products

27th April, 10am-12

This informal workshop session is ideal for people who have a handmade product, or an idea for one, and are considering starting to sell online.

BOOK: www.makecic.org/whatson

Jobs Calls

Project Coordinator, Liverpool Biennial

This role is a part-time, fixed term role responsible for the first group visit to Liverpool Biennial 2023, working closely with Biennial and British Council colleagues to facilitate a fruitful and impactful programme

DEADLINE: 16th April

APPLY: www.biennial.com

Learning Programme Manager, National Museums Liverpool

A role that is critical to delivering accessible and representative learning programmes at the International Slavery Museum.

DEADLINE: 14th April