Art in Liverpool Magazine, issue #14, April 2019

Issue #14 - April 2019 News, Reviews & What’s On. Your monthly update on visual art in the Liverpool City Region

image credit: Maria Eagle, MP for Garston and Halewood, by Olivia Harris. Part of 209 Women at Open Eye Gallery

29 Mar – 16 Jun 2019

ERICKA BECKMAN MARIANNA SIMNETT

88 WOOD STREET fact.co.uk Top image: Ericka Beckman, Hiatus (video still), 1999. Courtesy of the artist. Bottom image: Marianna Simnett, The Udder (video still), 2014. Courtesy of the artist.

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19/03/2019 09:12:45

Art in Liverpool magazine is a monthly newspaper promoting visual art across the Liverpool City Region.

Art in Liverpool, issue #14, April 2019

Published by Art in Liverpool C.I.C. and written by contributions from our partners, supporters and most importantly, volunteer writers, who add a unique voice to arts writing in the UK, thinking differently about what actually matters to people visiting galleries.

With issue #1 published in March 2018 we’ve got a lot of growing to do, and if you want to be part of that, get in touch: info@artinliverpool.com Equally, 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

Arthur Jafa, Love is the Message, The Message is Death 2016. Courtesy the artist and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York/Rome.

Since 2008, Liverpool has been so palpably linked with Europe, leading by example for cities hoping to put the arts and culture at the top of their list of merits. I don’t think we reflected enough last year on the importance of that.

At the time of writing this, we’re four days from the date set for the UK to leave the EU. That date has been scrubbed from history, and the departure date appears to be moving ever further into the future, but the fact remains that, as it stands, we are leaving the European Union.

issue #14, April 2019 Editor: Patrick Kirk-Smith Contributors: Charlotte Hill, Lorraine Bacchus, Sophia Charuhas, Kathryn Wainwright, John Beck and Matthew Cornford Advertising, sponsorship, distribution, stocking & event enquiries should be sent to info@artinliverpool.com Art in Liverpool C.I.C. Company No. 10871320

Forget for a moment what that will mean for the UK, and instead focus on what it will mean for Liverpool, and more specifically, our creative industry. We’re a region built on migration, and the representation of that migration, with boroughs that have utterly unique cultures in themselves.

This month alone, there are three major new exhibitions featuring the work of internationally respected artists coming to Merseyside, with May showing off what the diverse residents of the city have to show when festival season gets well and truly under way.

My question then, if it holds up, is whether Liverpool has done enough to maintain its place in the continent of Europe to last as a cultural power, beyond its place in the political community.

An important part of understanding that is taking stock of everything we actually have to offer. Importantly, while it’s easy to sit back and feel hard done by that we’re

losing our political neighbours, you must also think of the strength of migration more widely.

Liverpool has the largest festival of African arts in the UK, with Africa Oye; we host Milapfest, whose national Indian Arts Awards close for nominations later this month; Liverpool Arab Arts Festival fills the summer streets with a powerful pride; Pagoda is one of the most stable Chinese Arts centres in the UK, working on international projects with local people; and countless other incredible organisations representing the world on our doorstep.

In fact, April is probably going to be a pretty calming month in that respect, reassuring us that talent will still come to our shores, and the unique draw of the world class galleries in Liverpool will continue bringing the best artists in the world to this region.

This month, FACT open the first exhibition of their 2019 programme entirely made of women artists. Ericka Beckman and Mariana Sminett is a celebration of film from two ends of the artist filmmaker community, with Beckman’s work internationally recognisable and Simnett touted as an emerging talent in the same field. While down the road at Tate Liverpool, Arthur Jafa’s film Love is The Message, The Message is Death, ever growing in its reputation brings the story of modern African American history to Liverpool.

And Bluecoat launches Survey, a twelve year review of the Jerwood Visual Arts Prize,

and an exhibition that shows predominantly UK based talent, later this month too, to kick off a summer of programming at the gallery that promises to show the sorts of talent Liverpool can attract.

So no, I don’t think Liverpool is going to fundamentally change after Brexit, when/ if it happens, and I don’t think our lives will drastically suffer, because Liverpool will continue to fly the flag of international culture, and carry on leading the way as the UKs last European Capital of Culture, inspiring the UK Capital of Culture, and Boroughs of Culture, and towns and cities that don’t feel the need for titles, but welcome artistic endeavour from around the globe to add to the UKs own voice.

In short, whatever happens, Liverpool will still be a European Capital of Culture, eleven years past the use by date of that title, and we will continue to welcome and support voices from all over the world here.

It’s who we are.

Making the Glasgow Style Review of Charles Rennie Mackintosh at Walker Art Gallery

Charles Rennie Mackintosh was an artist with his eyes open. The exhibition at Walker Art Gallery, dedicated to his life and work, and that of his peers, is a view in true perspective of the world around Mackintosh, and the relationships within it.

His designs have defined the cities we live in, and shaped the way we see the world around us, so it is a privilege to see and understand the world that existed around this great creator.

He was a pioneer by chance rather than by effort, as his work evolved from the joy he gained from observations of the world around him. His inspirations were never hidden, and his resolve to create things that pleased him never wavered. Something which is abundantly clear in Making the Glasgow Style.

The relationships he created between his furniture and his buildings, and their occupants are as bespoke as the objects themselves, manufacturing new ways of living in space; new ways of interacting with it; of being.

What stands out at the Walker exhibition is the time it takes to understand it. This is not a walk through exhibition, or a display of objects that can simply be enjoyed for their visual power – though they have that abundantly – it is a show of unity across

a movement, that exhibits precisely why, where and how it came to be, and why, where and how, it came to end.

how it would make the sitter feel is unusual.

The driving force behind this chair sums up so much of the Glasgow Style; a force led by the idea that space was a quality that could be harnessed; that every space was a place.

Frances McNair, Mackintosh’s sister-inlaw, and fellow artist, died in Glasgow in 1921. Her husband then gathered as much of their work as he could, and destroyed it. One year later, Margaret, Charles’ wife stopped making work. And six years later, having drastically moved away from the Glasgow Style, Charles Rennie Mackintosh died.

Their deaths were not the end of the Glasgow Style, but came while it was moving on to become something else more relevant to the modernising world. As they moved away from the style, and their lives took them further and further from it, the movement dissipated. Their influence lived on, but was never quite matched in its truth to form. Essentially, when they began observing a new stage of life, which was closer to death, their love of creating space faded, and they instead began reflecting on the spaces that existed around them.

Observant to the end, and appropriately reflective on their own existence throughout.

Making the Glasgow Style is a celebration of what was one of the strongest creative communities in British history. William Morris’ Arts & Crafts bled straight into the

Created to encompass its sitter, the HighBacked Chair is an elegant throne that wraps its subject in its presence, and elevates the act of being in that place to an experience. The posters, the stained glass, the furniture, the cathedrals of education.

They were more than their titles suggest.

Every drawing came from seeing the world for what it was.

movement, which can probably be best described as a movement away from beauty without thought, into beauty with reason.

Take the High-Backed Chair for Miss Cranston’s Ingram Street Tearooms for example, the first piece you see after the ticket desk. It’s a bewilderingly beautiful object, with no more functionality than most seats of the time, but it’s consideration of

Mackintosh’s entry to the competition to design Liverpool Cathedral is probably the most famous building to never exist.

The Giles Gilbert Scott masterpiece is an outstanding global attraction, but what could have been would have been revolutionary, and likely made Liverpool a very different place to live. His design is the only piece in the exhibition to have been here before, having been displayed during the competition in 1902.

The flora that framed his design softened the cathedral, while presenting a similar scale to Gilbert Scott’s work. Had it come to exist it would have been an altogether different experience entering the building – one that was more connected to the world around it than the elevated grandeur of the

Moments of Clarity;

Review of Rituals at Bluecoat Display Centre

all images: Charle Rennie Mackintosh, Making the Glasgow Style at Walker Art Gallery, 2019 © Gareth Jones

Bluecoat Display Centre is a base not only for artists but also collectives, small organisations and those working in craft. As such, showing in the display centre from now until April 20th 2019 is a mixed-media exhibition of artist crafts titled ‘Rituals’.

eventual cathedral.

But this exhibition is not just Mackintosh, it is, just like the Cathedral’s design, a collaboration. His architecture practice was run with James Herbert McNair. The two attended evening classes at Glasgow School of Art, and met their future wives there. ‘The Four’ as they became known were the driving force of the movement.

Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, Charles’ wife, holds a dear place in the exhibition’s centre, with a frieze, The May Queen, That demands an emotional response. It speaks of the relationship between the artists of The Glasgow Style movement, and the relationship of the movement to the rest of the art world. The tactile, rough nature hints at a longing to stray from the clean lines of the movement, and the preservation of it as a key part of this collection shows how important that openness was.

The openness to expand, and explore other disciplines, entrenched in the learned lines of The Four makes this more than an exhibition of artefacts. The entire collection, as it is hung, has a voice as relevant today as it was then. Artists and designers weave their own path, often collaborative.

Tensions exist between those groups, and artists stray from their paths and into new territory. Their explorations inform the decisions of their peers, apprentices,

masters and equals, and lead movements to change directions.

But the movement is known as the Style because no matter what other influences, media, materials or subjects encroached on their work, the aesthetic values remained the same. Never did they waver form the Glasgow Style we know today, and never has a movement been so defined by one identifiable look.

As I said in the opening, Mackintosh was an artist with his eyes open, whose unique perspective on the world lent him his success. That same passionate ability to see beyond the surface to the quality of objects and spaces is taught all over the world now in art schools, often attributed to John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, but never more accurately displayed than by the Glasgow Style. And no artist defines that time more than Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

-Charles Rennie Mackintosh: Making the Glasgow Style is at Walker Art Gallery until 26th August 2019 Tickets: £9 adult, £8 concession, £2 children Words, Patrick Kirk-Smith

Nearly all the works sit mysteriously between being functional and abstract. Rachel Holian, one of the artists involved, is the creator of a series of miniature porcelain vessels and stamps. Despite their tiny size, they are clearly made with a high regard for craftsmanship and love that transfers easily from the small forms to the viewer peering at them, in the way that tiny things are often stared down upon.

Katie Haywood’s ceramics are smooth and mystical. Marble-like white forms that look like crowns, chains and sticks appear as powerful tools that could wield the elements or protect a soul encased in a tomb after death.

On a similar note, Anthony Wong has a collection of hand-crafted jewellery which is accompanied by a statement heralding the power of such personal trinkets to make one feel dressed, denouncing the feeling of nakedness that is felt when the jewellery is removed.

The chosen title for the arrangement of these different art and craft practices, Rituals, is beautifully apt. There is a sense of something nomadic, ancient and entwined with what it is to be human in the air.

Hugh Miller’s work echoes this, yet at the same time has a modern sensibility to it. Mostly formed of English elm and brass, an artist statement on display reads that the artist sees his works as ‘small pieces of architecture’. Whereas some of the works, adorned with teabags or small piles of sugar, bring to mind the ritualistic behaviours of making and drinking tea or cooking, Hugh Miller’s make you think more about direction and process – the predictability and reliability of following instruction.

Many of our daily actions, despite differences across people and their individual quirks, are akin to carrying out rituals. Simultaneously simple and complex, the peaceful sureness of the crafts at Bluecoat Display Centre certainly make me think of how honouring our own rituals, whatever form they take, is a therapeutic and important act. An act that can bring us moments of clarity, security and calmness.

The need for rituals that we perform in our day to day lives can give us back control in times of turbulence, or a feeling of preparation for whatever lies ahead.

-Rituals is open at Bluecoat Display Centre until 20th April Words, Charlotte Hill

Alison McGovern, MP for Wirral South, by Hilary Wood

Angela Eagle, MP for Wallasey,

by Alejandra Carle-Toira

Maria Eagle, MP for Garston and Halewood, by Olivia Harris

Luciana Berger, MP for Liverpool Wavertree, by Emma Blau Louise Ellman, MP for Liverpool Riverside, by Carlotta Cerdana

209 Women - from Parliament to Open Eye Gallery

Margaret Greenwood, MP for Wirral West, by Stephanie Wynne

Marie Rimmer, MP for St Helens South and Whiston, by Emma Case

An exhibition of women in power, in a system dominated by men.

It is unity, more than power that stands out in the latest exhibition at Open Eye Gallery, which has travelled from London after the show, curated by Hilary Wood, Cheryl Newman, Lisa Tse, and Tracy Marshall (Director of Development and Partnerships at Open Eye Gallery), was hung in Westminster.

whose alliances we know. We voted for them after all.

Some though are more familiar, from their appearances on national television. It’s easy to forget that Luciana Berger, is MP for Wavertree, or Louise Ellman for Liverpool Riverside, when you see them arguing over national issues on the news.

The first installation, in London, was opened to the public on 14th December 2018, one hundred years to the day since women voted for the first time. The same year the first woman was elected to Parliament.

It’s easy to forget Theresa May is MP for Maidenhead.

They are elected by the people of those constituencies to represent them in parliament, and bring local issues with national impacts to the house.

In 2018 there were 209 female MPs, with less taking their seats due to Sinn Fein’s abstention from Westminster; an abstention that was extended to the exhibition, with their images omitted from the show. In Open Eye though, all 209 women take space on the walls connected only by an elected office.

Some of the images are in allotments, some - the MP for Maidenhead, Theresa May - are on utterly plain backgrounds.

You get a sense of the individual from these images but the onus is very much on you the viewer to connect to them as individuals rather than as MPs, and through visuals not text.

With the major political parties split within themselves on fundamental ideals it is a disservice to these women to suggest that anything other than their elected title connects them. Something that is even more apparent when reading the image credits, none of which hold any information about their party alliances or their ministerial positions, simply their names, their constituencies and the women who took their photograph.

Of course there are local MPs from around the North West

Maria Eagle’s portrait is set on the industrial banks of the Mersey, in the heart of her constituency, while Louise Ellman stands proudly in front of Museum of Liverpool.

The two images, though both within their constituencies, are completely different. Two MPs whose portraits reveal masses about them. Ellman is connected to the success of the city centre through her position, while Maria Eagle sets herself within a less grand, less iconic space.

Some MPs have no connection to the places they represent in their images and, perhaps cynically, the more TV time

they get, the less personal their portraits appear. From Luciana Berger, whose portrait is simply herself set in a plain room, to the Prime Minister whose portrait could have been taken in any studio, or the ego of cabinet ministers whose shots look like something out of a style magazine.

But it is an exhibition of work by 209 photographers as much as it is of 209 MPs. And with that in mind, the style and creative expression in the images has to be in part attributed to them as artists. They have after all created 209 stunning portraits of some of the UKs most important women. Some are works of art, some even border on satire, and others focus on the real driving force of the exhibition; an opportunity to remember the significance of that number. 209 women sit in Parliament today. 100 years ago, just 1 was an elected member of the house.

Writing this in the gallery, sat in front of the work, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the statement of the exhibition, but at face value, politics aside, this is an exhibition of exceptional photography from the nation’s best female photographers.

They have been brought together in a project that is unprecedented in scale and subject, in a way that very deliberately frames this time in history.

-209 Women is at Open Eye Gallery until 14th April 2019 Words, Patrick Kirk-Smith

Review: The Female Gaze: Women Depicting Women – dot-art

The majority of visual artists are women, but typically a far smaller fraction than half are exhibited in art museums. On top of that, the vast majority of nudes depicted in art works are female.

The Female Gaze: Women Depicting Women, the current exhibit at the dot-art gallery, attempts to subvert these ingrained expectations of the art world by focusing on the faces of women, portrayed by women.

Three locally-based female artists were chosen to display their work in this exhibit, and all three have vastly different styles.

Mia Cathcart, who paints from the Royal Standard, paints lively, bold portraits straddling the fence between life-like and abstract. Her style is meant to evoke a feeling of anonymity from that which is familiar. She seeks to question the expectations of normal portraiture, which she does using fluid brush strokes.

Wirral-based experimental fine art photographer Liz Jeary works in photography and embroidery, a style also known as photobroderie. She creates unique portraits that combine bright stitchery with black and white photographs. The effect is otherworldly and pushes the boundary of what can be called a photograph.

Becky Atherton’s acrylic paintings, which may also be described as other-worldly, present women melded with mythological birds. The evocative paintings are theatrical and fantastical. Becky is inspired by the natural world and wants her audience

to feel connected to it and gain a deeper respect for it through her unconventional paintings.

The exhibit is small, but each art piece speaks its own message that is worth contemplating, as women explore their own identities and the identities of other women through these pieces. With a great number of art works existing which depict the beauty of the female body, it is refreshing to find some that depict the beauty of the female face. The final product is something ethereal; all three styles are different but somehow corroborate each other.

The exhibit was aptly timed to open around the same time as International Women’s Day. It is free to view and is open MondaysSaturdays, 10am-6pm until May 4th.

-The Female Gaze: Women Depicting Women, continues at dot-art until 4th May 2019 Words, Sophia Charuhas

Liz Jeary’s work in The Female Gaze, dot-art, 2019

NEWS

Seven artworks commissioned for 10th Liverpool LightNight Richie Moment, Cheriton, LightFestival2018, photo by Kevan Smith at smith studios

Artists explore ‘Ritual’ at free late-night arts festival & new venue announced Taking place across 50 venues on Friday 17 May 2019 from 5pm until late, LightNight showcases the creative lifeblood of Liverpool when the city’s world-class cultural venues open their doors until late at night staging over 100 free special events for all ages.

The thousands who take to the city’s streets each year to explore the programme enjoy everything from concerts to exhibitions, hands on workshops, dance, street performance, theatre, talks and music.

Seven new artistic commissions are revealed today; each exploring ‘Ritual’ – the theme binding 2019’s programme, with events exploring personal and communal rituals of all kinds throughout history to the current day.

The seven new works commissioned especially for LightNight 2019 look at cultural rituals from across the globe and closer to home. For the very first time, the underground tunnel at Moorfields Train Station will be transformed into an immersive sound and light installation.

The full programme will be released on 15 April and is available to pre-order now at www.lightnightliverpool.co.uk

The seven new commissions are: Bido100 and Merseyrail present RITUAL 2.0 — Sam Wiehl & Forest Swords Moorfields Station Tunnel Set within the subterranean tunnels of Moorfields Station, RITUAL 2.0 is a large-scale, public realm audio-visual installation, developed by artist Sam Wiehl with an accompanying soundtrack mix

by Forest Swords. Marking the launch of

bido100! the project will encourage the public to consider a creative future based on Artificial Intelligence.

— Híbridos, The Spirits of Brazil — Vincent Moon & Priscilla Telmon Victoria Gallery & Museum International artists and filmmakers Vincent Moon & Priscilla Telmon have been researching rituals across Brazil for four years. In an immersive multi-screen installation at Victoria Gallery & Museum, Híbridos is a poetic and ethnographic exploration of the world of diverse sacred ceremonies, breaking down the distance between the viewer and the subject, guiding them through a realm of movements, of dances, and music pulsating at high rhythms. Brought to you by LightNight with support from Victoria Gallery & Museum.

— The Great British Baraat — Movema, Milapfest & Bombay Baja Brass Band Church Street Milapfest and Movema will join forces for a joyous celebration of the ritual of Indian marriage, the Baarat. The exuberant outdoor wedding ritual culminates in a Milni, the meeting of two families. In a unique mass street-dance take on this ritual Movema, local dancers and Milap favourite the Bombay Baja Brass Band will meet on Church Street in Liverpool city centre and combine what they do best – music and dance!

— The Peaks & Troughs of Modern Rituals — Richie MomentSt George’s Hall East Portico Steps Recent graduate of the Royal Academy Schools Richie Moment turns his critical

eye on the rituals that interlace our modern lives. Producing eight light sculptures installed at historic St. Georges Hall East Portico Steps, Moment’s video and installation works are as vibrant as they are intriguing. The light sculptures are shrines to the popular culture we engage with on a daily basis. Whilst their bright colours celebrate convenience food, celebrity and the days of TV on demand, they also hide a darker musing of how much of a good thing is too much of a good thing?

Liverpool based Japanese artist anticool presents a multi-screen video and sculpture installation at Bluecoat exploring memorial objects. Inspired by Japanese cremation ceremonies, in advance of this year’s festival anti-cool will ceremonially burn objects that hold negative memories brought forward by local people and present the personal histories behind their chosen objects.

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Ad Finitum: The Invisible Choir & Death Café — Rory Ballantyne Lady Chapel, Liverpool Cathedral

Donna Summer Fever — Projectile Vomit Constellations, Baltic Triangle

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An atmospheric concert featuring new choral arrangements by composer and musician Rory Ballantyne. The eclectic and dynamic repertoire will journey audiences through both uplifting and emotional pop, rock, ancient folk, classical and experimental songs which explore ideas around death and dying. The concert will be followed by a Death Café where audiences are invited to share and discuss their perspectives on death in a friendly and informal setting – with cake!

Demolition Memorial Keepsake — anticool Bluecoat

The full programme will be released on 15 April and is available to pre-order now at www.lightnightliverpool.co.uk

A modern-day pagan ritual at Constellations. Liverpool artist group Projectile Vomit will erect an audio-visual shrine in Constellations that will act as a focus for our collective disco energies and attempt to induce a Donna Summer fever in order to appease Donna and ensure good weather in the months ahead and a bountiful harvest in 2019.

Find the latest news & more on these articles at www.artinliverpool.com

Masterplanners sought for Liverpool waterfront

Wirral Borough of Culture awarded £130,000 Arts Council grant

National Museums Liverpool is on the search for planners to help them transform its waterfront estate.

The scheme – or masterplan – is to create a modern visitor attraction that connects Liverpool’s historic waterfront with the city, the River Mersey and its architecture; integral features of Liverpool’s iconic identity.

The affected area, around the Canning Graving Docks, is at the heart of Liverpool’s World Heritage Site, taking in the Royal Albert Dock Liverpool on one side and the Pier Head and Mann Island on the other.

Mairi Johnson, National Museums Liverpool’s Director of Estates said, “The masterplan is an ambitious undertaking that will dramatically change the visitor experience when it is complete.

“Liverpool’s waterfront is not only a beautiful space but also one of huge historic significance to the city, the wider region and the rest of the UK. This is an exciting opportunity to create spaces for visitors to linger within this unique setting and to really engage with the spirit of the place.

“We’re expecting this tender process to attract really creative thinkers and exciting plans, inspired by the beauty and potential of the area. We hope to see interesting ways in which we can open up the quaysides, currently not accessible to the public, with a strong, connected vision for how these spaces could be used to complement the amazing stories we tell in the nearby museums.”

-If you’re interested in applying, we’ve got the full details on artinliverpool.com, in the calls section.

Wirral’s year as Liverpool City Region Borough of Culture has got off to a flying start after securing a significant grant from Arts Council England. £130,000 from the Arts Council’s National Lottery Project Grants has been awarded to Wirral Council to support working with internationallyrenowned artists as well as local creatives as part of the borough’s ambitious cultural programme for 2019.

The announcement comes just days before the first major event of Wirral’s Borough of Culture year, Animated Square, which will see a family festival in Hamilton Square on Saturday 23 March. Thousands are expected to attend the event, which will feature a spectacular 3D projection onto Birkenhead Town Hall reflecting the town’s people, places and history, and Wirral’s impact on the wider world.

Wirral’s Borough of Culture programme includes exciting new commissions and collaborations inspired by discovery, exploration and the great outdoors. Among the highlights for this year are The Witching Hour – a brand new outdoor spectacle to be presented in Birkenhead Park and Hull, the OVO Energy Tour Series and Tour of Britain, and Constellations – a series of events and activities linked to the moon and stars.

Arts Council England recognised that Wirral’s 2019 programme reflects an ongoing commitment by Wirral Council to increase engagement and participation with cultural activities among residents, as well as delivering major events which will attract hundreds of thousands to the borough.

Last year’s Imagine Wirral cultural programme saw over 250,000 people attend and be part of incredible cultural events including the Tall Ships Three Festivals Regatta celebrations, New Brighton Revisited, Lost Castles, the Giant Spectacular and River of Light. Wirral’s 2018 events generated over £5m for the local economy.

Wirral Council leader Phil Davies says: “The decision by Arts Council England to support Wirral’s Borough of Culture programme is a ringing endorsement for the fantastic year of events and cultural projects that lies ahead.

“The grant will enable us to widen our ambition to work with some incredible artists from across the world and closer to home, and to deliver extraordinary cultural experiences for our residents and visitors.”

Alison Clark, Director, North, Arts Council England says: “I am delighted that we are awarding Wirral Council £130,000 to support their work as Liverpool City Region Borough of Culture 2019. Wirral as a borough have already shown a clear commitment to the importance of arts and culture and this funding will enable the Council to build on their fantastic work. I am excited to see the vast arts and culture programme that is being produced and I look forward to seeing how this will benefit the people of the borough, encourage new visitors to the area and transform the Wirral as a place.”

The Borough of Culture initiative was introduced by the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority in 2018 and is designed to encourage cultural activities across the region.

NEWS

New installation, inspired by Speke’s secrets, opens at Speke Hall Espionage and secrecy concealed in the wattle and daub of the 16th century building at Speke Hall is the inspiration behind a new artwork opening on 13 March at the National Trust attraction. From priest holes for hiding Catholic clergy to eaves for servants to eavesdrop for their masters and mistresses, the sound piece will bring to life the hidden rebellions contained within the very fabric of Speke’s iconic hall.

The installation is by award-winning British artist Serena Korda who has been commissioned by the National Trust as part of its Trust New Art programme, which seeks to connect people to places through contemporary art. The commission is also part of a continued partnership with Bluecoat, Liverpool’s centre for contemporary art, who are working with artists to open up heritage in the city.

The term Under the Rose or Sub Rosa means secrecy or in secret. Throughout ancient history the rose has been recognised as a symbol of secrecy and ceiling roses were often placed in locations indicating that secrecy needed to be upheld. In this new sound work made for the courtyard at Speke, Korda was inspired by the acoustics of secrecy charting a history of observation, eavesdropping and the hiding of Catholic priests at the Tudor mansion.

Artist, Serena Korda says: “The courtyard at Speke is a special place not only because of the presence of Adam and Eve, the two yew trees that hold the house together, but

credit. National Trust

because of the unique way in which sound bounces off of its walls. This was once the entrance to Speke and for this reason was built with acoustics in mind at a time of Reformation Catholic families like the Norris’ wanted to protect themselves. They were aware of the power of acoustics at the time and built eaves into the courtyard to enable eavesdropping. Under the Rose has an unsettling quality making you aware of the layers of secret histories that the house holds and the importance of acoustics in providing protection.”

The new audio artwork is the companion piece to The Bell Tree created by Serena Korda also. In autumn 2018 three hundred fairy-like ceramic mushrooms appeared in the ancient woodland at Speke Hall

Under the Road soud installation at Speke Hall. credit. © National Trust

and Gardens. The artwork combines sound and sculpture to explore the spirit of this ancient site and the folklore of the native bluebells that grow beneath the branches of The Bell Tree. Both artworks can be experienced as part of your visit to the National Trust attraction from 13 March with The Bell Tree set to look even more magical when the bluebells that inspired the ceramic mushrooms come into bloom late April.

Serena says: “This builds on The Bell Tee which looks at how nature spirits provide protection for the forest, the Yew trees at the centre of Under the Rose are an important symbol in plantlore of mourning, they are seen as an access point to the afterlife and for this reason become

another attraction to the courtyard as an entrance to many realms.”

Serena works across performance sound and sculpture with an interest in under explored feminist narratives – herstoriesand the alternative histories of folklore and witchcraft.

From 15 May 2019 visitors will have the opportunity to find out even more about the Speke’s hidden past in new indoor exhibition Tension, Turmoil and Traitors: The Story of Tudor Speke. The history books will be opened on Elizabethan England at Speke Hall and the life or death secrets that were kept within the walls during the turmoil of religious persecution.

The artist, Serena Koroda, with her work,. credit. © North News Pictures

Find the latest news & more on these articles at www.artinliverpool.com

The pull of the earth: Luke Jerram’s ‘Gaia’ is heading to Liverpool Cathedral as part of River Festival Liverpool The popular River Festival Liverpool is back in June and a huge 23ft replica of the earth will be one of the event highlights.

Located in Britain’s biggest cathedral, Liverpool Cathedral, the artwork called ‘Gaia’ (meaning the personification of the earth), will hang majestically in the Grade I listed building and features accurate and detailed NASA imagery of the earth.

The installation, by renowned British artist Luke Jerram, will be complemented with a sound composition created by BAFTA and Ivor Novello award-winning composer Dan Jones.

Gaia will be open to the public from Saturday 25 May – a week before the free festival takes place on Saturday 1 and Sunday 2 June.

The artwork forms part of the ‘Changing Tides’ creative programme, which last year saw the Museum of the Moon installed in the Cathedral attracting 60,000 visitors to the venue in just two weeks. This year’s programme celebrates the port of Liverpool as an arrival and departure base for exemplary culture, music, food and wine from all over earth.

Gaia will be in position for four weeks until Sunday 23 June, and a programme of events and talks will take place under the earth during its run – these will be announced in the forthcoming weeks.

As well as the Changing Tides programme, River Festival Liverpool will feature the usual popular, family friendly elements.

Royal Albert Dock Liverpool will be home to

three Ship Stages dedicated to showcasing Indian, African and Irish live music and performances.

in the coming weeks, but tickets can be purchased now from www.bwfliverpool. com.

A number of Nobby Boats will also open their doors and allow people to come on board and the International Canoe Polo Tournament will return to the Princes Dock complex.

The Northern Boat Show will also return for its fifth year. It will give visitors the chance to experience all the various ways to get on the water – from sailing and cruising right through to kayaking – there’s something for the whole family at Salthouse Dock.

The Brian Boru a beautiful wooden hulled, traditionally built and riffed gaff ketch will sail into the city, joining the 60-feet schooner Adventure Wales, Pelican of London and Tall Ships Maybe and Blue Clipper.

Audiences can also expect the usual exhibitions including unarmed combat and weapons displays and the Sea Cadets will be performing their field gun window ladder semaphore and club swinging activities.

There will be story-telling, music workshops, street theatre and dancing showcases taking place across the site during the two days.

The award-winning Bordeaux Wine Festival Liverpool makes it return offering worldclass wine and delicious food on the Pier Head. This will kick off on Friday 31 May and will run until Sunday 2 June. More details about the event will be revealed

This maritime event will cover Royal Albert Dock Liverpool, Salthouse Dock, the paved area of The Strand and Mann Island with a whole raft of free family friendly activities.

River Festival Liverpool and Changing Tides has been curated by Liverpool City Council.

Supporters making the event possible are Huyton Asphalt, Arriva, the Mayoral Club, Heart North West and Merseyrail For all the latest information, visit www. theriverfestival.co.uk, or follow River Festival Liverpool on Facebook and Instagram and @riverfestlpool on Twitter #RiverFestival For more information about Gaia, visit www.my-earth.org, #earthartwork.

NEWS

World Museum celebrates 50th anniversary of the moon landing with Astronomy Photographer of the Year

Transport the Soul Brad Goldpaint

AR 2665 and Quiescent Prominence, Ukasz Sujka

Thunderstorm under milky way, Tianyuan Xiao

A half century on from the moon landing, visitors to Liverpool’s World Museum this spring are invited to experience an Earth’s-eye-view of the universe in the exhibition, Astronomy Photographer of the Year, opening 3 May to 1 September 2019.

It features 100 awe-inspiring photographs that include the winners and shortlisted images from the 2018 competition.

The competition is organised by the Royal Observatory Greenwich. In 2018, more than 4,200 entries from amateur and professional photographers from 91 countries were received. Images selected for the exhibition feature a mesmerising mosaic of the Great Orion and the Running Man Nebula; a magical scene of an Aurora Borealis exploding over the south coast of Iceland and a solar transit of the International Space Station between the massive sunspots AR 12674 and AR 12673.

Senior Curator, Dr Geraldine Reid says, “The Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition is hugely popular.

Living space, Andrew Whyte

The exhibition celebrates the very best in astrophotography from around the world. Each year it produces images that broaden our perception of the universe and year on year, shows its diverse and wonderful beauty.”

“During the run of the Astronomy Photographer of the Year exhibition, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the moon landing on 20 July 1969. Its timing couldn’t be more perfect, and where else, but World Museum to enjoy such dazzling images?”

2018 judges included artist Sarah Pickering, comedian and keen amateur astronomer Jon Culshaw and Editor of BBC Sky at Night Magazine Chris Bramley, alongside a host of experts in the worlds of art and astronomy.

As well as Astronomy Photographer of the Year there will be a free programme of events and activities for visitors to enjoy at World Museum, including the Space gallery where they can get up close to rockets, telescopes, meteorites and moon rocks. In the immersive, full-dome Planetarium,

visitors can travel through space and time and discover the universe and its marvels – tickets, adult £3, child £2, National Museums Liverpool Members go free.

A Tour of Hardman House;

as new work goes on display, fourty years since it’s discovery

There is something about stepping into a time capsule of recent history that is so much more poignant than a place simply occupied, centuries ago. The sense is that however meticulously it has been cleaned and restored, the corners and shadows still hold the essence of the lives that were lived there.

This was my experience during a visit to the former home and studio of renowned photographers, Edward and Margaret Hardman, located on Rodney Street in the heart of Liverpool’s Georgian quarter.

The four-storey house, now managed by the National Trust, would have been the ultimate challenge for the present doyenne of de-cluttering, Marie Kondo; for the Hardmans never threw anything away, not from their professional nor their private lives. And they lived and worked in the house for 40 years.

We can thank the founding art director of Open Eye Gallery, Peter Hagerty, that there was no unfettered throwing out. His fortuitous involvement in the 1980’s came via a phone call from Social Services who thought that, as a fellow photographer, he might be able to help them persuade the, by then, frail and elderly Hardman to leave his home.

Edward Chambré Fitzmaurice Hardman, to give him his full name, survived his wife, Margaret née Mills, for nearly 20 years and in that time he became increasingly

reclusive. Hagerty explains that when he arrived at the house after the phone call, things were being stuffed into bin bags in an attempt to clear some of the clutter surrounding Hardman. Hagerty realised immediately that valuable photographic material was in danger of being dumped.

He halted the clearing out and the rest, as they say, is history.

The house you can visit today is preserved as it was in the 1950’s at the height of the Hardmans’ business. It is the only known example of a 20th century photographic practice, where the complete output has been preserved intact – 150,000 images bundled into boxes – along with all the studio equipment, the stock, the personal possessions and all the office paraphernalia.

The volunteers who conduct the tours do a good job in conveying what went on in each room and the effect of standing before such lives as the Hardmans is silencing. What is so affecting about this house, as with other artists’ studios that have been painstakingly recreated – such as Brancusi’s in Paris or Bacon’s in Dublin – is that a freeze-framing has taken place bestowing everything with a peculiar melancholia.

It is of course fascinating to be able to see in such detail how the Hardmans ran their business, right down to the framed instructions to the sitters: “do not use powder”, is the advice, “as its effect is to make the face look too full”. And, pre-dating

Photoshop by many decades, they are told that the studio’s artists would remove any temporary skin blemishes on the final print.

The Hardmans did not make the move into colour photography but they did offer a hand-colouring service. Such was their attention to detail that in order to ensure the colours were as accurate as possible, copious notes would be made and a lock of hair and a snip of fabric would be taken from a sitter’s outfit. One of the drawers in the house was crammed with envelopes containing such personal effects, which seems extraordinary these days, given the stringent laws around the storing of DNA. This was a couple whose day job was producing studio portraits of the famous and the wealthy but who made their escape at every opportunity – strapping their equipment to bicycles – getting out and about, photographing the landscape of the city, its streets and its people. The evidence of chaotic domesticity they left behind reveals two people who were too excited by their art form to be bothered with everyday chores.

For all their laissez-faire with regard to their personal lives, the Hardmans were scrupulous in their professional ones and although they demanded high standards of all who worked for them, they were apparently fair and kind employers. There are a couple of eerie, disembodied recordings of their staff, whose recollections of their time working for the Hardmans make plain

a high level of job satisfaction. Some of the work practices, however, would make today’s zealous health and safety officers blanche; the description of the fumes in the cellar’s darkroom, for example.

The Trust’s challenge was to open the house to the public, whilst at the same time maintaining a sense of how it was used. The answer has been to limit each tour to a maximum of seven people and to choreograph it to a strict routine. The focus is very much on Chambré Hardman who was the front man, the face of the studio, with Margaret seemingly doing everything else, having a talent for running a business.

But she was also a gifted photographer and it would have been good to see more evidence of this. In fact I’d expected to see a great deal more of their photographs on the walls but presumably such a display has been jettisoned in the Trust’s endeavours to recreate the house as it was.

What is celebrated in this house is a photographic legacy of immense historical interest. But what is palpable is the Hardmans’ love affair – not just with each other but also with the art of photography.

-38 of Hardman’s unseen photographs went on display last month, and can now be seen as part of The Hardman House tour.

Words, Lorraine Bacchus

Art Students on Film, John Beck and Matthew Cornford

The curators of Bluecoat’s recent ‘The Art Schools of North West England’ reflect on art school, then and now.

student, while in the latter all the clichés of the so-called artistic temperament combine with the unexamined masculinist privileges and prejudices of mid-twentieth century Britain to create a pathetic portrait of thwarted creativity. A Taste of Honey has in many ways aged remarkably well and addresses with clarity and optimism issues that remain relevant to a twentyfirst century audience. Little Malcolm is an uglier film, yet the posturing of its protagonist, as well as the bullying and casual sexism, speak no less directly to contemporary issues surrounding male rage and toxic masculinity.

Malcolm has been expelled from art school for a minor infraction of the rules that is the last straw for the college principal, who has become tired of Malcolm’s waywardness and indifference. Humiliated, Malcolm plots revenge and enlists the help of his impressionable friends to wage war on what he perceives to be the gutlessness of modern life and the ‘self-hatin’ eunuchs’ that run it.

A Taste of Honey is framed by a pair of shots of characters carrying portfolios. At the beginning of the film, teenage Jo and her flighty mother traipse from one bedsit to another, Jo carrying a folder of drawings that signals a muted creativity she later complains she cannot pursue because she needs to earn a living. In the final scene, as Jo’s mother breaks up the unconventional household Jo has established with her friend, textile student Geoffrey, the young man is pictured, portfolio under his arm, taking refuge once more in the shadows.

The portfolio marks Jo’s and Geoffrey’s outsider status but also serves as code for inventiveness and freedom of the imagination in a world of severely reduced options.

prejudice, the other imagining creativity as corrupted by resentment, compensatory self-aggrandisement and violence. One imagines a world capable of emotional maturity and full of pockets of utopian potential; the other is fascistic, puerile and bitter. Taken together they capture something of the conflicted sense of what art school and art students might signify during the 1960s. The perceived social liberalism of art students sat alongside a scepticism toward the pretensions art school could support. Art school produced, from one perspective, enlightened individuals critical of outmoded social conventions and the corruptions of an emerging consumer society. From another, art students were a plague of statesupported social and sexual subversives.

Malcolm’s shrill attempts at relevance were, perhaps, by the time Halliwell’s play is filmed in 1974, already anachronistic. There are few art student characters in films after Little Malcolm. Instead, as a sign of the type’s diminished social relevance, art students were, briefly, more often seen in TV comedies.

A Taste of Honey and Little Malcolm are like the Woodstock and Altamont of art student narratives, one presenting a vision of creative youth as uncluttered by inherited

images courtesy Bluecoat, 2019

You can blame the war for art students.

At least, in typically flamboyant form, this is former life model Quentin Crisp’s assessment in The Naked Civil Servant (1968). ‘When peace broke out,’ he wrote, the ‘Minister of Education ran down to the water’s edge and, as our brave boys disembarked, scattered grants to art schools over the heads like confetti’. No one, according to Crisp, could pass up the chance to study without paying fees, so on the first day of term ‘a mob of would-be students pressed with Klondike intensity against the entrance to every art school in the country waving their grants above their heads like prospecting claims’. It is a charming, if ludicrous, picture of the glee with which the British public claimed a free education as a reward for years of fighting Nazis, but what Crisp does capture here is the broad sense in which, by the late 1960s, art students had come to embody the cultural transformations of the postwar period. Shifting gender and class positions, in no small part brought about by the widening educational opportunities available to a growing youth population, became a central preoccupation of British popular culture of the late 1950s and 1960s, much of it driven by art school trained designers, advertising and TV executives, performers and artists.

Through the 1960s and into the 1970s, ‘art school’ and ‘art student’ came to serve as shorthand for vaguely countercultural or permissive tendencies. The stereotypes are broad and unflattering, from the ‘long haired layabout’ to the ‘dolly bird,’ yet beyond these media caricatures there are also a number of plays and films that position the art school as the incubator of trends that carry significance beyond the imagined

bohemianism of the life room. In most cases, from Shelagh Delaney’s celebrated drama A Taste of Honey (1958) and its 1961 film adaptation, through Edmond T. Gréville’s sleazy Soho exploitation flick Beat Girl (1960), David Halliwell’s play Little Malcolm and His Struggle against the Eunuchs (1965) and the film adaptation that followed in 1974, to Michael Sarne’s Joanna (1968), art school itself is not the focus of the narrative. Nevertheless, the presence of art students usually operates as a means through which changing attitudes toward, for example, inter-generational, mixedrace and same sex relationships can be explored and articulated. Art students are not simply depicted as rebellious, but they are also often positioned as the vanguard of the permissive society, indifferent to social norms and willing to explore alternative models of sexual, family and, though less often, class relations beyond the pinched demands of straight British society.

To complement our exhibition The Art Schools of North West England we screened two films related to the region featuring art student characters, with Empty Spaces Cinema. A Taste of Honey is famously set in Salford, while Little Malcolm, though notionally set in Huddersfield, was partly shot in Oldham. These are very different films, from either side of the 1960s, but in their differences they capture something, we think, of the complexity of the idea of the art student as social innovator. While A Taste of Honey rehearses a largely benign vision of a post-nuclear, post-patriarchal family characterised by mutual respect and support, Little Malcolm seethes with poisonous male resentment. In the former, an unplanned pregnancy prompts a young woman to cohabit with a gay textiles

Little Malcolm is not so fleet of foot but it also sees in the art student characteristics that speak to broader social concerns.

Drawing on his experiences at Huddersfield College of Art during the 1950s, Halliwell explores the provincial will to power as it manifests itself in the vengeful fantasies of the alienated Malcolm Scrawdyke.

Stripped of subversive tendencies, art students on TV were largely figures of fun, most often depicted as work shy, unworldly, and disengaged. Characters of this type include the naive art student John, who features in the film version of the TV sitcom Rising Damp (1978) and Rodney, the morose brother of Thatcherite wideboy Del Trotter in Only Fools and Horses (19812003), who is partly defined as the hapless dreamer by the year he spent at art school and the drugs and liberal values he found there. Rodney eventually learns to work for a living, unlike Mike in Bless This House (1971-76), the unemployed art school drop

Translating the street – The Hive, Birkenhead Casey Orr on her latest project with Alternator Studios Translating the street has been a project I’ve wanted to see revived ever since its first edition back in 2016, when Brigitte Jurack, lead artist at Alternator Studios in Birkenhead, linked nationally renowned artists with the small businesses of Oxton Road.

Three years on I’ve got my wish, and I cannot wait to see what happens. It promises to be a very different offering to the first, where Harold Offeh, Haleh Jamali and Jeff Young were invited to live and work in Birkenhead and to listen to the stories unfolding in three iconic businesses on the street. Sadly some have now closed their doors, and the momentum of the area, and the public hand in it’s development, is clear in this 2019 edition.

Rather than private hair dressers, green grocers or cobblers, Casey Orr and Kwong Lee are working with The Hive Youth Zone and Birkenhead Library to connect with their users rather than the owners and workers of the area. Chris Dobrowolski is working with Kitstop Model Shop and Polski Sklep European Delicatessen though, in a project that is likely to be more reminiscent of the defining 2016 output.

out son of Sidney and Jean Abbott who continues to ‘practice’ in the family garage.

Mike and Rodney are British culture’s revenge on the art student. What was once sexy, subversive and thrilling is now exposed as the contemptibly narcissistic posturing of the perpetual adolescent.

Quentin Crisp’s extravagant image of the art school Klondike was always a fiction, but it contains the kernel of resentment — the suspicion that people were getting something for nothing — that continues to resonate in our more economically defensive times. If there is any bite to the notion of the art student as socially relevant, it might be, ultimately, it seems to us, in the emancipatory capacities latent in the humble maintenance grant, which could propel imaginative but marginalised souls like Jo and Geoffrey (and even Malcolm) out of their bedsits and into … who knows? Another reality of their own making.

-Words, John Beck and Matthew Cornford

The interest this year then is in difference, in how these spaces can appear through the eyes of their residents.

We spoke to Casey Orr about her work with The Hive ahead of the launch, and her wonder shone through, having discovered a whole new world on emerging from the Queensway Tunnel for the first time.

Were you familiar with Oxton Road before you got involved with Translating the Street? What sort of place do you think you represented through the studio there?

They’re a mix of portraiture, cityscapes and performance. I wasn’t sure if the idea would work but I’m pleased with the results.

What does photography bring to a project like this? Working in a really direct way with a community?

C: Portraiture is different from selfies and the social media sharing we’ve become accustomed to. Portraiture is a collaboration between me and the people I’m working with. So, for me, I get to explore a place I don’t know and work with new people. I go into a project with an open attitude to what the outcomes will be, to allow this idea of collaboration to unfold. This is a slow way of using photography that is unusual these days and can make us think differently about how we are and what the place we know can be.

Has Translating the Street linked up with any of your other work?

C: Since 2013 I photographed young women in towns and cities throughout the UK with a pop up portrait studio as part of my series Saturday Girl.

Saturday Girl is an exploration of self-expression, style, and tribe identity. After 14 cities, 6 years and over 600 portraits Saturday Girl will be published this summer by Bluecoat Press.

-Translating The Street 2019 opens in various locations on the 13th April, with a full afternoon of events Find out more by visiting www. artinliverpool.com/events/ birkenhead-translating Interview, Patrick Kirk-Smith

Casey Orr: I hadn’t been to Birkenhead before. Kids are doing what kids are doing everywhere, but also there is something different and unique about the place. I don’t know the area enough to say what that is but it’s thrilling to me to emerge into the place from under the Mersey.

Where have you been based for your part of Translating the Street?

C: I’ve been working with The Hive since Autumn 2018. The Hive is just the most fantastic youth club you could ever imagine with lots of different spaces and activities. It’s loud and creative with a staff team of people who really believe in what they do. These physical gathering places are so important!

What’s been the most rewarding result of this project?

C: The large printed portraits being held in different locations in Birkenhead by kids who I met at The Hive were an experiment.

image credits: top; Photographer Casey Orr. Our Birkenhead; Portraits with The Hive. Image courtesy of the artist. bottom; Translating the street 2016, c. Slternator Studios

WHAT’S ON > CURRENT EXHIBITIONS Ericka Beckman Marianna Simnett FACT

Arthur Jafa – Love is The Message, The Message is Death Tate Liverpool

Current Exhibitions Spring Open ArtHouse Gallery, until 13 April Artists responding to the theme of ‘Metal’ -Julie Arkell – In The Window Bluecoat Display Centre, until 30 April One of England’s best recognized contemporary folk artists, working in papier-mâché and mixed media -Constructing the Mersey Gateway Bridge The Brindley, until 5 April Paintings and drawings of the development of the Bridge by artist Shaun Smyth -Peter Moore – drawing lots Corke Art Gallery, until 5 April This exhibition is a personal record of places visited, a record shared with only a few until now -The Female Gaze: Women Depicting Women dot-art, until 4 May Each artist depicts women in their work, capturing and exploring identity and the complex representations of women --

Ericka Beckman Marianna Simnett FACT, until 16 June Two female artists who both use technology and classic tropes of fairy tale storytelling to create artworks that are alluring and repelling, sensual and troubling -18th Knowsley Open Art Exhibition Kirkby Gallery, until 4 May Artists of all ages who live, work, study or volunteer in Knowsley come together to exhibit -Fresh Perspectives Lady Lever Art Gallery, 29 March – 6 May Artwork from the artists, makers and creatives of the future with this unique exhibition providing GCSE and A level students the chance to display their artwork in a national gallery -Double Fantasy – John & Yoko Museum of Liverpool, until 3 November John and Yoko’s story in their own words --

The Provincial Grand Orange Lodge of Liverpool Museum of Liverpool, until 28 September A community display at the Museum of Liverpool explores the history of the Orange Lodge in Liverpool -209 Women Open Eye Gallery, 14 April A national artist-led project founded by Hilary Wood that aims to champion the visibility of women, particularly in maledominated environments

The Williamson Open Williamson Art Gallery

In Character RIBA North, until 1 June Studio MUTT bring the elaborate writings of Sir John Soane to life in an exhibition where ornament, colour and form explore how architecture can communicate to us Serena Korda: The Bell Tree Speke Hall & Bluecoat, until 28 July Set in Speke Hall’s ancient woodlands and grounds, The Bell Tree draws on the hall’s hidden history --

Find FULL listings and events information at www.artinliverpool.com

Peter Moore – drawing lots Corke Art Gallery Jasmir Creed – Dystopolis Victoria Gallery & Museum, until 21 April An exhibition expressing alienation and disorientation in the modern city by Jasmir Creed -She’s Eclectic: Women Artists of the VG&M collection Victoria Gallery & Museum, until 30 April Showcasing the diversity of artwork by women artists in the VG&M collection -Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing Walker Art Gallery, until 6 May To mark the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci, 144 of his greatest are on display in 12 simultaneous exhibitions across the UK --

Arthur Jafa – Love is The Message, The Message is Death Tate Liverpool, until 12 May The seven-minute video shows a montage of historic and contemporary film footage to trace African American history and experience

Ideas Depot Tate Liverpool, until 21 July A dynamic display of artworks chosen for primary school children to be enjoyed by everyone

Op Art in Focus Tate Liverpool, until 2 June Op art – short for optical art – emerged in the 1960s. Its leading figures included Bridget Riley, Jesus Rafael Soto and Victor Vasarely

Southport: Double Take (Old Southport Through a Modern Lens) The Atkinson, until 1 December Local photographer Matt Dodd has blended historical photographs of Southport with images from the present

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Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Making the Glasgow style Walker Art Gallery, until 26 August Spanning the lifetime of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his contemporaries, exploring the movement that became known as The Glasgow Style.

-The Williamson Open Williamson Art Gallery & Museum, until 5 May The Williamson Open continues a tradition stretching back to 1913 -Stephen Hitchin – Shooting the Sun Williamson Art Gallery & Museum, until 14 April The extreme environment of the maritime world is the inspiration for this work, principally made of marble -Animal Mosaic Exhibition 92 Degrees Coffee, until 30 April Local artist, Freya Levy, uses tiles, glass and found items. .

WHAT’S ON > COMING SOON Survey Bluecoat

Baroque Art from Rome to England Walker Art Gallery

New Makers Bluecoat Display Centre

Remember Imagine Tate Exchange

Exhibitions Baroque Art from Rome to England Walker Art Gallery, 30 March – 16 June William Dobson’s ‘The Executioner with the Head of John the Baptist’ was copied after a painting by Matthias Stom. The two paintings are displayed together for the first time in almost 400 years.

The Famous Women Project Tate Exchange, 8-14 April The Famous Women project invites you to look back through history and choose your own hero or heroine

-Remember Imagine Tate Exchange, 1-7 April 2021 will mark the Royal Albert Dock’s 175th birthday. In all those years, from working dock to waterfront attraction, many people have been and gone. --

Survey Bluecoat, 13 April – 23 June Survey is the largest review of contemporary art practice in Jerwood Visual Art’s 12 years of programming, spanning a breadth of disciplines including film, performance, ceramics, installation and painting

Illuminating the Wilderness Tate Liverpool, 4 – 28 April Filmed in the Scottish Highlands, Illuminating the Wilderness 2018 documents the exploration of Glen Affric by people who are highly sensitive to the sensory stimuli of the world around them.

Dance ‘til Dawn The Reader Gallery, 9-14 April A new exhibition of work by Paul Scragg, whose previous exhibitions have been inspired by landscape. This series of works is focused on human beings innate attraction to movement, and rhythm

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New Makers Bluecoat Display Centre, 27 April – 8 June This exhibition will celebrate the work of recent graduates and newly emerging designer makers, chosen for their innovative design qualities and making skills -The Sensory toolkit: We are open Tate Exchange, 29 April – 5 May Step inside a 3D sketchbook and experience an artist’s journey of discovery -Astronomy Photographer of the Year World Museum, 3 May – 1 September The Royal Observatory Greenwich’s hugely popular Astronomy Photographer of the Year exhibition celebrates the very best in astrophotography from around the world --

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Northern Stone and Peat Smoke by Anthony Ratcliffe Kirkby Gallery, 20 May – 10 August Kirkby Gallery is delighted to present this new and never seen before exhibition, Northern Stone and Peat Smoke, by artist Anthony Ratcliffe.

-Rembrandt in Print Lady Lever Art Gallery, 1 June – 15 September The Ashmolean Museum holds a world class collection of over 200 prints made by Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (1606-1669).

This exhibition will present Rembrandt as an unrivalled storyteller through a selection of around 50 outstanding prints ranging from 1630 until the late 1650s .

Find FULL listings and events information at www.artinliverpool.com

Moving Dialogues Symposium Bluecoat

Translating The Street 2019 – launch Birkenhead

The Liquid Club #3: The Posthuman by Rosi Braidotti Liverpool Central Library

Liverpool Print Fair Bluecoat

Talks, Tours & Performance Jazz in Britain: A New Jazz Age? Victoria Gallery & Museum, 3 April, 5pm A thought-provoking new series of public lectures exploring the theme of ‘Movement, Place and Meaning’ from the perspective of interconnected disciplines in the School of the Arts

Objects in Focus Victoria Gallery & Museum, 4 April, 3:30pm Find out more about the VG&M collections and join the conversation in this fun, friendly and informal session. (Tuesdays, fortnightly)

Behind the Seams 17 Love Lane, 6 April, 12-6pm One day pop-up store, led by artists, where pieces of clothing or an item with a short story, sentence or poem attached are connected to that item

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-The Liquid Club #3: The Posthuman by Rosi Braidotti Liverpool Central Library, 3 April, 6:30pm A discussion group which invites collective thinking and drives the development of Liverpool Biennial 2020.

Translating The Street 2019 – launch Birkenhead (various locations), 13 April, 12-6pm International micro-residencies in Birkenhead featuring photographer Casey Orr, sculptor Chris Dobrowolski and artist Kwong Lee.

Moving Dialogues Symposium Bluecoat, 6 April, 10:30am-5pm Moving Dialogues is a one-day event for artists and educators. Delivered in partnership with Liverpool Improvisation Collective (LIC), the symposium is the culmination of INHABIT, a 3-year programme of new dance at Bluecoat.

Survey: Exhibition Launch Bluecoat, 12 April, 6pm At 7pm, artist Ashley Holmes will perform Good to Us, a live presentation developed from a written adaptation of African American writer, music critic and poet, Amiri Baraka’s poem, Dope

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Liverpool Print Fair Bluecoat, 7 April, 10:30am-5pm A biannual print fair showcasing affordable art from a variety of talented printmakers, designers and artists.

Find FULL listings and events information at www.artinliverpool.com

WHAT’S ON > COMING SOON dot-art: Sketching in the Tunnels Williamson Tunnel

Do Something Saturdays FACT,

6. Collaboration in the field (Artist Professional Development) Heart of Glass

Kids Clay Lab Baltic Clay,

Classes & Workshops Almost all of these workshops need booking, please go to the website to find booking links & further event information for all of the below

Art Play for Under Fives Lady Lever Art Gallery, Mondays, 10am Creative play activities, including puppets, costumes, toys, storytelling and nursery rhymes

Do Something Saturdays FACT, Saturdays, 12-4pm Discover a different way of experiencing exhibitions at FACT

Kids Clay Lab Baltic Clay, 11 April, 4:30-5:30pm Children play, explore, create in clay while their parent or guardian relaxes nearby in the Fodder cafĂŠ

Marble Art Workshop Cass Art, 28 April, 2pm Learn how to create your own marbled patterns by using the traditional techniques taught by VA Studio artist.

--Jigsaw: A workshop series, exploring the nature and practice of free improvisation in music Bluecoat, 3 April, 6:45pm The shape of the content follows on from a review of those present at each session --

6. Collaboration in the field (Artist Professional Development) Heart of Glass, 9 April, 10am-4pm Collaboration in the field is the sixth and final workshop in a series of six practical artist professional development sessions for artists working within socially engaged practice, hosted by Heart of Glass in collaboration with Mark Devereux Projects

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dot-art: Sketching in the Tunnels Williamson Tunnels, 28 April, 10am-1pm This sketching session is a mixed ability class suitable for experienced artists & beginners who want to experience drawing in this unique location

dot-art: Drawing Techniques Bluecoat, 30 April, 6:45-9pm This 10 week art course is designed to develop observational and expressive drawing techniques and skills. This course is suitable for beginners or those wishing to explore aspects of their own practise.

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JOBS & OPPORTUNITIES

For more details on all opportunities, including links on how to apply, head to www.artinliverpool.com/opportunities-2/ To send us details on jobs or opportunities for artists, email info@artinliverpool.com

CALLS Creating new life – Call for artists from Centre of Reproductive Health Cheshire based fertility clinic is planning to hold an exhibition in May 2019 on the theme of ‘Creating new life’ as part of events to mark the fifth anniversary of the opening of our clinic.

DEADLINE: 4th April

The Westmorland Landscape Prize – open for entries he selection panel will be looking for works which reach beyond the aesthetic, stimulating thinking and debate about the way in which we exist alongside, as part of, or sometimes in spite of our landscape.

DEADLINE: 17th June 2019

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New Mills Festival Launches Call For Visual Arts 2019 The Trail forms part of New Mills Festival which takes place across the town from the 13th to the 29th September 2019.

DEADLINE: 5th May 2019

Shape Open 2019: Submissions Open The Open is Shape’s annual exhibition of artwork by disabled and non-disabled artists created in response to a disabilitycentred theme.

DEADLINE: 15th April 2019

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Trustee, MDI Particularly looking for skills and experience in one or more of the following areas: The cultural sector, Legal, People management and HR strategy DEADLINE: 12th April 2019

The Bath Open Art Prize – Call for entries Now in its 9th year, The Bath Open Art Prize is one of the key open art prizes in the South West. Open to visual artists working in any medium, anywhere in the UK DEADLINE: 26th April 2019

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Sculpture Production Award 2019 – Pangaea Sculptors’ Centre Open to emerging artists working in 3D, based within the UK but outside of London, the Award will provide six sculptors with skills mentoring and a £1,000 production grant towards the realisation of a new work.

DEADLINE: 10th May 2019

Ormskirk Maker’s Market Display your work at Chapel Gallery and joi the Maker’s Market! Cabinets, shelves and card racks are provided. Spaces cost £10 a month, with no commission taken on sales under £100.

DEADLINE: Open

Sunny Art Prize – Open Call for Artists The Sunny Art Prize is an international art prize hosted by Sunny Art Centre, London.

This fine art competition in the UK is a global platform offering art opportunities to emerging and established artists to showcase their artworks internationally DEADLINE: 30th June 2019 -Call for Entries – JERWOOD/FVU AWARDS 2020 ‘HINDSIGHT’ The 2020 edition of the Jerwood/FVU Awards offers an increased budget of £25,000 for each of the two commissioned moving image artworks.

DEADLINE: 8th April 2019 --

-Call for makers -Makers Market, National Festival of Making, Hopeful and Glorious Applications are now open for the Makers Market at the National Festival of Making 2019. Hopeful and Glorious are curating the market bringing together a selection of the best in art, craft and design.

DEADLINE: 28th April 2019 --

-The John Ruskin Prize 2019 A shortlist of 25 artists, designers and makers will have their selected works exhibited at The Holden Gallery, Manchester in a high profile exhibition from 12 July – 24 August 2019.

DEADLINE: 12th May 2019 -Call to Artists – The Grosvenor Museum’s Open Art Exhibition Chester’s Grosvenor Museum announces its 13th Open Art Exhibition. This will present the best in contemporary art from the region, giving artists in the area a chance to show their work and providing a diverse and stimulating exhibition for the public.

DEADLINE: 26th April 2019

National Indian Arts Awards 2019 – Call for Nominations The National Indian Arts Awards return for the 5th year to honour and celebrate the great contribution of the professionals who have devoted themselves to promoting, nurturing and developing Indian arts DEADLINE: 12th April 2019 -Call for Artists – Wirral Society of Arts 9th Open Exhibition 2019 Wirral Society of Arts biennial exhibition is open to all artists – local, national and international – at all stages in their careers.

DEADLINE: 1st July 2019 -Artivists GM – Artist Residencies, Greater Manchester Combined Authority, GM Libraries & Archives, and Manchester Histories Greater Manchester Combined Authority, GM Libraries & Archives, and Manchester Histories are collaborating to deliver an exciting programme of artist residencies in archives across Greater Manchester; Artivist GM. DEADLINE: 8th April 2019

JOBS Artistic Director, In Harmony Liverpool, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Building on the successful first 10 years of In Harmony Liverpool, we are seeking an exceptional musician to become its next Artistic Director DEADLINE: 12th April 2019 -Personal Assistant to the Chief Executive, The Lowry Maternity Cover. Provide dedicated administrative services and support to ensure that the CEO is fully able to carry out her responsibilities and to deliver against the objectives of the organisation.

DEADLINE: 9th April 2019 -Finance Assistant, The Reader This is a diverse role that requires an ability to learn a breadth of finance processes, undertake day to day transactions and be adaptable to the needs of the organisation.

DEADLINE: 22nd April 2019 --

Dance Development Officer x2 – Talent Development – Cultural Education, Ludus Dance Forming part of a small but dynamic team, the Dance Development Officer (DDO) will work closely with Artistic Directors and CEO to shape, develop and maintain our programmes of activity DEADLINE: 7th April 2019 -Marketing Coordinator, National Festival of Making The National Festival of Making is recruiting for a Marketing Coordinator to support the delivery of print and digital marketing ahead of and during the Festival weekend on 15th & 16th June 2019 DEADLINE: 3rd April 2019 -Freelance Business Development Manager, Global Grooves Plan and deliver a strategic business development programme to help to connect with new partners and secure commercial bookings at festivals and events throughout the UK DEADLINE: 9th April 2019

Freelance Community Fundraising and Communications Officer, Global Grooves Plan and deliver a community fundraising and strategic communications/advocacy programme DEADLINE: 9th April 2019

Teaching Assistant, Small Screen Talent Small Screen Talent is a unique weekend TV acting academy for young performers aged 5-19 founded by British Soap Award winner, and HOLLYOAKS actor, Ross Adams.

DEADLINE: 2nd April 2019

--Digital Assistant, The Shop Floor Project This is an exciting opportunity to join our award-winning online gallery based in Ulverston, Cumbria DEADLINE: 5th April 2019 -Director of the Manchester Poetry Library, Manchester Metropolitan University This role is to provide strategic leadership and management of Manchester Poetry Library, working to optimise its potential within the culture sector DEADLINE: 11th April 2019 --

Video Producer, Halle Concerts Society The Video Producer will be responsible for high quality video content creation to support the continual development of the Hallé’s digital and social media presence DEADLINE: 5th April 2019 -Facilities Manager, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic The post holder will manage Liverpool Philharmonic’s facilities, handling all aspects of the delivery of FM services including management, care, maintenance and health and safety DEADLINE: 5th April 2019

Local handmade jewellery

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CLASSIFIEDS

Post-it: Independents Biennial Writers-in-Residence 2018 Look back at last year’s Independents Biennial, with scripts, short stories, poetry and critical writing written by the festival’s Writers-in-Residence.

www.etsy.com/uk/shop/ArtinLiverpool

Are you an artist, maker or small creative organisation looking to reach more people? // Get in touch with kathy@artinliverpool.com who’ll be looking after our classified page & can answer all your questions. // Prices are £25 per box, and multiple boxes can be booked.