Liverpool has arguably the best quality and range of visual art venues of any English regional city. This site brings you the inside track on Liverpool's vibrant arts scene, including the essential must sees, news and reviews.
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Imogen Stidworthy is an artist whose work delves deep into issues facing communities and individuals today. She works with voices effected by specific social or physical conditions, to question the role played by language in defining social space. Imogen won the Liverpool Art Prize in 2008. Her work has been shown internationally for many years and since coming to live in Liverpool in 2002 after ten years abroad, her reputation has been growing in the UK.
Founded in 1977 Open Eye is an independent not for profit photography gallery based in Liverpool. Open Eye is one of the UK’s leading photography spaces, and the only gallery dedicated to photography and related media in the North West of England.
November is a big month for Open Eye as after a lot of hard work and development they are re-launching in a brand new purpose-built home on the Liverpool Waterfront.
The office being unpacked
The new gallery is split over two floors. The ground floor will present an international programme of cutting edge contemporary photography whilst the first floor will showcase a changing exhibition from the in-house archive.
They will also commission a series of Wall Works. Large-scale graphic installations for the external facade of the gallery. The first commission going to S Mark Gubb.
Art Feast armed with a hard hat and high visibility vest, went down for a sneak peak and tour of the unfinished gallery space. Continue reading
Naive John
Naive John (born Ian Wylie) is a British artist based in Liverpool. His work shows attention to detail with subjects that combine elements from popular culture alongside the mythic and mundane. His last and most famous painting The Chav-ant Garde was commissioned by the influential collector David Roberts for his Art Foundation in London. A large-scale group portrait of the artist’s dysfunctional family, it uses the Teletubbies as stand-ins for the artist’s family members.
Naive john is also a highly regarded visiting speaker having given lectures at TATE Liverpool, John Moores University and most recently the University of London.
Art Feast caught up with Naive John to talk about philosophy, inspiration and pseudonyms Continue reading
Sir Peter Blake at The Walker Art Gallery
An Alphabet
Sir Peter Blake
1 October 2011 – 4 December 2011
If you haven’t already heard Sir Peter Blake has been named as the first patron of the John Moores Painting Prize, the UK’s biggest painting competition.
He will represent the competition which has a first prize of £25,000, and is held biennially at the Walker Art Gallery. He will take on this role 50 years after winning the Junior section of John Moores 3 with his painting Self Portrait with Badges in 1961.
In celebration The Walker Art Gallery is currently hosting An Alphabet, a display of one of Sir Peter Blake’s alphabet series.
The display is made up of 26 silkscreen prints and shows Peter Blake’s fascination with letters, fonts and typography.
Peter Blake incorporates imagery from popular culture into his work, including comic books, consumer goods and advertisements. In this display you can find anything from a poem about Leopards (in ‘L’), to images of Father Christmas (in ‘X’). Continue reading
Robyn Woolston is a visual artist based in Liverpool. She is Passionate about people, relationships and the way the world works, her practice reveals structures and raises questions concerning social, economic and ecological perspectives.
Two of our studio members are moving into their own shop and are developing their businesses, as a result of this Arena have four spaces available for rent. We are looking for vibrant new artists to join our group; preferably from the visual arts. We are looking for artists who are enthusiastic and keen to develop their own practice and develop their skills through involvement with the initiatives and exhibition opportunities both local, national and internationally offered within Arena.
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Abandon Normal Devices (AND) is an energetic regional festival of new cinema and digital culture. A unique partnership between FACT, Cornerhouse and Folly, the Festival was launched in Liverpool in 2009. This year saw the festival’s third year spread across the Northwest region.
The AND Salon Simian Safari was a panel discussion focusing on Rachel Mayeri’s Video work Primate Cinema: Apes as Family and was shown in TAO as part of the AND Festival. Continue reading
It has been clear since Thursday evening, as the AND Festival 2011 previewed in Liverpool, that Zee was the word on everyone’s lips.
As the AND Festival information tells us “Kurt Hentschläger has spent a lifetime creating artworks that push the viewer into a state of sensory overload. Zee is no exception. As one visitor to put it: “It is really hard to say something smart about something so sensual”. Variously described as “insane”, “like entering Heaven” and “another planet”, Zee is an installation of fog, light and sound that transforms Gallery 1 at FACT into an out of body experience. An installation “like death” that has audiences struggling to believe the evidence of their senses”.
If you haven’t experienced it yet, you can watch a trailer for Zee here and listen to the response from one member of the audience on Sunday 2 October here
Zee is at FACT until 28 November 2011.
The great thing about festivals is the opportunity to bring together the people at the heart of it all with the audience. The digital age, means – in theory – it is a lot easier to participate in these events via on-line streaming. There are still glitches galore and a variety of different streaming options means sometimes you have to put up with ads. This session for the AND Festival, focussing on fanaticism brings together the artists John O’Shea, football fan and co-director of the ‘Spirit of Shankly’ campaign, James McKenna and academic, Prof. Andy Miah. It was easy to engage with the presenters as they showed film clips and discussed the territory around John O’Shea’s ‘Pig’s Bladder Football’ project. The lack of a roving mic made it difficult to hear questions from the floor. Andy Miah reported on his own attempt to make a pig’s bladder football in the shop, over the road – which he described as “messy”.
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