Event type: Exhibition

Inner Beauty exhibition at the LAKE ga...

The latest exhibition at the LAKE gallery celebrates the beauty of the everyday, with a captivating collection of still life artworks each offering a unique perspective on the little things that make up a home.

With Sherilyn Halligan and Fiona Philipps.

Sherilyn Halligan
Working intuitively, each of Sherilyn Halligan’s paintings emerge from her experiences, memories and observations. Bright colours, bold marks and playful textures have worked their way into her new collection of floral and interior pieces; essentially still abstract but with more defining marks. The interior scenes resemble room sets. Familiar objects and pieces of furniture belonging to family or friends find themselves in unfamiliar settings.

Fiona Philipps
Fiona’s collection of paintings are inspired not only by her home and garden but also draw upon memories of her childhood. They explore her thoughts on both the human and animal desire to create a home and document the everyday objects that surround her, many of which have history and a story behind them. Some of the paintings are evoked by memories of the artist’s childhood visits to the homes of her grandmother and aunties and uncles – the days of family get togethers.

The gallery will be hosting a preview evening on Thursday 27th June between 6pm and 8pm, and all are welcome. Fiona and Sherilyn will both be joining us in the gallery for the evening so do come along to meet them.

You’ll find the LAKE gallery in the heart of West Kirby, a couple of minutes from the train station.

LOOK Photo Biennial 2024: Beyond Sight

LOOK Photo Biennial 2024: Beyond Sight is coming to Open Eye Gallery with three impressive projects. Looking at stars and seashores, photo prints and urban lights, the artists explore the complex human relationships with nature and use photography as a creative tool for scientific inquiry and environmental advocacy.

The exhibited projects are:

Protege Noctem by Mattia Balsamini: a visual research dedicated to the disappearance of the night. The project chronicles the unofficial alliance between scientists and citizens documenting the harmful effects of artificial light on the natural night sky and ecosystems. Light pollution is a significant issue, and defending darkness is crucial for human health, scientific research and protecting wildlife.

Erosion by Stephanie Wynne: a piece of research and a photographic exploration of how post WW2 the structural waste of war was disposed of or reused. This reverberates with the dreadful current conflicts around the world – when or if a conflict is over, how does the structure of a city or landscape recover?

Precious Metals by Melanie King: a project considering the life cycle of silver and palladium, from their production within the cosmos, extraction from Earth and their uses in photography. The project suggests methods and materials that are less harmful to the environment.

Max Gorbatskyi, Open Eye Gallery Curator, says: The exhibition explores the interplay between human intervention and natural processes, shedding light on the often unseen or overlooked consequences of ubiquitous human practices. By addressing cosmic, terrestrial, and daily subjects, the projects underscore the increasing complexity of human relationships with nature guided by consumption and ambition. The artists use exquisite form and poetic subjects to firmly state the urgency of sustainable practices, whether in art or urban planning.

Main gallery show is accompanied by our Digital Window exhibition, Blast Sheets by Max Boardman. This project (created in the Lake District, Cumbria) explores the relationship between the natural and the altered environment – focusing specifically on the development and scale of the process of quarrying. The images display the enormity of the industry and the historical and contemporary scars that are accommodated by the natural landscape.

The LOOK Photo Biennial is building on from the six week long exploratory Climate Lab which took place between January and March 2024. Open Eye Gallery invited researchers, artists, academics and visionaries to take over the gallery and use it as a lab space, showing work in progress and talking through ideas to tackle climate change.

More exhibitions and events developed with a range of partners will be announced throughout the summer in Liverpool, Wigan and Cumbria as LOOK Photo Biennial 2024 continues.

LOOK Photo Biennial is a photography festival delivered by Open Eye Gallery. Taking place in sites across the North West, LOOK’s programme operates as a cultural exchange both locally and internationally.

Celebration event with drinks and music from Dance for Plants: 27 June, 6 – 8 pm. RSVP.

Feature Image Credit: Mattia Balsamini, Protege Noctem

 

#LAF24 (Liverpool Architecture Festiva...

The Architecture Showcase will be a month-long pop-up exhibition of work from 26 architecture practices based throughout the Liverpool City Region.

Event

Event Details:

1st June – 30th June (Tuesday – Sunday), 11:00 – 18:00

Paddy Gould and Roxy Topia: Let Your I...

This thought provoking family-friendly exhibition from Merseyside based artists Roxy Topia and Paddy Gould has been created in collaboration with children aged 8-11 from Out of the Blue, the Bluecoat’s after school art club.

Explore the world of work and what the workplace might look like in the future, through the eyes of children. Advances in Artificial Intelligence and technology have rendered some occupations obsolete, which could mean fewer options for children as they choose a career path. This brand new exhibition suggests that the creativity of humans is an irreplaceable skill which will become more important in years to come.

Let Your Ideas Come Back As Children hopes to inspire conversation between adults and children, particularly around how children navigate this world dominated by technology, and what that means for their future.

Each gallery space will have a range of artworks designed to be touched and interacted with, including soft sculpture, a busy board, colourful hand painted sculptures and areas for children to perform, allowing the exhibition to function like a creative game.

The show will also contain a new audio piece created in collaboration with Cormac Gould.

Beyond the Beat

Sixteen unseen photographs of musicians from Liverpool’s bustling 1960s Merseybeat era will go on display this June, as Beyond the Beat (29 June to 3 November) at Museum of Liverpool explores the music scene in Liverpool’s bustling nightclubs in the period immediately after the Beatles.

The display will showcase some of the bands that clamoured to play Liverpool’s music scene in the wake of The Beatles monumental fame, through a series of never-before-seen photographs of Liverpool’s Merseybeat scene.

At the heart of the display are international artists who hoped to play in Liverpool and local bands with dreams of following in the Fab Four’s footsteps – including photographs of two currently unidentified bands that curators are keen to track down.

Artists from rock and blues backgrounds including The Yardbirds, The Hollies, John Lee Hooker and Spencer Davis Group, feature in the display alongside local artists that performed during this important era.

Following the stratospheric success of The Beatles and Liverpool’s Merseybeat sound, musicians would flock to play the clubs of Mathew Street, including some of history’s most influential American blues artists.

Front and centre were an army of photographers, including Bill Connell and Les Chadwick from Liverpool studio Peter Kaye Photography. The company documented the performances and crowds that danced to the beat of the clubs during the swinging 60s.

Museum of Liverpool purchased 912 negative strips from Peter Kaye Photography with photographs documenting many different elements of Liverpool life.

From this selection of negatives, 16 never-before-seen images were chosen to go on display for the first time in Museum of Liverpool’s Skylight Gallery for Beyond the Beat. With hundreds more archived in the museum’s collections.

Claire Hunter, assistant curator at Museum of Liverpool, said: “The Beatles may have dominated Liverpool’s music scene in the 1960s, but following their departure from the stages of Mathew Street, hundreds of artists wanted a chance to walk in their footsteps.

“This small selection of photographs, taken from a huge archive by Peter Kaye Photography, captures the essence of the Merseybeat scene. The energy of the clubs, the enthusiasm of the crowds and the power of the musicians to captivate their audiences.

“Beyond the Beat looks past the Fab Four and at some of the local, national and international artists that made the city swing.”

Alongside well-known acts and local bands, two unknown Liverpool acts feature in the display and Museum of Liverpool curators are keen to find out more about both bands. The unknown bands are both thought to be local musicians from Liverpool, but not much more is known about either group.

Museum curators are asking people with information about either of the unknown bands on display to email beyondthebeat@liverpoolmuseums.org.uk.

Beyond the Beat is on display and free to visit in Museum of Liverpool’s Skylight Gallery from Saturday 29 June until Sunday 3 November 2024. For more information, please visit: www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/beyond-the-beat.

In View

Six young people from Whitby High School were challenged to explore their personal relationship with the current climate crisis. The In View exhibition presents the results of this photography project. The main gallery show is accompanied by a digital window exhibition Through Our Eyes showcasing work from six year 10 students from Gateacre High School, Belle Vale.

For In View, Open Eye Gallery has been working with long-standing partners Whitby High School in Ellesmere Port. With the theme of climate change in mind, six students have been inspired by the LOOK Climate Lab on display at Open Eye Gallery earlier this year and have worked on their own photography projects.

These projects explore the complex relationship between growing up as a young person in Ellesmere Port and a global battle with the world’s climate crisis. From rising sea levels to local green spaces, these six individuals have used their visual language to explore what climate change means to them and their future.

Anna Wijnhoven, creative producer for schools and young people said: In View has been an incredible journey of learning, discussion and protest. The work within the exhibition responds to the urgency of representation needed for young people in the wider conversation around the climate crisis we all face today. This project has helped to equip these young people with the skills and understanding to recognise the value and importance of their role as a future generation living within a climate crisis.

By highlighting and platforming the opinions of young people on this key issue, we hope to inspire, inform and question ways to make positive change for our future – hearing from voices so often lost in this vital area of work. Together, we are turning up the volume on their voice, from a chatter to a shout.

Student Alex Colebrook said: I have enjoyed going out with the group and taking photos of different things related to the project. I have learned the extent of climate change and the effects it has on our planet. I have really enjoyed my time doing this project and working with the people I have done.

The students involved in this project are:

Ellie Bowers

Alec Colebrook

Patsie Davies

Ruby Donaldson

Mia Selby

Riley White

Event

Image: Ellie Bowers

Maria Hammond – In the Window

Maria Hammond is a mixed media contemporary jeweller, passionate about sustainability and our relationship with the environment.

She has been awarded this spotlight exhibition from a range of makers who exhibited at the 2023 MMU School of Art Graduate show. Her work was chosen for it’s creative use of materials and the innovative making and design qualities. By using materials that go unnoticed, or go to waste, she seeks to create pieces that are both beautiful and responsible.

This collection is inspired by an abandoned, derelict industrial building and its decayed materials, which have a unique beauty and character that reflect local history and experiences of life. As it is reclaimed by nature, she is reminded of the cycle of life and death, and is filled with a sense of hope and possibility.

To understand her attraction to the transformative process of time and the representation of memory in buildings and objects, her practise includes burning, patinating, oxidising, and carving. Through these techniques, she aims to create pieces that catch a snapshot of disappearing industrial sites and the beauty in the textures and patterns of their decaying materiality.

Her work is on display ‘In the Window’ on College Lane, and available to purchase in the gallery and online, throughout June 2024.

Summer Exhibition 2024

Bluecoat Display Centre’s Summer 2024 selling exhibition is inspired by a place by the sea. The work of their featured makers captures the spirit of days spent at the coast – whether in glorious sunshine or tempestuous storms – and the treasures we might find and bring home, from interesting shells, pebbles and sea glass to the memory of the colour of the sea at sunset.

Makers include:

Jewellery by Roslyn Ashcroft, Bronwen Gwillim, Gilly Langton & Ruth Praill

Ceramics by Molly Attrill, Helen Beard, Kirsti Hannah Brown, Rachel Peters, Vivienne Ross & Anna Silverton

Textiles by Eve Campbell, Jessica Geach & RubyKite

Glass by Jane Charles, Loco Glass & Shakspeare Glass

Leather by Janine Partington

Wood by Jane Crisp

Exhibition Opening

Join the the team and some of the featured makers for a special opening event on Thursday 20 June 2024, from 5.30pm – 7pm. Refreshments will be served and Friends of the Bdc will receive a 10% discount on all purchases during the evening.

A curated selection of work will be available through our online shop.

In the Window – Leoma Drew and V...

For Bluecoat Display Centre’s 2023 Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair Showcase Award they are delighted to feature the work of jeweller Leoma Drew alongside ceramicist Vallari Harshwal.

Leoma’s jewellery practice explores memory and nostalgia, leading her to abstract emotional journeys through creating motifs, which became a cryptic symbology to depict personal events within her life. As Leoma’s work progressed and developed the butterfly became a predominant symbol that kept presenting itself, and is now part of her signature style.

Vallari is drawn towards the unexplored aspect of clay and its processes, and leans toward being non-conformist in her visual aesthetics. Handcrafting timeless, simple objects which stand the test of time brings her joy. Vallari’s work is an essence of her Indian heritage, juxtaposed with her life in England.

Opening hours:10-5.30pm Monday – Saturday and 12pm-5pm  on Sundays.

Queen by Magnus Hastings

Known for his internationally-recognised work with drag performers and the LGBTQ+ community, Magnus Hastings has photographed a who’s-who of drag superstars throughout his career as well created numerous icon images of well-known famous faces from Todrick Hall and Boy George, to Luke Evans and Cheyenne Jackson.

In his exhibition at Walker Art Gallery, titled ‘Queen’, Hastings displays a curated selection of his most famous photographs, including portraits of renowned drag queens Bianca del Rio, Courtney Act, and Trixie Mattel. Alongside these iconic images, the exhibition features newly commissioned, never-before-seen photographs spotlighting dozens of Liverpool’s own legendary drag artists, shot in the city’s famous Pride Quarter.

Originally from London, Hastings has gained widespread recognition through his distinctive style that combines bold colour palettes with a keen eye for capturing the essence of his subjects. ‘Queen’, a unique collaboration between Magnus Hastings and National Museums Liverpool, stands as a vibrant testament to the individual artistry of drag and the collective spirit of pride. Liverpool’s world-renowned drag scene serves as both a haven and a stage for numerous outstanding performers who live, work, and slay in the city.

From iconic local artists like Lily Savage to more recent stars like Danny Beard, winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK season four, the city boasts a rich drag history shaped by these queens. In ‘Queen’, Hastings turns the camera on some of the city’s local drag superstars, showcasing their unique looks in a series of photographs that capture the vivacity and individuality embodying the city’s drag scene.

In addition to these original images, a series of Hastings’ most iconic photographs from throughout his career are featured, including those from his book ‘Rainbow Revolution’, which showcases figures from across the LGBTQ+ community, creatively envisioning the space inside an empty white box. Hastings’ work evokes the essence of drag in an intimate, multi-layered portrait, presenting these performers and their art in a rarely seen way. His self-taught, spontaneous approach captures the irreverent spirit and fierce glamour of drag culture.

The exhibition features a royal court of drag excellences, with international queens featured including Adore Delano, Alaska, Bob the Drag Queen, Gottmik, Jaida Essence Hall, Jinkx Monsoon, Katya, Raja, Sasha Velour, Violet Chachki, and many more. Among the local drag artists photographed for ‘Queen’ are Danny Beard, Sister Sister, Brenda LaBeau, Naya Thorn, and Violet Pain, alongside a host of other Merseyside performers.