“New mediums gave rise to considerations of how painting and painters might respond.” A trio of works demonstrate that painting’s engagement with photography and film continues to reverberate, finds Mike Pinnington…  

Prior to the 19th century arrival of photography, painting had been the undisputed visual recording device. It wasn’t, of course, always truthful. Nor was it democratic. Gentry and royalty – those able to pay for the privilege – would be flattered; a nip here, a tuck there, long before plastic surgery made such terminology commonplace, and longer still before editing software and apps made aesthetic tweaks the norm. With the possibility of near instantaneous image capture, painting’s role came under scrutiny. As one commentator said in 1839, photography was: “an invention… which could cause some alarm to our Dutch painters. A method has been found whereby sunlight itself is elevated to the rank of drawing master, and faithful depictions of nature are made the work of a few minutes.”   

Subsequent decades saw the birth of cinema (with the Lumière brothers holding the first ticketed screening of moving pictures in Paris, in 1895). And, as the next century dawned concerns grew, moving the artist Henrietta Clopath to remark in 1901 that: “The fear has sometimes been expressed that photography would in time entirely supersede the art of painting. Some people seem to think that when the process of taking photographs in colors has been perfected and made common enough, the painter will have nothing more to do.”

The rumours of painting’s impending death, however, had been greatly exaggerated. As we know, while its viability is periodically questioned (not least today), rather than its being superseded, what happened instead is that painters adapted to, were catalysed even, by the perceived threat. The new mediums of photography and film gave rise to considerations of how painting and painters might respond; either by going beyond the old tradition of performing the role of mirror on the world, or in open dialogue.

Writing on the conversation between film and photography, David Campany has said that the mediums remain significant for each other, “not just technically but aesthetically and artistically. Each has borrowed from and lent to the other. Each has envied the qualities of the other. And at key moments each has relied upon the other for its self-definition.” The exact same can said of painting, in view of such technological arrivistism. Painting’s engagement with both photography and film, at times simultaneously, continues to reverberate through the discipline, a point richly demonstrated by a trio of contemporary works now on display at Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery.

Via the woozy ambiguity of Eva Helene Pade’s 2025 painting, I mørket (In the dark), we are transported back to early 20th century Germany and the expressionism that represented a conscious move to address the challenges posed by new means of capturing the world. Marked by an urge to represent emotion, interiority and spirituality as opposed to facsimile, from Kandinsky to Schiele, Munch to Dix, this was a movement delving deep beneath the surface of its subject matter. Often, these were paintings of women – either muse or hysterics – by men. In the case of Pade’s modern-day take, however, in work she has described as a ‘surrender to the more metaphysical parts of the paintings,’ we find an artist depicting active female protagonists rather than passive subjects. I mørket (In the dark) – vivid, and the longer you look at it, somehow destabilising – feels at once fresh, relevant and literate.

Ella Kruglyanskaya, an artist who said that she wants her paintings to feel cinematic, is contending with the canonical problem of the representation of women. Her 2024 work, Odalisque in Blue (small) – featuring a naked female figure viewed from behind, looking back at us over her shoulder – finds Kruglyanskaya referencing the intersectional issues contained within the ‘Orientalist’ movement’s objectification of enslaved women. Situating representation of women in a contemporary context, her paintings blur disciplinary lines between art, illustration and the ubiquity of social media image-making. Speaking in a 2016 TDN interview about the sources and themes that proliferate in her practice, she said: “pop culture, art history, the history of painting, and the culture of cinema, photography – I think they all play into each other, back and forth.”

Gilles Deleuze has said that “The encounter between two disciplines doesn’t take place when one begins to reflect on another, but when one discipline realizes that it has to resolve, for itself and by its own means, a problem similar to one confronted by the other.” Along with the breadth of cultural reference points, what we see most often in the paintings of Ella Kruglyanskaya, which imply a tussle towards resolving the problem of representations of women, is a resolute decision that her women can rarely be construed as mere subjects of the gaze – a gaze often returned with a large helping of knowing side-eye. As Laura Robertson has observed: “the Female Gaze in Kruglyanskaya’s work stares right back.”

The language of cinema is more explicit still in Mise en scène (2025), a luminous and seductive painting by Louise Giovanelli. Drawn from a found image of a 1970s film, its title, from the French, means ‘to place on stage’, and refers to the means by which visual elements are arranged in a film – including props, the set and, of course, actors. In Giovanelli’s painting, the camera’s lens lands on and captures a woman seemingly amidst, lost even, in pure ecstasy. Superficially at least, it suggests a particular reading, one of sexual pleasure. In fact, belying assumptions borne of a lifetime’s worth of mainstream portrayals of women on screen, she is delighting in another act, that of taking communion.

The spectre haunting each of these works and, indeed, this piece of writing, is neither photography or film, but Laura Mulvey’s 1975 essay, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, which introduced the theory of the ‘male gaze.’ In a later, 2003 essay, Stillness in the Moving Image: Ways of Visualizing Time and its Passing, Mulvey wrote: “I was preoccupied by Hollywood’s ability to construct the female star as ultimate spectacle, the emblem and guarantee of its fascination and power. Now, I am more interested in the way that those moments of spectacle were also moments of narrative halt, near stillness, that figure the halt and stillness inherent in the structure of celluloid itself. Then, I was concerned with the way Hollywood eroticized the pleasure of looking, inscribing a sanitized voyeurism into its style and narrative conventions. Now, I am more interested in the ways in which the presence of time itself can be discovered behind the mask of storytelling.”

Mulvey goes on to say that “new technologies allow the spectator time to stop, look and think.” But Giovanelli (and others channelling similar concerns), demonstrates that ‘old’ technology can be equally adept at providing that space; in the stillness of painting can be found a space that takes us beyond (the albeit still relevant) ‘woman as image’ narrative this trio of works might at first suggest.

Mike Pinnington

Works discussed are on display in the Walker Art Gallery‘s Contemporary displays 

Images, from top: Installation view of Louise Giovanelli, ‘Mise en scène’ (2025) at Walker Art Gallery © Pete Carr; other installation shots: Eva Helene Pade’s 2025 painting, I mørket (In the dark); Ella Kruglyanskaya’s 2024 painting, Odalisque in Blue (small); and Louise Giovanelli’s 2025 painting, Mise en scène, all MP

Reckoning with uncertain times, a group exhibition taking its name from a century old movement is a tonic, says Mike Pinnington…

Z – A – U – M. ZAUM. With its roots in the early 20th century Russian futurist movement, this was the name given to a language of experimentation beyond meaning (‘za – beyond’; ‘um – mind’). Developed by radical modernist poet, Aleksei Kruchenykh, it is said to have inspired Malevich (he of the black square), in “trying desperately to free art from the dead weight of the real world…” with a new painterly language of colour and form outside established perimeters. Never fear: “In our art,” said Kruchenykh, “we already have the first experiments of the language of the future.”

ZAUM lends its name and, more than a century on, some of its intent, to an ambitious group exhibition currently on display at 50MV, an artist-run space in Sefton’s Waterloo. Across its 15 works, there is the suggestion of striving for new, different ways to address and reckon with our own uncertain times. Bridging the gap between then and now is Sir Terry Frost (1915–2003), renowned for his use of Cornish light, colour and shape, all of which informs the strikingly beautiful Newlyn Yellow (1996).

The space, though (formerly home to a high street newsagents), is otherwise populated with works made this decade (the majority of them this year), making this an exhibition of our moment, one that has otherwise come to be defined by an art that commonly, understandably, is overtly wrestling with the socio-political concerns of the day. ZAUM!, however, like its anti-language namesake, possesses a more gnomic – some may say more sophisticated – quality, implying philosophies, and answers, just out of reach.

James Bacchi-Andreoli (who, alongside Luke Skiffington, is the exhibition’s co-curator) mentions processes of accident and chance, unplanned encounters, and of losing and finding, all of which seem present in his gesso and coloured pencil odyssey, Inside Outside 1 – a fragmented cut-up grid of cul-de-sacs, wrong turns and happenstance. There is, similarly, something of the labyrinthine in the painstakingly hand-chiselled angular furrows of Sasha Holzer’s Walnut (above).

Jane K Morter‘s sculptural piece, meanwhile, seems to evoke a lost futures moodiness, with the brutalism-inflected wall work, Lightfold. Molly Thompson’s architectonic acrylic on panel construction, Transitional Measures, with what the artist describes as ‘off-kilter geometries’ invites us to adopt a topographic perspective; David Ryan’s eye-catching Zones 8 goes further still, putting one in mind of a zoomed out, abstracted Google Earth screen grab.

Alongside all of this form, there is certainly no lack of colour. Mike Carney‘s Untitled (above, detail) has a pleasingly outside-the-lines quality in its bleed of inky greens, oranges and blues on non-porous Yupo paper – a study in ‘visual and aural abstraction,’ says Carney. Clem Crosby’s fabulously named Almighty Meat is a frenetic riot of mostly primary colours, while Christopher Peterson’s Untitled is a tablet-like rune of symbology, its layers suggesting a puzzle to be solved. Safe to say: the chromatically inclined amongst us are covered.

Questing, colour and form are all here, then, combining multiple nods to the heyday of abstraction with an up-to-the-minute hue. A tonic of an exhibition, ZAUM! offers works defying current expectations of the visual arts landscape. To paraphrase the poet Kruchenykh: might we already have the first experiments of a new language of the future?

ZAUM! is on display @ 50MV Gallery until 28 June

Images: Installation photography, courtesy Luke Skiffington; Sasha Holzer, Walnut (2026); Mike Carney, Untitled (2024, detail)

Mike Pinnington

The great American road trip – the frontier and its trappings – serve as departure point for artist Ed Ruscha, and this tightly focused exhibition of his works, finds Mike Pinnington…

In 1956, Ed Ruscha – an artist JG Ballard said had ‘the coolest gaze in American art’ – embarked on a journey that, in many ways, would foreshadow a career and its concerns to follow. Leaving his Oklahoma City birthplace behind, he made his way west, driving along dusty highways and byways, to Los Angeles. En route, he was struck by the stark expanse of the landscape.

Signs of life came mostly in the form of gas stations, those uncanny waystations which punctuated his trip and the liminal spaces along the storied Route 66. Many of these he would capture with his camera, resulting in the photographs that led in 1963 to his first, now iconic artist book, Twentysix Gasoline Stations (as well as an accompanying series of paintings, drawings and prints). These works speak to the great American road trip – the frontier and its trappings – and serve as departure point for a close, ongoing engagement with the signs and symbols of the US.

From its landscape and self-image (commonly projected onto the silver screen) – all of it a reflected, blurry version of what used to be called the American dream – Ruscha’s work gives us a front-row seat, inviting us along for the ride. Such aspects are brought together in tight focus in Tate Liverpool’s ARTIST ROOMS: Ed Ruscha.

The artist has said: “When I got going on the books … it was really the red meat of my work.” Fittingly, then, the show begins with the handsome ARTISTS WHO DO BOOKS (1976), a monochromatic black and white work on paper that reads as declaration of intent, and as a reminder of Ruscha’s beginnings and continuing interest in graphic design. Nearby, a vitrine protects, among other items, second and third editions of Twentysix Gasoline Stations; above it, a 1970 lithograph presents a framed tactile-looking depiction of the book. If the constraints of viewing printed matter in this way frustrate somewhat, an adjacent digital display allows for a relaxed, leisurely look at this and other publications that echo throughout the following works herein.

From route 66, we nose our way through West Hollywood, arriving at the Sunset Strip. Drawn from photographs made in 1966 for Ruscha’s book Every Building on the Sunset Strip (a series he revisited in 1995), the examples on display here invoke nothing if not the locale’s mythology. Shimmering with the heat haze of the blazing California sunshine, they call to mind movies made – and, no doubt, merely dreamt and imagined – here, at such industry haunts as Greenblatt’s Deli. Reminding us of Hollywood’s genius and propensity for artifice, Ruscha used razor blades and sandpaper to simultaneously deface and emphasise the filmic quality of these images.

Cinema and its history is rich subject matter for artist and audience. In Pools #1–#9 (1968), we recall the moneyed leisure/ennui on show in The Swimmer, made the same year. Frank Perry’s picture finds Burt Lancaster’s Ned Merrill swimming home via neighbourhood pools on a journey of middle-aged existentialist self-discovery. 1975’s semi-abstract Miracle #64, meanwhile, is at once shaft of celestial projector light, and a foreshadowing, at least to my mind’s eye, of David Lynch’s then yet to be made film, Lost Highway (1997). In that, it somehow suggests, perhaps even informs, and is drawn into, the mobius strip time loop of that film’s narrative; the two somehow meet along the road, to become fellow travellers, emphasising the enduring and fruitful conversation enjoyed between art and film.

Elsewhere, tools of the graphic design trade are once again to the fore; in Los Francisco San Angeles Portfolio (2001) and BLVD.-AVE.-ST. (2006), we see small- and large-scale experimentation with geometric patterns and grid systems the artist calls ‘metro plots’.  With PAY NOTHING UNTIL APRIL and DAILY PLANET (both 2003), Ruscha enlists his wonderfully named Boy Scout Utility Modern typeface, in ambiguous, intertextual works – one seemingly a reference to delaying the inevitable, the other environmental and pop culture comic book reference both – juxtaposing the text of their titles with vast mountainsides.

In the onomatopoeia of HONK (1962), we are brought neatly back to that grand North American symbol of liberation, the means by which Ruscha became Ruscha, the automobile. MAD SCIENTIST (1975) and HOLLYWOOD TANTRUM (1979) imply La La Land tropes – on-screen and off – touching yet again on visual art’s complex relationship to cinema. Like many a great film, ARTIST ROOMS: Ed Ruscha, is over before you know it; not, however, before one final nod in the direction of the intersecting of life and the movies, with the irresistibly apt – forgivably on-the-nose – selection of THE END #40 (2003). A staple of closing credits, it serves here as marker of the close of this exhibition – while leaving you yearning for an extended director’s cut.

Mike Pinnington

Artist Rooms: Ed Ruscha continues @ Tate Liverpool until 14 June

Images: Ed Ruscha, Standard Study # 3 1963 © Ed Ruscha; Edward Ruscha, ARTISTS WHO DO BOOKS 1976; Ed Ruscha, Greenblatt’s Deli (Sunset Strip Portfolio) 1976, printed 1995 © Ed Ruscha; Ed Ruscha, HONK, 1962. ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. © Ed Ruscha  

“This exhibition is a road trip, with Ruscha as the driver.” Stephen Clarke rides shotgun through Tate Liverpool’s Artist Rooms: Ed Ruscha… 

The text-based artwork, ARTISTS WHO DO BOOKS (1976), acts as the frontispiece to Tate Liverpool’s exhibition Artist Rooms: Ed Ruscha at RIBA North. The exhibition is a road trip, with Ruscha as the driver and his artist books acting as our guide. Our first stop is the seminal publication Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963). This small book contains photographs taken by Ruscha along the highway, Route 66, between Los Angeles and Oklahoma. On a touch screen monitor next to its display case the viewer can leaf through a digital copy; and see other complete copies of seven of Ruscha’s classic books. These selected publications provide our itinerary, each one focusing attention upon the built environment – a suitable subject for a gallery at the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Tanked up on gasoline, we are on the move. Our route is punctuated by text-based artworks. The large letters OK (1990) suggest that it is okay to continue our journey and, perhaps, reference Oklahoma as OK is the state’s abbreviated form as it would appear on a vehicle licence plate. It is worthwhile noting that Ruscha is an ‘Okie’ – a migrant to Los Angeles who has had to learn how to read this city. Our next guidebook is Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966), an accordion-format book that unfolds to nearly twenty-five feet in length. We literally have to travel along this continuous image – the viewers’ eyes in motion as the book is read. In the gallery, six photographic prints represent the Strip. On the negatives for the prints Ruscha has applied a razor blade and sandpaper to distress each picture. The result is that we become aware of the artist’s hand that disrupts our view through the car window.

The next punctuation point is another text-based piece, DANCE? (1973). This piece uses foodstuffs – coffee, egg white, mustard, chilli sauce, ketchup and cheddar cheese – to produce the letters that stain the canvas. DANCE? functions as a juncture between the diners and nightclubs pictured in the photographs of the Strip and invites the sort of physical activity that could take place in the next series of photographs of swimming pools from the artist book Nine Swimming Pools and a Broken Glass (1968). These pools seem to be the communal spaces of apartment complexes or, more likely, roadside motels. Motion is arrested as the still, uninviting pools wait for guests to arrive. Around the corner are photographs from Thirtyfour Parking Lots in Los Angeles (1967). It is a fanciful leap to consider drivers parking up to take advantage of the empty pools; however, both sets of work await intervention. The question function of Dance? becomes ‘Park?’ and ‘Swim?’

America, Her Best Product (1974) is the next punctuation and effectively introduces artworks that reference street maps. A set of aerial photographs of parking lots taken from a helicopter gives us the bird’s eye view or downward gaze that is the vantage point of the following painting and etchings. The painting BLVD. – AVE. – ST (2006), is dissected by thick pale bands across a light grey speckled ground which connotes the surface of the Los Angeles roads. The harshness of sunlight is apparent in the grey tones whilst a band of bright orange at the top of the canvas adds to the feeling of heat. This painting is supported by a group of small, coloured etchings that are comprised of lines and street names – reinforcing the reference to map reading. It is at this point in our journey that we move on to higher ground.

Snow-capped mountains that seemingly have no place in the hot desert of southern California are the background for two large paintings. These are overlaid with text: one reads DAILY PLANET (2002), while the other promises Pay Nothing Until April (2003). Are these billboard adverts that we drive past? A strong connection is made to the movie industry since The Daily Planet is the workplace of Clark Kent, and the snow-capped mountain is the logo for Paramount Pictures. At the close of this section the piece Miracle #64 (1975) depicts a strong shaft of light shining from the top left corner that cuts through the darkness of the background. It is often interpreted as a depiction of light emanating from a film projector, or alternatively a heavenly intervention; it could be seen more prosaically as the overhead light from a streetlamp.

The penultimate punctuation point is the word painting HONK (1962). Situated high on the wall, thus disrupting the flow, the piece breaks the silence of Miracle #64. At the close of this exhibition, references to the film industry take centre stage as the text pieces MAD SCIENTIST (1975) and HOLLYWOOD TANTRUM (1979) connote cinematic drama. Perhaps, the fate of the screenwriter was enacted by the minor drama of Royal Road Test (1967) – on display as a digital book – that documented Ruscha dropping a vintage typewriter from a speeding Buick. Did Ruscha take on the role of the scientist undertaking a mad experiment or was the typewriter thrown through the window as an act of aggression?

The exhibition closes with a final text-based artwork. THE END #40 (2003), is a depiction of the last few seconds of a movie, caught between frames. The two words, ‘The End’, are cut along the horizontal plane and so simulate the motion of the film. The dynamic of this exhibition has been the viewer moving through the landscape of southern California; however, the main concern has been the relationship between Ruscha’s books with his paintings, prints and photographs. The centrality of his publications is evident: it is clearly affirmed that Ruscha is the artist that does books.

Stephen Clarke is Senior Lecturer in Critical and Contextual Studies, University of Chester

Artist Rooms: Ed Ruscha continues @ Tate Liverpool until 14 June

Images: Edward Ruscha, ARTISTS WHO DO BOOKS 1976; Ed Ruscha, OK (State I) 1990. ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. © Ed Ruscha; Edward Ruscha, DAILY PLANET 2003 &PAY NOTHING UNTIL APRIL 2003

Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from across Liverpool and beyond…

Monday – Portrait of a Lady on Fire 5.10pm @ FACT Liverpool – £9.35

When Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire won the Queer Palm at Cannes, jurors were quick to point out that “above all,” it is “an incredible film for cinema”, full stop. All who have seen it are inclined to agree. Telling a tale of desire between a painter and her subject in late 18th century France, this is a “period piece with a distinctly modern feminist sensibility”.

Tuesday – Exhibitions Continue: John Akomfrah: Listening All Night to the Rain & Gender Stories @ the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool – FREE  

Recently opened, this fine pair of exhibitions should be savoured. John Akomfrah’s Listening All Night to the Rain (commissioned for the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2024) offers a space in which to meditate on colonial and post-colonial history. Drawing on memory, migration, racial injustice and climate change, this is serious art for serious times – past, present, and future. In Gender Stories, we find works brought together to address questions including (but not limited to): What is gender? How have ideas about it changed over time? How does it shape our day-to-day lives? Includes work by Helen Chadwick, David Hockney, Zanele Muholi and many more.

Wednesday – Book Launch: Melete, by Jennifer Lee Tsai 6pm @ the Bluecoat, Liverpool – £2-£5 (£15 including book)

Artist in Residence at the Bluecoat, Jennifer Lee Tsai, joined by Costa Book of the Year Poetry Award winner Hannah Lowe, launches her first full-length collection of poems, Melete, which tackles culture, heritage, memory, migration, and mysticism. Expect readings by the pair, who will be in conversation with curator Marie-Anne McQuay, and music from pianist Hannah Chiu.

From the archive: Jennifer Lee Tsai: Fallen Star 

British Art History – Forgotten Chapters, with Professor Tamar Garb 6.30pm @ Exhibition Research Lab @ John Lennon Art & Design Building, Liverpool – FREE    

The current exhibition at Liverpool John Moores University’s Exhibition Research Lab throws light on self-taught South African photographer, George Hallett, who worked in the country both pre- and post-apartheid. This first in a series of conversations with South African artists and art historians in response to the exhibition, finds its curator Dr Christine Eyene joined by fellow art historian and curator Professor Tamar Garb, to discuss Dumile Feni (1942-1991). Photographed by Hallett in 1983 (below), Feni was one of the first Black South African visual artists to live in exile in London and New York from 1968 to 1991.

Thursday – Talking Culture: Public Discussion Group 5.30pm @ the Bluecoat, Liverpool – FREE (booking required) 

The second in a series of discussions convened by the Bluecoat ‘to think, talk, and explore today’s major issues,’ this meeting, led by Dr. Kirsty Morrin, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Liverpool, uses as its departure point the title Justice Delayed is Justice Denied: The Grenfell Tower Fire. With director Steve McQueen’s essential Grenfell film currently screening at the gallery, the discussion offers a timely opportunity – and reminder – to keep social justice on the agenda. 

Friday – Exhibition Opening: Small Wonders: Reimagining British Art @ Williamson Art Gallery and Museum – FREE

Marking the 75th anniversary of 1951′s Festival of Britain, this Hayward Gallery touring show offers a contemporary reimagining of the hopeful landmark exhibition that accompanied it. Bringing together 50 artists who have participated in the British Art Show since its inception in 1979, with each artist creating new, small-scale works, Small Wonders promises a focused overview of recent(ish) British art history.

Exhibition Opening: Nocturnal Rainbow: Maurice Cockrill RA 6pm @ Bridewell Studios & Gallery – FREE

2026 sees bastion of Liverpool’s artist led scene, Bridewell Studios & Gallery, celebrate 50 years since moving into the site of a former police station in 1976. Marking this impressive anniversary, Nocturnal Rainbow showcases the work of one of its most influential early residents, Maurice Cockrill RA (1936 – 2013), presenting paintings made when he lived and worked there between 1978 and 1982.

Saturday – Music from the Movies: The Best of 20th Century Film Soundtracks 7.30pm @ Liverpool Philharmonic Hall – from £10

As debates about how we consume cinema in general – via a still-growing multitude of streaming platforms, or the good old-fashioned way – rumble on, there is a parallel trend for experiencing film scores live. Whatever your own preferences, tonight’s concert at Liverpool Philharmonic (conducted by Anthony Gabriele) promises bangers from Star Wars, Back to the Future, Casablanca, Vertigo, and more.

Sunday – Last Chance to See: Self Defined. New Stories from Archives @ Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool – FREE

A “first attempt,” says curator Viktoria Bavykina, ”in our long-term work with photography archives from countries occupied or influenced by the Soviet regime,” Self Defined mines the “histories, legacies, and lives shaped by years of totalitarian and imperial rule.” The result is a poignant, sometimes speculative, coming together of family stories, including: an exploration of post-Second World War displacement in Poland and Ukraine; the history of the Crimean Tatars in the 20th century; rural life in Latvia; collages of Soviet tourist photographs, and family archives. Catch it while you can.

Mike Pinnington

Images, from top: Portrait of a Lady on Fire; Listening All Night to the Rain, John Akomfrah; George Hallett, Dumile. New York, 1983. Courtesy of George Hallett Research Collection

We know that they are melting, never to return. We know that they are so intrinsic to Icelandic culture that there is grief around their loss; a funeral was held for Okjokull, Iceland’s first glacier to disappear, and which once covered six square miles of deep ice.  

“Exploring the work of ChihChung Chang is to better understand the slippage between stories we think we know and those as experienced by living, breathing places – and the communities calling them home.” Mike Pinnington digs into the artist and cultural researcher’s multi-site contribution to Liverpool Biennial 2025…

On the site of a former Chinese boarding house in Liverpool’s Great George Square there is a blue plaque commemorating the contribution to the city’s history by Chinese seafarers forcibly deported from the city in 1946. A shameful, underexposed chapter in the UK’s post-Second World War history, the policy separated thousands of seafarers from their families. That its unveiling, coming in July 2024, is so recent speaks to the complex, disproportionate relationship between Britain, this city, and the oldest Chinese community in Europe.

As if to reflect this complexity, there are many strands to Taiwanese artist and cultural researcher ChihChung Chang’s multi-site Liverpool Biennial contribution. To engage with the fruits of Chang’s research is not unlike prying off the thin though stubborn façade of place to get to the real, human stories beneath; at other times, it is more akin to setting forth on a voyage of discovery. Exploring the work of this cultural cartographer is to better understand the slippage between stories we think we know and those as experienced by living, breathing places – and the communities calling them home.

Across a satisfying multi-disciplinary installation at city centre venue, Bluecoat, an outside companion piece situated in Liverpool’s China Town, and a film in the nearby Pine Court Housing Association, the works speak to interwoven threads, allusions and tensions to unpick, consider and address. They each tell a part of the story in and of themselves, but – as with much of this Biennial – it is best to think of them as constituent parts. To experience each complementary aspect as parts of a whole is to see Chang’s research coalesce into a bigger picture.

At Bluecoat, you’ll find narratives of social history that reference family, community, biography, industrial decline, and cultural regeneration via post-modernity. In a Taiwan-set film of cultural histories told in three chapters, various objects relating to shipping (with a model vessel playing the role of anchor work) and a Chinese Arch come together to form Port of Fata Morgana. It situates art as both tribute – to home and family – and a self-portrait of sorts. This is the stuff of the artist’s life – the place, upbringing and people that have influenced him, one way or another, and inspired the research that lead him here.

Pushing beyond those initial, substantial layers, Port of Fata Morgana (named for the mutable, inconsistent nature of once bustling port cities) instigates a process of identifying and interrogating the commonalities and differences shared by communities separated by language, history and thousands of miles (6,199 if we’re counting). Here, Chang bridges historical, cultural and geographic gaps, by putting his home of Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan in conversation with Liverpool, his artworks’ temporary home.

A multitude of resonances have surfaced in the process. Both Kaohsiung and Liverpool are declining port cities, whose busiest, most profitable shipping days are behind them; they have each been rejuvenated of late, through necessity, by a belief in and commitment to culture as a driving force. These resonances initiate a departure point from which we can dig deeper, and consider the impact on people and places when surroundings and their meaning shifts – planned or otherwise – and vice versa. What does it mean for a place to become a microcosm for a changing world?

A work which gets to the heart of how the warp and weft of place and communities – especially ports – might be felt, is Keystone (2025), a collaboratively made paper mural found in Liverpool’s China Town (on Grenville Street South). Depicting a Chinese Arch, its title responds directly to the BEDROCK theme of Liverpool Biennial; an architectural keystone is structurally crucial. But it might also speak to and acknowledge the strength and diversity within the community it reflects, and the components that make powerful meaning within it.

With facilitation from Liverpool’s Pagoda Arts, whose mission it is ‘to introduce Chinese Culture to a wide and diverse community’, Keystone – artwork as connective tissue – is the manifestation of workshops in which residents were invited to share their stories of and relationships to Liverpool. Sparking these stories, participants were asked to bring along a meaningful object that they felt was important to them and their place in the city, from which they made rubbings in charcoal.

In an accompanying film of these workshops showing at Pine Court, it is clear that its contributors represent a spectrum of ages and backgrounds. Keystone, then, is both representation and in recognition of different generations of people who have helped develop this particular ongoing volume of the story of a city. In it, you can see images of items, text and people’s signatures, along with the artist’s own rubbings. You can pick out Mersey Docks signage; a plaque commemorating David Lewis, department store founder; and Liver Birds standing in for the traditional Chinese dragon – a creature representing power, prosperity and good luck. Taken from across the city, these rubbings link China Town’s communities and heritage to Liverpool at large, as opposed to the limitations of a specific setting.

A cross-section of the culture and society of which they are all part, this isn’t a picture or representation of any one unified story. Nor, I don’t think, is it meant to be. Instead it establishes a place for the many interweaving lives and narratives from the diaspora to be told. Memories, emotions, dreams of the city – these are literal imprints of the community embedded in Liverpool’s urban and psychological landscape.

Rendered in simple monochrome it may be, but Keystone is nothing less than a visualisation of the belonging and adding to that takes place therein, one layer of sediment atop another. It is a living rather than fixed monument, in a way that even the grandeur of the 44ft Imperial Arch that marks the gateway to China Town – a gift from Shanghai to celebrate the twinning of  the cities 25 years ago – can’t be.          

Mike Pinnington

Liverpool Biennial 2025: BEDROCK continues until 14 September at various venues across the city

Images, from top: ChihChung Chang, ‘Keystone’, 2025. Liverpool Biennial 2025. Photography by Rob Battersby; ChihChung Chang 張致中, ‘Port of Fata Morgana’, 2024. Liverpool Biennial 2025 at Bluecoat. Photography by Mark McNulty; ChihChung Chang, ‘Keystone’, 2025. Liverpool Biennial 2025. Photography by Rob Battersby 

Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from across Liverpool and beyond…

Monday – Exhibition Continues: Haunted Paper @ Dorothy, Baltic Triangle, Liverpool – FREE

Hot on the heels of author Jeff Young’s winning of the TLS Ackerley Prize for memoir, Wild Twin, comes this exhibition of collage and notebooks made during and to inspire its writing. Very much artworks in their own right, Young sees them as: “An archive of fleeting moments captured before they fade away.” They’re every bit as poetic and evocative as that sounds.

Further Reading: Sacred & Profane: Jeff Young’s Haunted Paper

Continuing: Liverpool Biennial 2025: BEDROCK – FREE

The 13th edition of Liverpool Biennial continues across the city and the public realm. There is the usual rich mix of institutional and ‘found’ spaces, with the city-wide arts festival a celebration of discovery as much as anything else. This iteration’s subtitle, BEDROCK, suggests nothing if not a solid foundation from which to build. Curator Marie-Anne McQuay and an array of international artists’ excavations of and responses to the city await. Check individual venues for opening days/times.

Further Reading: My Life in the Biennial with Ghosts; Liverpool Biennial: BEDROCK Review

Continuing: Independents Biennial 2025 – FREE

Running in parallel to BEDROCK is the well-established Independents Biennial which, this year, feels as ambitious as ever. Taking place in an astonishing 120 locations, expect degree show first-timers to the likes of Rebecca Chesney, Johnny Vegas, and Brigitte Jurack.

Further Reading: Another Dimension – On Contemporary Drawing; Caroline Gorick: After Hours – Reviewed

Tuesday – Brigitte Jurack: Rising Darkness, Floor Mosaic Workshops 1pm @ the Victoria Gallery & Museum –  FREE

During Rising Darkness, an exhibition exploring current affairs, literature, landscape and history, artist Brigitte Jurack has been leading workshops in making a co-created mosaic. Inspired by a floor found in a Roman villa, and updated to address some of the exhibition’s themes, this is the second-to-last opportunity to have a hand in the new work.

Wednesday – Exhibition Opening: The CASS Artists in Residence & Exhibition –  FREE

Accessible on foot from West Kirby, Hilbre Island has something of the magical, even folkloric, about it. As such, it is a seductive setting for art, artists and the wider public. This new group exhibition (which runs until Sunday) highlights the work of the CASS Centre for Art, Science, Sustainability, which foregrounds collaboration and exploration around the locale.

Thursday – Liverpool Biennial 2025: Drop-in Weekly Tea and Talk Tours 2pm @ 20 Jordan Street – FREE

This does what it says on the tin tour offers a way to ease yourself in to the Biennial if all those sites, artists and the theme itself prove a bit overwhelming – it can be a lot to take in. If our experience of this edition’s Biennial volunteers is anything to go by, you’ll be in safe, informative, hands.

Friday – The French Connection 8.30pm @ FACT, Liverpool — £9.35

William Friedkin’s classic, a winner of five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Actor, sees Gene Hackman as NY detective Jimmy ‘Popeye’ Doyle steal the show. He and his partner, Buddy Russo (Roy Scheider), are on narcotics detail, tailing heroin smugglers Sal Boca (Tony Lo Bianco) and his wife, Angie (Arlene Faber). Grimy realism, superb acting and a knock-out, high speed car chase combine to keep this in some ways of its time thriller feeling fresh.

Saturday – Bidston Observatory Open Days 1/2/3pm @ Bidston Observatory, Birkenhead – £5/£2

Built in 1866, in-part, to establish the ‘exact time,’ today the wonderful Bidston Observatory Artistic Research Centre operates as a ‘self-organising study site for research, communality and experimentation’. Whether interested in its history, as an affordable place to contemplate and conduct your own research, or both, take a look around this weekend for free.

Further Reading: Field Trip: Bidston Observatory Artistic Research Centre – Bringing Forth Other Worlds

Last Chance to See: REITERATIONS: The Royal Standard Studio Members Exhibition / The Royal Standard Studio Open Day –  FREE

Your last chance to see this group exhibition considering 19 years of The Royal Standard, reflecting on the practice, process – and sustainability – of such spaces. While you’re there, you can check out more of what’s going on at the artist-led studios’ open day.

Further Reading: Back in 2016, C. James Fagan considered a decade of The Royal Standard, considering the many challenges and far-reaching achievements of the artist-led studios and gallery 

Sunday – Lynchspirations: Experiment in Terror 5pm @ FACT Liverpool – £9.35

Continuing the year-long exploration and celebration of director, David Lynch (who died in January), this 1962 neo-noir directed by Blake Edwards sees Ross Martin’s sadistic crim, Garland “Red” Lynch, terrorise Lee Remick’s bank teller Kelly Sherwood. Glenn Ford’s FBI man, John “Rip” Ripley, is on the case.

Mike Pinnington

Images/media, from top: Experiment in Terror trailer; Jeff Young film still, courtesy Matt Bell; Brigitte Jurack, install photography, VGM; The French Connection trailer; Bidston Observatory, courtesy Mathilde Grandjean; Northern Lights, situated in Cains Brewery Village, Liverpool. Image courtesy Pete Carr, 2018

On the eve of a new Liverpool exhibition, showcasing the notebooks and collages of 2025 TLS Ackerley Prize-winning author Jeff Young, Mike Pinnington considers memory, nostalgia, and the writer’s creative process… 

In Yoko Ogawa’s allegorical The Memory Police, things – birds, calendars, maps – are arbitrarily ‘disappeared’ from the collective memory, fascistically stripped of meaning; in Apple TV’s Silo, objects from a ‘before time’ (including a Pez dispenser) are designated as relics, and forbidden; Georgi Gospodinov’s satire, Time Shelter, revolves around ‘clinics for the past’ as a method of treatment for those with Alzheimer’s. These prove so successful as to precipitate a ‘referendum of the past’ in which European countries opt to vote for a bygone decade they want to recreate and live in.

Truth often proves to be stranger than fiction: after Franco’s death in Spain in 1975, a Pact of Forgetting was proposed as a means of moving beyond the painful legacies of the Civil War. But memory is a powerful thing. Both sacred and profane, the past – like it or not – tears through the years and decades. Inevitably it catches up with us, and remains present. It shapes our world view, the way we think and, to some extent, act.

Frequently, objects – as both Ogawa and Gospodinov demonstrate – are the locus of remembrance, voluntary or otherwise. Like the taste of a madeleine dipped in tea in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, some things (they needn’t be cakes!), are imbued with evocative, mysterious properties, and can flood us with memories and feelings long forgotten, or thought buried. They suggest, provoke, exhume and resuscitate; conjuring time, place and feelings, they are infused with a kind of magic.

The writing of author and playwright Jeff Young has been known to have much the same effect. The worlds he invokes feel so close as to brush up against us. Ghost Town – his alt. city symphony shortlisted for the 2020 Costa Biography award – builds a picture of Liverpool as “a living thing”, as he calls it, so successfully that you feel you could open the book and step onto the city’s streets, walk in his footsteps; maybe even grab a coffee with him. Certain of its passages prick your eyes and make the hairs on the back of your neck stand to attention. “I had the feeling – still have the feeling – that the city was a living novel and we were walking through its pages.”

His most recent act of writing time and place into fresh existence is 2024′s Wild Twin, for which Young has just been awarded the 2025 TLS Ackerley Prize for literary autobiography ‘of outstanding merit’. Here, as it inextricably must be, memory is closely entwined with nostalgia:

“I began to dream of places I had been to and could no longer go. And so I went to where I always go, into the shadowplay of memory where I might find an echo, a reflection, the wild twin that always runs on ahead over the edge, into the beyond.”

As we know, there is peril in nostalgia. It is tempting, seductive. It is a kind of warping as much as it is a yearning. What do we want? Who do we want? A younger, more vital and fearless version of ourselves? Had that person ever really existed? Are we remembering right? Sometimes, we can haunt ourselves. For Young, though, it seems nostalgia isn’t something to be wary of. This isn’t a place to wallow and hide, shutting out the world, denying the present and hope of a future like a latter day Miss Haversham, or a reclusive, gone-to-seed rock star well past their prime. It is neither a cul-de-sac, nor simple aide-memoire; it is a creative provocation.

From it, Young excavates friends and lovers, old haunts, music shops, films, paperbacks, architecture, family gatherings, misadventures – the stuff of life that we all must accumulate to become ourselves – to produce something vibrant and alive in the here and now. Most obviously, this comes in the form of his lyrical, richly textured writing, which arrives with such warmth, and so fully realised, as to put us in the city, bar or living room he has reached back through time to vividly recall and present afresh.

The kindling for these works is provided in no small part by notebooks kept by Young, but also by companion collage and assemblage. Collectively, he describes these three-dimensional artefacts as ‘imagination batteries’, helping to invigorate, and provide the impetus and drive for the writing process. ”I see them as magic spells,” he has said. “An archive of fleeting moments captured before they fade away. They summon up ghosts, language, images, memories, ideas, incantations, hexes, ritual alchemy.” What he might not say, however, is that these are works of art in their own right, that beautifully complement the books they helped inspire him to write.

Two such collages adorn the pages of Wild Twin, a book dedicated to his dad, Cyril, who had died in 2023. Unvarnished, Young writes on this in the book’s final chapter. He writes also about these works that amount, in some ways, to family portraits; absences very much present in the “vessels [that] would act as time machines, as portals to the past” built while his dad slept.

As rich with meaning and suggestion as his writing, these accumulations plucked from life’s flotsam and jetsam, include: “Thimbles, foreign coins, medals, brooches, holiday snaps, acorns, pebbles, seashells, door keys, lucky charms, earrings, lace handkerchiefs, spoons, poems, cigarette and tea cards, the broken heads of dolls, marbles, cufflinks, dried flowers, corks, buttons, chess pieces, teeth.”

Channelling, he says, Joseph Cornell’s boxes, “In tobacco tins and cigar tins I curated memories.” And, he explains: “I thought of memory as being in the present moment, rather than in the mists of whatever ‘The Past’ is. I imagined my tiny museums and tobacco tin machines were living engines of today and tomorrow as much as they were reminders of the past.”

Maybe this is the best way to think about memory – and its own wild twin, nostalgia – as much the driver of the present- and future-tense as it is a place to wistfully visit on occasion, lest we get pulled down by the undertow.

Mike Pinnington

Dorothy X Jeff Young: Haunted Paper previews 6 August, from 5pm @ Dorothy, Jamaica Street, Baltic Triangle, Liverpool

Read Ghost Town: A Liverpool Shadowplay – A Conversation with Jeff Young

Images, from top: Film still, courtesy Matt Bell; Ghost Town; Wild Twin Collage, by Jeff Young; film stills, courtesy Matt Bell

Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from across Liverpool and beyond…

Monday – Continuing: Liverpool Biennial 2025: BEDROCK – FREE

The 13th edition of Liverpool Biennial continues across the city and the public realm. There is the usual rich mix of institutional and ‘found’ spaces, with the city-wide arts festival a celebration of discovery as much as anything else. This iteration’s subtitle, BEDROCK, suggests nothing if not a solid foundation from which to build. Curator Marie-Anne McQuay and an array of international artists’ excavations of and responses to the city await. Check individual venues for opening days/times.

Further Reading: My Life in the Biennial with Ghosts; Liverpool Biennial: BEDROCK Review

Continuing: Independents Biennial 2025 – FREE

Running in parallel to BEDROCK is the well-established Independents Biennial which, this year, feels as ambitious as ever. Taking place in an astonishing 120 locations, expect degree show first-timers to the likes of Rebecca Chesney, Johnny Vegas, and Brigitte Jurack.

Further Reading: Another Dimension – On Contemporary Drawing; Caroline Gorick: After Hours – Reviewed

Exhibition Opening: Non-Stop Destruction 6pm @ Birch Studios, Hamilton Square, Birkenhead – FREE

Artists Ruth Dillon, Jill Eastland, Thomas Eastland, Idit Nathan & Sarah Wood come together for this group exhibition examining the continuing assault on Gaza and its people. Considering the erasure of a culture through the ‘disappearance of memories, relatives and neighbours’ – not to mention the homes which previously housed them – Non-Stop Destruction asks and responds to questions including: How can we create art in a genocide? And how can artists respond to the ongoing destruction of Palestine and the decimation of its people?’

Tuesday – Moonchild Sanelly 8pm @ District, Baltic Triangle, Liverpool – £15

She’s guested on Beyoncé and Gorillaz tracks, but the time has well and truly come for South African rapper, Moonchild Sanelly, to step out of the shadows. New album, Full Moon, released earlier this year to glowing reviews, sees her take centre-stage.

Wednesday – Exhibition Opening: Haunted Paper 5pm @ Dorothy, Baltic Triangle, Liverpool – FREE

Hot on the heels of author and all-round renaissance man, Jeff Young’s winning of the TLS Ackerley Prize for memoir, Wild Twin, comes this exhibition of his collages (pictured, top) and notebooks, which he calls ‘energy batteries’ to aid the writing process. Artworks in their own right, however, Young says: “I see them as magic spells. An archive of fleeting moments captured before they fade away. They summon up ghosts, language, images, memories, ideas, incantations, hexes, ritual alchemy.”

Thursday – Liverpool Biennial 2025: Drop-in Weekly Tea and Talk Tours 2pm @ 20 Jordan Street – FREE

This does what it says on the tin tour offers a way to ease yourself in to the Biennial if all those sites, artists and the theme itself prove a bit overwhelming – it can be a lot to take in. If our experience of this edition’s Biennial volunteers is anything to go by, you’ll be in safe, informative, hands.

Friday – Exhibition Opening: REITERATIONS: The Royal Standard Studio Members Exhibition – FREE 

Group exhibition considering 19 years of the storied artist-led studio and gallery, reflecting on the practice, process – and sustainability – of such spaces.

Saturday – Exhibition Opening: INSIDE//OUT 1pm @ Bridewell Studios & Gallery – FREE

Visitors to Bridewell’s recent Drawing (Paper) Show may well have got an early preview to Gareth Kemp exhibition, INSIDE//OUT, in the form of large-scale outdoor abstract mural in the studios’ courtyard, Sculptural Forms in a Liminal Space. This afternoon sees the official unveiling, alongside an exhibition of related works by the artist.

Further Reading: Monument Exhibition Review; Light Sensitive Area Ahead – Reviewed

Dylyfu Fest: Gruff Rhys All-Dayer from 2pm @ Future Yard, Birkenhead – £25

Gruff Rhys has always been around, it seems. From the heady 90s days of his rabble-rousing band, Super Furry Animals, to last year’s latest solo effort Sadness Sets Me Free and forthcoming Welsh language LP, Dim Probs (above), Rhys has maintained an incredible standard of output – via the odd bit of genre experimentation and tweak here and there – for more than three decades. This weekend sees him headline this Anglo-Welsh all-dayer, supported by British Birds, Pys Melyn, Gintis, Georgia Ruth, Zara Smile, and Trial Tapes.

Sunday – Last Chance to See: Amartey Golding @ FACT Liverpool – FREE  

Amartey Golding’s work addresses masculinity, nationhood, vulnerability and violence; themes, he has, for the last two years, explored with men at Fazakerley’s HMP Altcourse. Together, they created Silent Knight, a suit of armour that is the latest piece in the artist’s Chainmail series. Both reflection on the tools men use to navigate life and, created over hundreds of hours, time spent that can never be reclaimed, today is your last chance to experience the installation.

VH-YES! 1pm @ VideOdyssey, Toxteth, Liverpool – FREE with mailing list sign-up (Booking Essential) 

Promising ‘outlandish, nostalgic film fun in your local video store’, this new, free film club – whose thing, as the winning name suggests, is a wholehearted and wholesome commitment to analogue – gets underway this Sunday. With screenings kept secret, expect the programme to contain ‘nostalgic treats, B-movies and horror gems galore’. Sounds fab! Please note: this event is ticketed: sign-up to the VH-YES! mailing list essential (no walk-ups, guys).

Mike Pinnington

Image credits from top: Collage from Wild Twin by Jeff Young, 2024. Sanelisiwe Twisha – aka Moonchild Sanelly. Courtesy the artist. Gruff Rhys’ ninth album Dim Probs (No Probs), 2025. VH-YES!: secret film club, hosted by VideOdyssey