How often do we really examine curatorial contributions – not simply to an exhibition, but to the care and display of collections? Mike Pinnington considers ALL THAT REMAINS: A Curator’s Choice at Victoria Gallery & Museum…

There was a period in the contemporary art world’s recent past in which serious questions where posed regarding the maybe and increasingly too-powerful position occupied by curators atop exhibiting hierarchies. But: how often do we really highlight and examine curatorial decision-making? Not just as reflected in one show, but in the longer-term health and accessibility of an institution and, in some cases, its collection. Rarely, I’d say, at least outside of quite specific circumstances and circles.

It’s interesting, then, to be able to identify so clearly such intent, in current Victoria Gallery & Museum show, ALL THAT REMAINS: A Curator’s Choice, which marks the culmination of Dr Amanda Draper’s time in the role there. For the recently opened exhibition (drawn from the University of Liverpool’s collection), Draper has cherry-picked some of her favourite works, as well as those by artists she believes have been, for whatever reason, overlooked.

With wall-space at a premium, across a relatively modest number of works, it covers a fair amount of ground – from a painting thought to be by Rembrandt’s last pupil to what one critic identified as ‘the most revolutionary event in post-war British art.’ Not bad at all for a gallery that, to my mind, currently fits all too snugly into the hidden gem category, especially when compared to Liverpool’s more central spaces.

Dedicated to earlier works, its first and smaller of two rooms feels, if I’m being honest, somewhat staid. Yes, it includes The Turkish Ambassador (c. 1680s), attributed to the aforementioned ‘Rembrandt’s last pupil’, Aert de Gelder. And the selection of 1892’s The Port of Liverpool by Parker Greenwood (above) means our journey has a nice, logical, departure point; and, while never for the sake of it, the city and its artists are well-represented here. But it underwhelms nonetheless.

Happily, ALL THAT REMAINS comes into its own as we ease, in a larger space next door, into modernism and those influenced and inspired by it. Cubism by Robert Colquhoun, Victor Passmore’s abstraction, and – local hero – painter and poet, Adrien Henri, rub shoulders with the underexposed and, no doubt for a fair few visitors, little known; such works, though, fair well by comparison with more established, not to say famous, names.

One of the first paintings encountered in this room is glorious: eye-catching, with details to hold attention beyond the plunging Battleship Potemkin-like steps, Mary Adshead’s aptly named The Steps, Fortuneswell (1953), offers a view to behold, leading the eye vertiginously down to Dorset’s Chesil Beach. In place of imperilled Odessa civilians, however, we find a picturesque scene of a milkman on his rounds. Still, there is something of the vortex about Adshead’s framing of the seaside vista, transforming an otherwise bucolic setting into one containing a nagging sense of unease.

Draper has declared – via one of her frequently illuminating captions – William Utermohlen’s 1968 painting, Trenchcoat (below), her ‘favourite in the collection.’ Because, she says, ‘of the bold colour and the enigma it poses.’ She’s not wrong – either in her admiration, or reasons for it. There’s a lot at play here; from the cubist rendering of the figurative sitter, Cuban writer Juan Arcocha’s clothes, to the red panels divided by the white vertical stripe behind him (which could pass for something by American painter, Barnet Newman). New to me, it’s a striking work that holds and rewards the gaze.

This mixture of representation, duelling and/or overlapping modernisms, and grades of abstraction (from cubist to fully fledged) emerges as a key feature of the room. The painter said to represent ‘the most revolutionary event in post-war British art,’ Victor Passmore, as so many before him, turned to abstraction immediately in the wake of visiting a Picasso and Matisse show. 1966’s Brown Development (Peat), while perhaps not the greatest example of his adventures in his newfound style (which would arguably come the following decade), illustrates the point nevertheless.

Nearby, Jack Coburn Witherop’s view of Portreath, Cornwall (1956), is stylised almost to the point of abstraction; while Jon Heritage’s A Cricket Match (c. 1980) finds horizontal and vertical lines demarking a strict grid. The ant-like cricketers at its centre are really all we have to identify its capturing a scene from life.

Euan Uglow appears similarly caught between abstraction and figuration in depicting the female form (below). Divided almost head to toe by a schema of horizontally placed arrows, the elegant if outsize nude both competes with and is augmented by those bands which, in fact, Uglow used to avoid distortion and inaccuracies in his representation of the figure.

The winner of the 1972 John Moores Painting Prize, Uglow’s Nude, 12 regular vertical positions from the eye (1967) had, for a long time if memory serves, occupied a place in the VGM’s corridor space outside this room. Not as ignominious as that sounds, it would be in good company today, with those same walls home to other permanent collection works (not included in this exhibition) by the likes of David Hockney, Yinka Shonibare, Lucien Freud, and Edward Burne-Jones.

For an exhibition given over entirely to a departing curator’s taste, this never feels like a navel-gazing exercise. In fact, the opposite is true, opening up understandings of collections – how they work, what they consist of, who gets to decide. By the same token, it cannot help but highlight historical oversights. You may have noticed, for instance, I’ve mentioned but one female artist here; there are few women included in the exhibition – fewer artists of colour (zero?).

I can’t be alone in finding its glaring lack of diversity face-achingly jarring, especially given the gallery’s moniker – that of Victoria – taking us right back to the bad old days of unchecked, unreconstructed Empire. But these are now issues for Draper’s successor to wrestle with (and wrestled with they must be). Collections – and the displays they produce – should not simply contain great works, but should also be reflective of society; its art movements, culture, make up and politics.

ALL THAT REMAINS, then, had us doing some reflecting, inspiring us to ask: given the same opportunity, what works would make the cut in our own show? How about you?

Mike Pinnington       

ALL THAT REMAINS: A Curator’s Choice continues at Victoria Gallery & Museum until 20 September

Images, from top: ALL THAT REMAINS installation, Mike Pinnington; The Port of Liverpool, Parker Greenwood (1892), ALL THAT REMAINS: a curator’s choice, Victoria Gallery & Museum, University of Liverpool; ALL THAT REMAINS installation, Mike Pinnington; Trenchcoat by William Utermohlen, 1968 © Estate of William Utermohlen; Nude, 12 regular vertical positions from the eye, Euan Uglow, detail (1967) 

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

Monday – 8½ 5pm @ FACT Liverpool –£8.50

Fellini’s film about filmmaking, 8½ finds Marcello Mastroianni’s blocked Guido wrestling with his directorial career. A self-referential triumph, it is considered one of the greatest commentaries on film ever committed to, well, film.

Tuesday – Exhibition Continues: Graham Crowley: I Paint Shadows @ the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool – FREE

John Moores Painting Prize winner Graham Crowley first showed at the Walker in 1976, having found inspiration there as a young artist earlier in the decade. Crowley, who has said: “I paint shadows. Light fascinates me…” has now returned to the gallery with this aptly titled solo show. Call for entries for this year’s John Moores Painting Prize close 5pm, 24 March.

Exhibition Continues: No Iconic Images @ Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool – FREE

A show asking pertinent questions of photojournalism – ‘What images of conflicts do we need? Do we believe in what we see?’ – No Iconic Images: Views of War, arrives at a time during which conflict rages everywhere you care to look. Once considered crucial in bringing the visual story to the eyes of the wider world, the exhibition interrogates conflict’s portrayal, and what, in today’s climate of proliferation, saturation and desensitisation, can possibly cut through to reach picture editors, audiences and politicians alike.

Dig! XX 7.15pm @ FACT Liverpool – £14

Winner of the Documentary Grand Jury Prize at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, Dig! is the real life story of friendship and professional rivalry between Portland bands The Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre, and their leaders Courtney Taylor-Taylor and Anton Newcombe. Filmmaker Ondi Timoner set out wanting to explore the scene they were in the vanguard of and ended up with one of the best music docs ever committed to film. For this 20th anniversary release, Dig! has been augmented with 40mins additional footage and new commentary (from BJM’s Joel Gion), for this extended one-off screening.

From the archive: The Big Interview: Anton Newcombe

Wednesday – Meet the Artist: Chris Shaw 6.30pm @ Tate Liverpool – £5/£3

Chris Shaw’s photographs make for a compelling introduction to the current Tate Liverpool exhibition, The Plant That Stowed Away, the title of which is drawn from the annotated series: I see no ships but the plant that stowed away. Catch the photographer in conversation this evening with Dr Christine Eyene on Shaw’s Weeds of Wallasey, the agency of plants, and maritime Liverpool.

Warpaint – Women at War + Recorded Q&A 7.50pm @ FACT Liverpool – £14

Margy Kinmonth has, quietly, steadfastly, and for some time, been exploring the lives of those in and around art. From Eric Ravilious to art in the aftermath of the Russian revolution, the director-producer has an eye for the story between the lines, which she has now turned to a female perspective on the frontline.

From the archive: Revolution: New Art For A New World

Thursday – Exhibition Opening: Interlude 6pm @ The Royal Standard, Liverpool – FREE

Group exhibition from Liverpool-based artist trio, Marginalia. Featuring: Jessie Birkett, whose work incorporates mythologies and the sublime; painter, India Clarke; Marginalia collective founder, writer-artist Elodie Horsewell; multidisciplinary installation artist, Ren Yeates Black; collagist Erin Shawe; and Beatrice Gillard.

Friday – In Conversation: Landlines Studio 6pm @ Williamson Art Gallery and Museum, Birkenhead – FREE

With Un/Earthed, Angela Stringer and Nicky Perrin – collectively, Landlines Studio – address and explore the alchemy and storytelling potential of the land. Join the artist duo this evening to hear about their process, inspirations, themes and retrospective exhibition, on display at the Williamson until 30 June.

Tribute to Max Richter 7pm @ the Tung Auditorium, Liverpool – £20-£35

Whether you realise it or not, neo-classical composer Max Richter has elevated many a film and TV show – from Shutter Island and Arrival to Black Mirror, The Leftovers, and Bridgerton of all things. Indeed, for a while there, his Blue Notebooks was ubiquitous. Lending a gravitas such productions mightn’t realise alone, it is unsurprising that Richter is now subject to tributes such as this by Mystery Ensemble, who bring his interpretation of Vivaldi’s The Four Season’s to the Tung. Stellar stuff.

Saturday – Eraserhead 8.30pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8.50

David Lynch’s debut feature, Eraserhead announced a remarkable new voice in Western Cinema. It is a darkly surreal vision of a film, which continues to intrigue almost half a century after its release.

From the archive: The Death of America: David Lynch’s My Head is Disconnected

Sunday – John Cale 7.30pm @ Liverpool Philharmonic Hall £35-£52

What is there left to say about John Cale? Born of Welsh mining stock; maverick composer and viola player; founder member of The Velvet Underground; producer of Nico’s best records; solo artist. Now 83, the previous two years have seen Cale release a pair of very well-received new records, the latter of which – POPtical Illusion – he’s currently touring. What is there left to say about Cale? There’s life in the avant-garde dog yet.

Mike Pinnington

Images/media, from top: 8 1/2 trailer; Dig! XX trailer; Chris Shaw, Weeds of Wallasey, 2007-12 © Chris Shaw; Warpaint – Women at War trailer; Mystery Ensemble trailer; Eraserhead trailer; Homepage: Raymond and his sons. Raymond Hubbard lost his leg in Baghdad on July 4, 2006, when a Russian-made 122 mm rocket crashed twenty feet from the guard post where he was stationed. Darien, Wisconsin, USA, 2007 © Peter van Agtmael / Magnum Photos

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

Monday – Brendan Lyons: After/Before (by appointment until Friday) @ Bridewell Studios & Gallery – FREE 

Short-run show for artist, Brendan Lyons, who has previously exhibited at the John Moores Painting Prize (2020) and as part of 2022′s Refractive Pool. Here, Lyons displays more than 20 small scale paintings (made entirely of paint).

Tuesday – Fancy Dance + Recorded Q&A 8pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8

Native American director Erica Tremblay’s debut, Fancy Dance, is a contemporary set film that interrogates colonial violence faced by generations of Indigenous people – more often than not, women. Screened by Reclaim The Frame and Native Spirit Festival, it is followed by a recorded Q&A with Tremblay.

Wednesday – The Warriors 8.30pm @ Storyhouse Chester – £9.90

A cult classic, Walter Hill’s The Warriors – set in a near future dystopian New York – sees the titular gang, falsely accused of murder, face an onslaught of misplaced revenge on rival turf as they battle to get home to safety. Notable today for its vision of a pre-gentrification NYC, at the time of its 1979 release, critic Roger Ebert declared it a ‘ballet of male violence’. Can You Dig It?!

Thursday – Beyond Van Gogh @ Exhibition Centre Liverpool – £13.20-£26.40

‘Witness over 300 masterpieces, including instantly-recognizable classics such as “The Starry Night”, “Sunflowers” and “Café Terrace at Night”, now freed from their frames’ goes the blurb for Beyond Van Gogh, opening today at Liverpool’s dockside exhibition centre. When I was a kid, I didn’t appreciate the depth and wonder of his paintings until seeing them, framed (as opposed to in postcard form), in Amsterdam’s dedicated Van Gogh museum. Can this mediated experience of his work ‘flowing across multiple surfaces’ (walls, floor and ceiling, then?) offer the same depth of engagement as witnessing first-hand the glorious texture and thickness of paint? Only one way to find out.

LOOK Photo Biennial 2024: Beyond Sight 6pm @ Open Eye Gallery – FREE 

Building on LOOK Climate Lab, here, three separate projects are brought together for LOOK Photo Biennial. Mattia Balsamini’s Protege Noctum (above) trains its lens on the ‘disappearance of the night’, documenting the effects of artificial light on the night sky; Erosion by Stephanie Wynne explores the structural waste of war via the rubble of WW2; and Melanie King’s Precious Metals considers the cosmic genesis, harmful extraction and use of silver and palladium in photography. “The artists,” says Open Eye curator Max Gorbatskyi, “use exquisite form and poetic subjects to firmly state the urgency of sustainable practices, whether in art or urban planning.”

Big Joanie 7pm @ Quarry, Liverpool – £12

Formed in the heart of London’s DIY scene, ‘Black Feminist Sistah’ punk duo, Big Joanie, land at Liverpool’s Quarry venue. Support comes in the form of the DSM IV, Lula Nova and Steel.

Friday – Liverpool Art Fair 12pm @ Royal Liver Building, Liverpool – FREE 

The annual, open submission, affordable art fair returns for this, its 10th anniversary edition. Featuring more than 200 artists, expect a wide range of styles, materials and genre in as grand a setting as they come.

Saturday – Another View: a critical discussion on accessibility and the landscape 2pm @ Lady Lever Gallery, Port Sunlight – £10 

An exhibition of women artists, Lady Lever Gallery’s Another View, offers an alternative perspective on British landscape art. Using the show as its departure point, today’s panel discussion is chaired by NML curator Dr Melissa Gustin, and features artist Lucy Jones, zoologist and environmental enthusiast Bushra Schuitemaker and academics Dr Morag Rose (Human Geography) and Dr Noreen Masud (English Literature).

Sunday – Exhibition Closing: Michelle Williams Gamaker and Dahong Hongxuan Wang 6pm @ the Bluecoat, Liverpool – FREE   

Using moving image works to explore cinema and identity, this pair of exhibitions retell the stories of those traditionally marginalised by colonial narratives. In Williams Gamaker’s multi-strand Our Mountains Are Painted on Glass, the artist celebrates and interrogates the movies she grew up with; while Hongxuan Wang – who has played Chinese American film star Anna May Wong on various occasions – exhibits Role Model, a film reflecting on and paying homage to the star’s career and afterlife. Read our review

The 400 Blows 5pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8

Paris on Screen season continues with Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (or Les quatre cents coups if you’re feeling fancy), which follows the escapades and (mostly) travails of school kid, Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), exposed at a young age to the wild life of the original French title. The director’s semi-autobiographical debut, it is a key work of the French New Wave.

Mike Pinnington

Images/media, from top: The 400 Blows (BFI restoration); Mattia Balsamini; Big Joanie, Today ft. Kim Deal; Michelle Williams Gamaker, Anna make up, photographed by Ellen Jane Rogers

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

Monday – Pit and the Pendulum 6.20pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8

A timely screening of Pit and the Pendulum from Roger Corman, who died last week, aged 98 – it was the director’s second (it must be said loose) adaptation of the work of Edgar Allan Poe. With a script from Richard Matheson and typically outlandish performance from Vincent Price, Corman brings it all together to produce a film full of shocks and rich in atmosphere. It screens again on Thursday should you miss out tonight.

Tuesday – Last Chance To See: Would You Land an Airplane There? Susan Leask: New Sculptures 6pm @ Bridewell Studios & Gallery, Liverpool – FREE

Sculptor Susan Leask, who repurposes found and unconventional materials, such as polystyrene packaging, introduces new works that “hint at stories, thoughts and places” at the Bridewell. Read Jon Barraclough’s new profile of the artist.

Peace for Palestine 7pm @ the Quaker Meeting House, Liverpool – £5 

As we watch the genocide unfold amid the cruelly obtuse and unhelpful doublespeak of so-called ‘leadership’, it is to others that we must look to keep the pressure for positive change on. In this spirit, Peace for Palestine (programmed as part of another superb and socially conscious WoWFEST), brings together author, Kamila Shamsie, Basma Ghalayini, Editor of Palestine+100 and performance poet Amina Atiq to discuss ’the roles that we can all play in demanding peace for Palestine’.

Wednesday – Webinar: Socially Engaged Photography 5pm Online – FREE 

Hosted by Norway’s national photographic space, Preus Museum, and Open Eye Gallery, this fascinating-sounding webinar – with promised insights from artists from Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden – looks at both the opportunities and challenges faced by socially engaged photographers in the Nordic region.

SixBySix Social: At The Match, by Colin McPherson: Book Launch and Exhibition 7pm @ Ropes & Twines, Liverpool – £6.50

Photobook At The Match celebrates two decades of football images from When Saturday Comes’ sterling team of photographers Simon Gill, Colin McPherson and Paul Thompson. Of the 120 matchday pictures featured, McPherson contributed 43 of them – a selection of which make up this new Ropes & Twines exhibition.

Thursday – Liverpool School of Art & Design Degree Show 5pm @ John Lennon Art and Design Building, Liverpool – FREE

Featuring Architecture, Fashion Design & Communication, Fine Art, Graphic Design and Illustration, History of Art & Museum Studies and Interior Architecture, this Thursday sees the opening of the 2024 LSAD degree shows. A good heads up for names we may see producing great, challenging work in the near future, and a barometer of the quality we should expect, LSAD’s degree show is a fixture in the city’s cultural calendar.

At The Match: Book Launch and Artist’s Talk 6pm @ Williamson Art Gallery and Museum, Birkenhead – £5

See Wednesday’s SixBySix Social entry, above.

Crywank 7.15pm @ Quarry, Liverpool – £13

In the pantheon of band names to ruin careers before they’ve even begun, Manchester’s Crywank must be up there with Selfish C*nt. Their blend of anti-folk ‘mostly sad songs‘ has, nevertheless, inspired a loyal following more than willing to forgive – and perhaps even embrace – the initially jarring moniker.

Friday – Exhibition Opening: Life at Arena 6pm @ Bridewell Studios & Gallery, Liverpool – FREE

Launch of an exhibition from the current roster of members of Arena Studios and Gallery. The opening includes work by 15 artists accompanied by DJs.

Publication Launch: A Machine to Unmake You 4pm @ FACT Liverpool – FREE 

Artist Melanie Crean’s current FACT exhibition A Machine to Unmake You considers the lives and experiences of incarcerated veterans. It’s sobering work, which looks at the myriad cultural and societal forces that results, for some, in enduring the justice system. Tonight’s publication launch includes a panel featuring ‘system-impacted’ artists who have taken part in Crean’s project.

Saturday – Exhibition Opening: The Ties That Bind @ The Atkinson, Southport – FREE

Including work by François Antoine de Bruycker (above), Linda Stein, Gillian Wearing and Laura Knight, this new exhibition explores how artists take inspiration from family life, working relationships, love stories and community, across paintings, ceramics and sculpture.

Ibibio Sound Machine 7.45pm @ Future Yard, Birkenhead – £20

Blending disco, post-punk, Afro funk and electronica, Ibibio Sound Machine’s is a winning party-hard formula. Catch them this evening hot on the heels of the launch earlier this month of fifth album, Pull The Rope.

Sunday – Eyes Wide Shut 4.30pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8

An underwhelming last act or – as Sight & Sound would have it – ‘Kubrick’s misunderstood masterwork’? When it was released just months after his death in 1999, the reception for Eyes Wide Shut was mixed. Did the director’s swansong do him and his towering career justice? Twenty five years on, however, his tale of sex, power and jealousy can be viewed with fresh eyes.

Mike Pinnington

Images/media, from top: Pit and the Pendulum trailer; Susan Leask: New Sculptures; At The Match publication; LJMU Degree Show promo artwork; Crywank; A Christening Party, by Francois Antoine de Bruycker (1816–1882)

Taking in climate change at Helsinki Biennial, diversity at the Ateneum, and visiting contrasting new galleries in an art school and bar toilets (!), Mike Pinnington’s return to Finland’s capital city is a timely reminder of how the arts are valued by the world’s happiest people… 

We’re at a table in the cosy waterfront setting of Wellamo, a tiny restaurant whose raison d’etre is its commitment to using only Finnish/Nordic ingredients. We are, therefore, taking the opportunity to enjoy some home-grown beers and wines. The place is packed with cheerful locals and whispering couples; it feels like the perfect spot to celebrate an occasion, or have a date.

This isn’t our first time in Helsinki: we’ve been lucky enough to visit several times, working with artists and institutions on text in all its forms – from gallery interpretation to artist statements. Owing to the global pandemic, though, it’s been a while. Soaking in the warm atmosphere and smells emanating from Wellamo’s kitchen, it feels good to be back.

We’re here to meet with Arja Miller, director of Helsinki Art Museum (known to all simply as HAM). We chat about the parallels and differences between art scenes in the UK and Finland, and, more specifically, between Liverpool and Helsinki; during our visit, each is host to a Biennial. And, coincidentally, Helsinki’s festival had been curated by Joasia Krysa, Professor of Exhibition Research and Head of Art and Design at Liverpool John Moores University’s School of Art and Design.

We discuss some of the artists who have made the trip from exhibiting in Liverpool over to Helsinki, such as augmented world-builders Keiken Collective (Hana Omori, Isabel Ramos and Tanya Cruz), and Danielle Braithwaite Shirley, who foregrounds Black Trans lives using video game installations – all who’ve shown at FACT Liverpool. Talk turns to commissioning, and Finland’s Percent for Art principle, whereby one percent of any construction project’s budget is designated to acquiring or funding works of art. UK readers won’t be terribly surprised to hear that Britain has never had such a policy, meaning that it’s up to other parties to stump up the money. It casts new light on cities like Liverpool’s appetite and commitment – never mind financial clout – for public art.

As outsiders, it can’t help but reinforce our sense that this part of the world thinks differently about itself – and its citizens – as Finland once again tops the UN’s World Happiness Report (which takes into account health, income and social support). We enjoy the rest of the evening chatting casually about art; we’re in good company after all.

Later in the week, we are reminded again of this sense of responsibility to citizens when meeting with the City of Helsinki‘s Acting Cultural Director, Mari Männistö. One of the initiatives she is most proud of being involved with is Culture Kids, a scheme whereby each child is invited, free of charge, to two events per year, by an assigned organisation who acts as a cultural guardian for that child.

Coming from a country in which most galleries and museums feel as though they pick up the slack for, rather than work in tandem with, local and national government when it comes to arts education and engagement, we can’t help but be impressed, but also dismayed. We reflect on how obvious and beneficial Culture Kids is – and wonder why similar government-led provision isn’t happening back in the UK.

Given such benefits, it comes as little surprise to find a smattering of English speakers in this city – and not just the bilingual locals. At the cavernous Kuva/Tila gallery, Academy of Fine Arts Mylly, University of the Arts Helsinki’s new exhibition space for students and staff, we find Irish artist and lecturer in Contemporary Art Practice, Suzanne Mooney, a resident since 2018. Over coffee, we chat about Mooney’s undergraduates, their expectations, and the question of staying in the city post-graduation to contribute to the scene here, or moving abroad for different experiences. Artist and academic both, Mooney has seen both sides. Certainly, the provision and opportunity for those studying here at the academy is ample; light-filled artist studios, cutting-edge teaching resources, and a dedicated modern gallery, all contained under the roof of this purpose-built space.

That evening we meet with a colleague of Mooney’s, and our friend from Manchester: Professor of Fine Art Pedagogy at UniArts, Magnus Quaife (who, despite the name, is not Swedish). As a modest bar crawl ensues, we take in some of Magnus’ – and our – favourite places to grab a beer in Helsinki, including trendy dive bar SalamaNation, home of Quaife’s new in-house gallery space, Suihkulähde. Translated as Fountain in Finnish, and perfectly reflecting Quaife’s sense of humour, it is, of course, in the accessible toilet. Showing only one artwork at any given time, it is at once a nod to art history via Marcel Duchamp, and an exploration of where we – and the public at large – might give a few minutes of our full attention to a print or photograph… or even the soap (by Jack Brown).

Amid the flurry of meetings, and the odd beverage, we make sure to carve out time to grasp more of the city’s rich arts and culture offer. Next morning, not too worse for wear, we head in the direction of a gallery that should be on every visitor’s radar: home of the national collection, the Ateneum. A Neo-Renaissance beauty that is a stone’s throw from the similarly striking train station, it holds great riches spanning Finland’s famed art history.

The major draw of its displays has recently been subject to a rehang, and outgoing director Marja Sakari (who will be replaced this year by Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff). “We took change as our starting point,” Sakari is quoted on the wall; “Our key concerns were the stories the collection can tell us today, and how it could truly be a collection for the whole nation.”

The sections – Art and Power, The Age of Nature, Images of a People and Modern Life – bring focus to the story, one that takes in and reflects not only the past, but also the beginnings of Finnish art, and artists’ reckoning with a tumultuous present and unpredictable future. Akseli Gallen-Kallela, known for his illustrations of Finnish national epic the Kalevala, and luminaries such as Helene Schjerfbeck and Hugo Simberg remain towering figures. Whatever your taste, there is something for you. There is always work to be done, however, especially in better reflecting a diversifying society that is barely 100 years old – and the spectre represented by a new coalition government that counts among its number the anti-immigration Finns Party (formerly known as True Finns).

Art isn’t created in a vacuum; while the romantic stereotype of it being an endeavour of solitude persists – better that the muse can strike – ideas and inspiration also spring forth in company. In the name of this and more, that evening we head to the offices of Laura Köönikkä, an independent curator, mentor and driving force behind the Finnish Art Agency. The occasion is one of simply coming together with those who might not ordinarily do so; the artists squeezed, sardine like, into a room of their peers.

Conversations, common concerns – and, no doubt, gossip – are soon animatedly shared. My multiple visits to Finland have afforded me the chance to meet many contemporary artists. This is something I deeply appreciate: to speak about how they present their work, hear about their wider practice, their influences and experiences, their hopes and expectations. And the evening presents a great opportunity to reconnect with some familiar faces. It’s genuinely lovely to see Camilla Vuorenmaa and Anu Kauhaniemi, two very different painters, whose careers I’ve followed since our first meetings on previous trips.

Not a natural conversationalist, however, I eventually take the chance to sit down. But I soon find myself chatting away with Kreetta Järvenpää, and I’m so glad I did, for she’s a photographer capable of incredible things. Her studio photographs, which must be seen to be believed, look like old master paintings of flowers. Later, I talk with Sami Havia, who brings the worlds of abstraction and figuration together in his questioning works on paper, and meet the recently crowned Young Artist Of The Year, sculptor Eetu Huhtela. All of which goes to demonstrate the richly textured make-up of Helsinki’s contemporary scene; it’s one we’re always so happy to be reacquainted with.

Next day, we head to the harbour to catch the ferry over to Vallisaari – one of Helsinki’s 330 islands which between 1918 and 2012 was under the purview of the Finnish Defence Forces. Islands have long been used by authors as a literary device; set apart from the fixed reality of the mainland by choppy waters, they readily lend themselves to flights of fancy.

Helsinki Biennial has leaned into this, staging the festival of contemporary art on Vallisaari for a second time, with the title New Directions May Emerge. This iteration takes its theme from anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s assertion that “As contamination changes world-making projects, mutual worlds – and new directions – may emerge.” It’s a thoughtful departure point, one with the intention of exploring how, even at this relatively late stage of proceedings, “we might find new [and hopefully better] ways of living in, and understanding, the world.”

Traversing Vallisaari’s woodland paths and coastline – which on our sun-kissed visit can’t help but be the star of the show – we encounter some well-selected works that enrich this idea of mutual worlds. A favourite work is by Lithuanian artist Emilija Škarnulytė (who has just been awarded the Ars Fennica prize). Her ‘eco sci-fi thriller’ Hypoxia, a multi-channel installation, weaves together traditional storytelling and the widely reported ‘discovery’ of an alien craft in the ocean, to consider humanity’s impact on the Baltic Sea, confront ecological catastrophe, and muse on the anthropocene.

Later, back on dry land, we head to HAM for the rest o9f the Biennial, where things are no less fantastical – in fact, it’s almost as if a mythological creature has escaped the island to lie in wait for us there. This is Estonian Bita Razavi’s kinetic sculpture, Kratt, whose beginnings can be found in the folklore of the artist’s homeland, and one that requires three drops of its master’s blood to be given as a gift to the devil in order for it to come ‘alive’. Taking the form of a sprawling mechanised arachnid printing press, it represents both servitude and, in its reach, the spreading of a colonial worldview.

When last we visited Finland, the UK was (unbelievably it felt back then as now) in the throes of Brexit and leaving the EU, and this time, Finland had recently joined NATO – seismic geopolitical shifts both. So it seemed fitting that we’d travelled from Liverpool – whose recent Biennial was “addressing the history and temperament” of a city haunted by the transatlantic slave trade, and what was once referred to as the second city of the British Empire – to Helsinki, undertaking, through art and artists (and an evolving population), its own reckoning with people and politics.

Each of these festivals of contemporary art wrestled with issues whose implications are both local and global. It’s art’s job to respond to, contend with, and to challenge. Neither Liverpool nor Helsinki lacks artists. Neither should they be found lacking in response to the most pressing concerns of our times.

Mike Pinnington

Images from top: Ateneum galleries, Helsinki. Stairway and studios in Academy of Fine Arts Main Building Mylly, University of the Arts Helsinki. Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Aino Myth triptych, 1891, Ateneum. Mike Pinnington on Vallisaari island, for Helsinki Biennial, and ferry. All photography by Laura Robertson, 2023, apart from second from last: Emilija Skarnulyte, Hypoxia, 2023, Helsinki Biennial 12.6.-17.9.2023, Vallisaari, Helsinki, Photo: © HAM/Helsinki Biennial/Kirsi Halkola

With thanks to Finnish Art Agency and Helsinki Partners

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

Monday – Drawing with coal: Liverpool to Silesia @ Editions Gallery, Liverpool – FREE

Featuring the work of artists Jordan L Rodgers and Paul Romano, Drawing with coal engages with and opens a conversation between Silesia, Poland, and Liverpool.

MADE IT 2023 @ The Royal Standard, Liverpool – FREE

Manchester-based Short Supply’s annual MADE IT exhibition was established to showcase recent artist graduates from the north west and this year travels to Liverpool for the first time. On display at The Royal Standard until 6 October.

From the archive: Read more about Short Supply

Tuesday – I, Daniel Blake 7.30pm @ the Playhouse, Liverpool – £11-£26

Part analysis of the criminally unfair benefits system, and all rallying cry, Ken Loach’s Palme d’Or-winning, Cannes-standing-ovation-inducing realist drama I, Daniel Blake comes to the stage. As the marketing copy tells us “With people living in poverty in the UK, this is not fiction. It is reality.” Urgent drama for difficult times.

From the archive: Read our interview with the film’s producer, Rebecca O’Brien

John Moores Painting Prize 2023 @ the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool – £5

2023 iteration of the prize that counts David Hockney, Richard Hamilton, Mary Martin, and Rose Wylie among its winners – to which number it has just added Graham Crowley (below) – continues.

Wednesday – Dementia-Friendly Screening: Back To The Future 12pm @ FACT Liverpool – £4.30

Watching old films helps people with dementia reconnect with memories – this screening is open to all, but especially for those coping with its effects. Arrive early for chat, free tea, coffee and biscuits ahead of the wild ride offered by Robert Zemeckis’ 1985 blockbuster, which sees teen Marty McFly team up with his pal, the scientist Doc Brown, for time traveling escapades.

Manchester Collective: Different Trains 8pm @ Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester – from £9

Different Trains, the first of Manchester Collective’s 23/24 offerings, continues its run. Inspired by composer Steve Reich’s childhood memories of railway journeys, expect a live score for strings interspersed with field recordings and fragments of spoken word.

Thursday – The Mirage – An Evening of Art and Music 6pm @ Bridewell Studios, Liverpool – FREE

One night only opportunity to catch abstract painter Gareth Kemp’s never before exhibited large scale 2018 triptych, playing backdrop to performances from bands Me and Deboe & Puzzle. Elsewhere in the once derelict police station’s spaces, Kemp’s fellow artist Nick Sykes shows a selection of new and old works.

From the archive: Read our review of Gareth Kemp’s 2022 exhibition, Light Sensitive Area Ahead

Persona 8.30pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8

Screening of Ingmar Bergman’s psychological study of an actress (Liv Ullman) experiencing emotional breakdown, and the nurse – played by Bibi Andersson – fighting to reach her. Considered by many to be the director’s masterpiece, the film was named in Sight and Sound Magazine’s top 20 Greatest Films of All Time.

Friday – Exhibition Opening: Helene Appel: Among Trees, Among Sand Grains @ The Williamson Art Gallery & Museum, Wirral – FREE

What happens when an everyday object is reproduced on a 1:1 scale in paint? What new life does it take on and what is left of its previous incarnation? Sitting between abstraction, realism, and sculpture, Berlin-based artist Helene Appel paints quotidian items such as car headlights (above), envelopes and tree bark, asking us to reconsider our relationship with the world.

Saturday – British Ceramics Biennial in venues across Stoke-on-Trent – FREE

The British Ceramics Biennial covers the spectrum of what we think of when we think of ceramics. Including a plethora of exhibitions, look out for Fresh Talent in the shape of artists Dorcas Casey, Nico Conti and Leora Honeyman, each awarded residencies in the previous festival; an examination of marginalised histories by Neil Brownsword; and William Cobbing’s Social Substance at AirSpace gallery, which sees a series of new video, sculpture, and performance works explore identity through clay – a material positioned here as a “social, communal, material force”.

Sunday – Last Chance To See: JMW Turner with Lamin Fofana: Dark Waters @ Tate Liverpool – £10/FREE for Members

Subtle yet thought-provoking, this inspired pairing of perhaps the UK’s most famed painter with contemporary electronic music producer, DJ, and artist Lamin Fofana might at first seem counter-intuitive. But Fofana’s soundscape addressing themes of movement, migration, alienation and belonging complements brilliantly the treacherously choppy waters (top) so famously depicted by Turner, opening up new space for contemplation. A near perfect combination of old master with new perspectives.

Mike Pinnington 

Images: JMW Turner, Waves Breaking Against the Wind © Tate; Light Industry by Graham Crowley; MCR Collective Different Trains artwork; H.Appel, Car-Light, 2023

“A celebration of prize-winning artists.” Mike Pinnington reflects on the 2020 & 2022 John Moores Painting Prize China Group Show… 

There has long been misguided talk about painting having reached the end of the road. That nothing more of interest could be done with the medium which had given us da Vinci, Rembrandt, Gentileschi, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Picasso, O’Keefe. Add to or take away from the pantheon as per your own taste – the list of artists who have contributed to our understanding of the world is as long as a piece of string. There, of course, remains serious conversation and debate to be had about so-called Zombie Abstraction and – more recently – Zombie Figuration. Each named for a lack of evolution in their respective forms, they play very well on Instagram if not with critics.

But away from the seductive allure of social media, many artists continue to strive to say something interesting as opposed to making decorative identikit art for living room walls. Certainly, from my 2023 vantage point, painting isn’t (un-)dead. If anything, released from the shackles of conforming to one art movement or another in any given period, and with an acknowledgement, finally, that painting also happens away from London, Paris or New York – and is sometimes even made by women – its transportational potential seems revitalised. Exposure to art made by those with names Microsoft Word doesn’t recognise, in other countries and from different cultural perspectives than our own, can be both eye-opening and thrilling.

All of which brings me to the John Moores Painting Prize which, since 2010, following a partnership with the Fine Arts Academy of Shanghai University, has showcased contemporary Chinese painting in Liverpool, home to the oldest Chinese community in Europe (and also the largest Chinese Arch). The relationship is apt – Liverpool and Shanghai having been made twin cities in 1999. This year, following the previous iteration’s lockdowns-hit compliment of Chinese artists’ works appearing at the Walker via projector only, all ten winners from a combination of both the 2020 and 2022 prizes have spent a month in the studio at the Liverpool School of Art and Design, and work created during the residency is currently on display at LJMU’s Exhibition Research Lab.

Including markedly different styles and traditions, the selection takes up two levels of the art school. Beginning with the ground floor’s Exhibition Research Lab, things are off to a strong start with the Buddhism-infused process-emphasising abstraction of Peng Yong (above). In acrylic on PVC board, with finely applied repeated brush strokes of gradients of blue and red, the grouping is clustered together under variations of the shared title 3000 Realms in a Single Moment of Life. You could easily get lost in those brush strokes. Transporting the viewer from the corporeal world and immersing them in the spiritual, it seems not impossible to glimpse, in the mind’s eye at least, those 3000 realms of the title.

Emerging, almost blinking into the light to reorientate oneself, nearby you’ll encounter a number of pieces by You Xin. The contrast between them – in palette and material – is stark; on first viewing I mistook them for the work of two different artists altogether. Rendered in charcoal powder, Holidays, Story, and The Start of Autumn (all 2023) evoke mournful grey days – most probably Sunday – spent whiling away the hours peering dolefully at the world from behind a windowpane made blurry by the constant streaming of rain. Melancholic and beautiful, these were created during the artist’s frequently sodden stay in Liverpool and capture the at first incremental and then sudden lurch into the darker days of a new season. In glorious technicolour, the other pieces on display here have more to do with op art than elegiac mood; they are no less successful for that. Utilising optical pigment, these demonstrate how You Xin employs colour, angle and light to change and dictate the viewer’s experience of them.

Similarly inviting viewers to consider their role in the gallery as dynamic rather than merely passive is Jin Dawei. His canvases (all 2023) hang from the ceiling, bisecting the space; they subtly punctuate flow and our perception. Provoking a different multi-dimensional feel, they open a dialogue that isn’t always available in the usually 2D, framed and wall-mounted world of painting. Li Qing’s figurative quartet, meanwhile, is all about narrative. Elegant, and leaning toward the surreal, her paintings are full of imposing, monolithic buildings. From them, fragments, scenes, even fully formed stories seem to flow; the doors, windows, and other architectural fissures in these feats of engineering are heavy with implication. One made this year is called Going on a Long Journey. The road less travelled. An underlying sinister atmosphere pervades. A frisson of warning that it may not always be wise to accept the voyage of discovery offered. There is no visible human presence – perhaps we are the unwitting intended protagonist here, ensnared within the confines of expertly mood conjured in paint.

Downstairs, you’ll find the work of Wang Longwei (below), an art teacher by trade who uses his cubist-inflected art as an expression both of his identity and the state of the world. In A Practice on the Raft of Medusa (2022) we see a wretched decapitated figure – who we’d hazard is playing cat’s cradle as opposed to puppet master, with what we must assume is their own head. Alongside it, Out of Control (2023) finds numerous figures foundering upon the fractured ground on which they are strewn, unable to gain a foothold much less any traction on their situation. In our uncertain world, full of nasty surprises, we’ve all felt this way.

While each of the artists have on display work made during their Liverpool residency period, few bear the imprint or inspiration of what they found here as clearly and immediately as Tan Bide (top). His idea for the protest placards exhibited here emerged out of a chance meeting with Bob and Roberta Smith’s All Schools Should be Art Schools (2016), which the artist saw on a trip to Tate Liverpool. But rather than simply mimic the messages of the source material, these are infused with meanings pertinent to him.

Exclamations of PEACE and LOVE might recall the Beatles, but then there is Chinaman, a kind of caricature who, with his exaggerated features, addresses longstanding racist Western stereotypes of a people and culture deemed alien. In another, a Chinese Arch – perhaps the city’s own – is subject to an assault by climate change in the form of cascading water; in the foreground a car floats by while an anchor is unmoored amid the deluge.

Art, despite the assumptions we all regularly make, needn’t be difficult; as Tan Bide so eloquently asserts, it can be direct, clear and also a call to action. Indeed, paint and painting, in the right hands (as demonstrated here), remains an open-handed medium of discourse. It is not dead, or even un-dead; calls for us to relegate it so risk overlooking the myriad opportunities it offers, not only to new voices, but for new conversations to emerge from the clamour.

Mike Pinnington     

The 2020 & 2022 John Moores Painting Prize China Winners Group Show continues @ the LJMU Exhibition Research Lab until Friday

Images, from top: Benjamin Nuttel; Mike Pinnington 

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

Monday – Exhibition Opening: 2020 & 2022 John Moores Painting Prize China Winners Group Show 3pm @ the Exhibition Research Lab, LJMU, Duckinfield Street, Liverpool – FREE

With planning of the last John Moores Painting Prize hit by lockdowns, the usual compliment of Chinese artists’ works appeared via projector only. This time around they get their own space to breathe. Alongside existing paintings new works were created this summer when the artists were resident at Liverpool School of Art and Design. This first UK exhibition of the 10 artists’ works spilling out across two floors runs for just five days, so catch it while you can.

Read Laura Robertson’s short story inspired by 2020 China category prize winner, Li Qing’s The Window

Tuesday – FACT Together @ FACT Liverpool & Online – FREE

FACT does vital work in platforming and encouraging new talent by commissioning early career artists to produce new digital art. The result is FACT Together, which this year sees Liverpool and Manchester-based artists Dongni Liang (above), Nicole Prior, Charlotte Southall and Ellie Towers exhibit both in gallery and online.

Wednesday – Goodfellas 2.30pm @ FACT Liverpool – £8

“As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.” Celebrating one of the most fruitful relationships in 20th Century Hollywood, the Scorsese/De Niro season continues this week with Goodfellas, a high water mark of cinema’s love affair with the Italian-American mob.

Thursday – Mellowtone presents… 7.30pm @ the Everyman, Liverpool – £11

Intimate showcase from Mellowtone, known for championing artists at the intersection of folk, blues, roots and more. Tonight sees a typically eclectic mix, with Sunstack Jones, She’s In The Trees, Plazzy Bag, and DJ Richie Vegas.

Friday – Late At Tate Liverpool: Fast Forward 6pm @ Tate Liverpool – FREE

With Tate Liverpool due to close next month for a face-lift described by the gallery as a “major reimagining”, tonight marks a great opportunity to spend an evening in the building for art, music, performance, workshops and talks. The hot ticket for many will be discussion Reimagining Tate Liverpool, led by director Helen Legg.

Saturday – Exhibition Opening: John Moores Painting Prize 2023 @ the Walker Art Gallery – FREE

As the event web copy observes, The John Moores Painting Prize (first held in 1957), is the UK’s “longest-running painting competition.” For a prize that counts David Hockney, Richard Hamilton, Mary Martin, and Rose Wylie among its winners, it should be considered a significant element of local and national arts calendars. With the 2023 winner due to be announced this Thursday, today’s opening represents a chance to experience the buzz for yourself.

Read Maja Lorkowska-Callaghan on most recent winner, Kathryn Maple

Manchester Collective: Different Trains 7.30pm @ the Tung Auditorium, Liverpool – £20/£10

We’re going to get in early and say that we count ourselves as big fans of autumn. There are many reasons, not least of which is the huddling together in front of world class performers whose goal it is to deliver a new season of glorious programming. So we welcome with open arms Different Trains, the first of Manchester Collective’s 23/24 offerings. Inspired by composer Steve Reich’s childhood memories of railway journeys, expect a live score for strings interspersed with field recordings and fragments of spoken word. Support comes in the form of Bill Ryder-Jones.

Read an interview with Manchester Collective’s co-director, Adam Szabo

Sunday – Last Chance To See: Liverpool Biennial: uMoya: The Sacred Return of Lost Things – FREE

In uMoya: The Sacred Return of Lost Things, we found a Biennial that has rarely felt so in touch with the concerns of the city it calls home. Sensitively addressing Liverpool’s prominent role in, and the legacies of Empire, if you haven’t experienced it yet – and we recommend you do – this week is your last opportunity.

Read Our Review

Last Chance To See: LuYang Arcade Liverpool @ FACT Liverpool – FREE

The language of video games has long been used by contemporary artists. Increasingly, as hierarchies collapse and gaming achieves acceptance, this has been less formalism and more genuine cultural exploration. The work of Shanghai-based artist LuYang, who has said “creating a game is like creating your own world,” embraces this, to experiment with: “identity, nationality, gender – even your existence as a human being”. In their exhibition, that means a gallery full of retro-futuristic games drawing on anime, sci-fi, Buddhism and neuroscience.

Mike Pinnington

Images: MCR Collective Different Trains artwork; Dongni Liang, Kudzu Whispers, 2023, Courtesy-of-the-artist; Goodfellas trailer; Tate Gallery Liverpool © liverpoolbiennial2021.com; Ranti Bam, Ifas, 2023. Installation view at St Nicholas Church Gardens, Liverpool Biennial 2023. Photography by Mark McNulty. Courtesy Liverpool Biennial

Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events – and loads of it’s free!

Monday – Alien Resident: Under Investigation @ Ropes & Twines, Bold Street, Liverpool – FREE

We’ve long admired speciality coffee shop Ropes & Twines’ commitment to displaying carefully curated photography. Organised since 2019 by Merseyside photography instigators SixBySix, the latest work in the space is by Chester-based Stephen Clarke, whose beautifully composed black and white pictures offer up a glimpse of 1980s Americana. Made during a year he spent post-graduation in San Diego, they are the response of a stranger in a strange land; and yet – mediated via TV and film – they feel oddly familiar. Drink them in with some of Liverpool’s finest coffee.

Read Over My Shoulder – Hollywood and the Photographs of Stephen Clarke

Tuesday – Macbeth [imitating the dog] @ the Playhouse, Liverpool – £11-£31

The wyrd sisters; the power behind the throne; and the loneliness of ambition. Macbeth’s key messages resonate down the centuries and continue to ring loudly in our times. So, it is little wonder then, that a new production of perhaps Shakespeare’s most famous and iconic play arrives this week at the Playhouse. Retold by imitating the dog, expect a fusion of live action and innovative tech to update the period piece as contemporary ‘neon noir’ thriller.

Wednesday – Alien Day: Alien/Aliens Double Bill @ FACT Liverpool – £13.20/concessions

It all begins with a fateful distress call from the terraformed moon LV-426. It will end (but also continue across many a sequel) in discovery, carnage and no small loss of life. Yes, this is the Alien universe, whose departure point – Ridley Scott’s Alien – remains the high watermark for many an aficionado. But why argue about what iteration of the franchise makes for the finest when you can sit back and, if not relax exactly, take in this timely double-bill of Xenomorph-inspired sci-fi horror.

Read A Special Kind Of Devil: Remembering H.R. Giger

Thursday – Richard Dawson @ The Tung Auditorium, Liverpool – £22.50

Expansive and ambitious, Richard Dawson’s latest album The Ruby Cord completes a trilogy of sorts alongside 2017’s Peasant and its follow-up, titled 2020. The blurb asks the listener to “Pop in your earpiece, close your eyes and embrace the wonders (and horrors) of augmented reality and prepare to travel 500 years into the future.” Transported by Dawson’s songs, when we get there, the future bears a remarkable similarity to now – which speaks more to the grim reality of present day Earth than it does to any failure of our time-travelling troubadour. As he observes: “It’s a leap into a future that is well within reach, in some cases already here.”

Friday – Apollo Remastered @ Williamson Art Gallery and Museum – FREE

Space, as a certain tech billionaire knows all too well, remains the final frontier. But when Kennedy announced in his 1962 speech that “we choose to go to the moon”, everything seemed possible – even if it was unimaginable by most. The mission that saw humans set foot on the moon was Apollo 11, an event that, in some ways, we’re still coming to terms with (as SpeaceX’s recent explosion indicates). So, it is with a kind of awe that we view images from that feted era, and this exhibition invites us to explore the Moon landings up close across spacewalks, iconic views of Earth and more.

Saturday – LuYang Arcade Liverpool, Curator Tour @ FACT Liverpool – FREE

The language of video games has long been used by contemporary artists. Increasingly, as hierarchies collapse and gaming has encroached on mainstream acceptability, this has been less formalism and more genuine cultural exploration. The work of Shanghai-based artist LuYang, who has said “creating a game is like creating your own world,” embraces this, to experiment with “identity, nationality, gender – even your existence as a human being”. In their new exhibition, that means a gallery full of retro-futuristic games drawing on anime, sci-fi, Buddhism and neuroscience. Join FACT’s Head of Programme, Maitreyi Maheshwari this Saturday, should you need help navigating this brave new world.

Sunday – Under a Hot Sun by Kathryn Maple @ the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool – FREE

The John Moores Painting Prize 2020 winner stars in a solo show at the Walker Art Gallery. In our review, which you can read here, Maja Lorkowska-Callaghan describes Under a Hot Sun as a richly deserved focus on the artist’s practice. Drawn from works made across 365 days audiences, says Lorkowska-Callaghan, are advised to “set aside some time, for this is not a show to rush through”.

Mike Pinnington

Images, from top: © Stephen Clarke; Alien Promotional Poster; LuYang, Material World Knight (2018) still. Courtesy of the artist

“I wouldn’t paint the walls in my house pink, green and brown, so why do these hues work so well here?” Kathryn Maple’s aptly titled exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery resonates with warmth, finds Maja Lorkowska-Callaghan… 

I’m not sure if I should admit that I have long been a fan of Kathryn Maple’s work at the start of a review of her show, having followed her artistic career for the last four or five years. Then again, art critique is an inherently subjective activity, no matter how much we try to convince ourselves, or our readers, otherwise.

Perhaps I mention this mostly because I am surprised by how much Maple’s work resonates with me. Despite loving her paintings when seen on Instagram, I’ve always been surprised by my own reaction – her use of colour is the exact opposite of what I would consider harmonious. I definitely wouldn’t paint the walls in my house pink, green and brown so why do these hues work so well on her canvases? We will dive into this shortly.

Kathryn Maple studied Fine Art Printmaking in Brighton and like many of the currently most compelling drawers and painters (including Joana Galego, Alice Macdonald and Jake Grewal), she then went on to study at the Royal Drawing School. Since then, she has exhibited widely in London, as well as Leeds, Kent and Berlin. In 2018 she was shortlisted for the John Moores Painting Prize, while in 2021 she won with her work The Common. This is where her close relationship with National Museums Liverpool and the city itself began, leading to the present solo show at the Walker Art Gallery.

As seen in The Common, Under a Hot Sun features Maple’s signature figures in both urban and rural spaces. While the official exhibition blurb states that the title is referring to the climate crisis, the paintings themselves don’t have an overarching, environmentally didactic purpose. Instead, some of them show everyday situations in the oppressive temperature of a heatwave, like a simple summer picnic with friends, strawberries and sun cream. It is sometimes in those moments, when we suddenly feel the extremes of the weather on our own sunburnt skin that climate panic quietly sets in. These paintings and their turbulent colours communicate a little bit of this sensation.

Let’s go back to the unexpected colours though, because they are the true star of this show. Deep blues are broken with rusty reds and yellows, pastel turquoise sits comfortably next to pale brown. Grass goes from luscious green to luminous orange, through purples and light pinks. There are just so! many! colours! To the degree that, in each piece, my mind has to isolate sections of the paintings to see the full extent of the work that has gone into them. Large sections of the paintings rely on contrast, like tiny lemon yellow marks on swathes ultramarine blue. What’s most striking is that despite the contrasts, the paintings maintain a serene aura, with the dissonant areas actually complementing each other – the mark of a true colourist.

It isn’t only the colours though, as mark-making here is just as important. Many of us may turn our nose up at Impressionism and even Pointillism’s current hyper-commercialised format with Monet’s Impression, Sunrise adorning umbrellas and notepads worldwide. Despite this, artists continue to draw on the Impressionists’ advanced understanding of colour combinations and mark-making. Would Maple appreciate such a comparison? I can’t know for sure, but it is difficult to avoid when her paintings are complex combinations of tiny, bold-coloured strokes. Her dots, lines and dabs are so concentrated that it is simply impossible to walk away after a brief glance from afar. The shapes make sense, the composition is clear, yet you have to get closer and really look.

There is something comforting about a painting that demands so much of your attention – like a book you can’t put down, these works seem to extend an inviting hand to a world of effortless but concentrated focus. It’s like staring into space but this time you’re not looking inward – mindfulness without having to be guided into it.

In a practical sense, you’re examining the result of months and months of painstaking work, preparatory drawings, composition and colour decisions. In fact, Maple’s first monograph A Year of Drawings, published this year, documents the 365 drawings that she created throughout 2022.

The exhibition is small, consisting of 14 works on canvas and paper contained within one square room. Perhaps this is also where the air of comfort comes from: the lack of natural light makes for a cosier setting to envelop yourself fully in the dissonant colours.

The display would, though, benefit from just a few more works on paper to really see the complexity of preparation for each larger piece. One lonely, monochrome monoprint displayed in the corner doesn’t represent the breadth of this particular medium’s possibilities and certainly does not capture the artist’s sensitivity or technical experiments. If anything, it feels a little out of place.

Still, despite its diminutive size, Under a Hot Sun offers enough to satisfy a viewer hungry for aesthetic experiences. Set aside some time too, because this is not a show to rush through: change your perspective, move in a little closer and step back to really immerse yourself in the dots and dabs. It’s a privilege too, to see the work of a young artist in a public institution, where often the most we can hope for is a group show between the blockbusters. A solo exhibition, however small, provides a much needed in-depth look into an artist’s practice. In this case, I predict Kathryn Maple’s career will continue to shimmer as brightly as her gorgeous paintings.

Maja Lorkowska-Callaghan

Under a Hot Sun by Kathryn Maple continues at the Walker Art Gallery until 8 May