Liverpool Art & Design Academy (ADA)

Archive for the ‘Public Art’ Category

LJMU and Shanghai University are pleased to announce the launch of the John Moores Critics Award in the UK, which recognises emerging new talent in critical writing about contemporary art.

The Awards in Shanghai and Liverpool will provide an international platform for budding critics in both countries to connect with their audiences and arts communities.

The UK John Moores Critics Award runs parallel to the John Moores Painting Prize as part of this year’s Liverpool Biennial at the Walker Art Gallery (National Museums Liverpool). Judging has already started on the Award in China as the panel is set the task of whittling down the entries of critical writing, focusing on the John Moores Painting Prize China held earlier this year in Shanghai.

In the UK, entrants will have to focus their critical eye on this year’s John Moores Painting Prize shortlist.

The UK Award closes on 28 October and winners will be announced publicly at the Walker Art Gallery (Liverpool) on Friday 16 November 2012.
Professor Juan Cruz, artist and Director of the LJMU School of Art and Design commented: “Critical writing about art, and art itself – like all forms of independent thinking – are constantly under threat from the pressure to conform exerted by social, political and consumer forces, whether in China or the UK. This new award is an important way to bring those pressures to mind and to resist
them, as well as to share experience between two significant art schools in the two countries.”

Professor Wang Dawei, Dean of the College of Fine Arts at Shanghai University said: “Our responsibility as scholarly and socially engaged organisations is to develop critical thinking about art and the importance of international cultural exchanges. This is particularly important as Liverpool and Shanghai are twinned cities and have a breadth of shared history and contemporary alliances.”

Two winners, one from the UK and one from China, will be selected by an esteemed panel of judges.

• Marjorie Allthorpe-Guyton, UK President of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA)
• David Batchelor, artist and writer
• Sam Thorne, Associate Editor, Frieze Magazine.

Each will receive £2,000, plus the opportunity to complete a three week exchange visit to either the UK or Shanghai, as guests of either LJMU or Shanghai University. The winner from this year’s Award in China will be visiting Liverpool during the Biennial.

Four further awards of £1,000 will be presented to two highly commended entrants to the competition in each country.

Winning entries will also be published on a new dual language John Moores Critics Award website and published in a bilingual publication, alongside the winners of the John Moores Painting Prize. This will be jointly edited by LJMU’s School of Art and Design and the University of Shanghai.

How to enter

Critics of all ages and abilities are welcome to enter. Although the Painting Prize exhibition is open till 6 January, the Critics Award is open until Sunday 28 October. Entries received after this date will not be considered so please bear this in mind if you would like to enter.

Once you have visited the show at the Walker Art Gallery, consider what you have seen and think about how it has inspired you or otherwise. We encourage you to read the details in the official Painting Prize catalogue and online, then write your response piece, aiming for between 750-1000 words or equivalent in Chinese characters. Each piece will be judged anonymously and the winners’ names will only be revealed to the judging panel once a unanimous decision is arrived at.

All works should be electronic rather than paper-based, and emailed to: jmca@ljmu.ac.uk before the closing date.

Liverpool City Council is meeting on Thursday, 3rd March to approve proposals to make dramatic budget cuts including to its arts budget. This will result in a number of council supported arts activities ceasing to take place (though some are protected for a year at least). Following 28% cuts to local government funding in the spending review, all local authorities are reviewing their budgets. If you care about arts provision in your area and believe that artistic activity and opportunities should continue to be supported.

There are three important things you can do to show decision makers how much you value the arts in Liverpool and why they should too.It is important that as many people as possible turn up to support the arts in Liverpool. Good attendance from people who value the arts will show Councillors that the arts in Liverpool are vital, valued and should not be cut.

The full council will meet at 5.00pm on Wednesday 2 March in the Council Chamber, Town Hall, High Street, Liverpool. Members of the Public may attend and there is an opportunity for the public to ask questions and make statements (these will need to be submitted in advance, contact the council for more information). Check the I Value the Arts website for details about how you can get involved

For the Agenda and other relevant papers, click here

The Sound Agents is an artist led not for profit arts organisation founded by Liverpool School of Art & Design Associate Research Fellow Mr John J Campbell and Artist/PhD Researcher Ms Moira Kenny in 2010. Working with the Chinese community, L1 residents and business sector to highlight and encourage international research, collaborations and development within Chinatowns in London, Paris, New York and San Francisco.

Mr Campbell & Ms Kenny are currently sourcing songs to produce a Chinatown my Chinatown CD of Chinese songs from Traditional Folk, Classic to Pop and working in partnership with the Ming-Ai Institute and Central St Martin’s London to create a major International collaboration and future conference.

Work in progress includes Radio Chinatown based in Liverpool.
As part of this years Chinese New Year celebrations The Sound Work in The Black-E Dome was recorded, developed and produced by Mr Campbell and Ms Kenny using archived audio material of residents of Chinatown and present day recordings, ambient sound of shipping, Chinatown sounds, Buddha Machine and morse code.

www.internationalchinesesoundagency.blogspot.com

A newspaper was also produced as a celebration of the success of the Shanghai Expo and represents a coming together of artists and researchers to offer their personal responses to the oldest Chinese Community in Europe.

The newspaper Chinatown My Chinatown can be downloaded here and was edited, designed and published in Liverpool, by Moira Kenny, John Campbell, Jon Barraclough and Mike Carney.

Special thanks to Liverpool City Council who financially supported this work as a celebration of the success of the Shanghai Expo and to everyone who contributed to the publication in their varying ways. Thanks also to Martin Downie for the publication of the newspaper and Andy Freeney and Graham Gildea for Technical Support.

Chinese New Year,
Liverpool 2011.

Bed Peace at the Bluecoat – The making and screening from Dorothy on Vimeo.

Liverpool collective Dorothy created a digital installation at the Bluecoat Gallery Liverpool to mark the anniversary of what would have been John Lennon’s 70th birthday and the 30th anniversary of his death in 1980. The project, formed part of the city’s season of events paying tribute to Lennon. Members of the public were invited to get on a bed and show their support for peace. We collected 300 images in 2 hours and over 500 people took part.

A film of the installation was screened on 9th December on Ocean’s media screen (Europe’s largest commercial LED screen), opposite Liverpool Lime Street to coincide with the UK anniversary of Lennon’s death.

View the final installation here:

Bed Peace at the Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool from Dorothy on Vimeo.

Exhibition Review by Dr Robert Macdonald.

Viewed at a distance the Irish ‘problem’ has always been a complex issue of history, politics and religion. I have found it all very difficult to understand. However, Stuart Borthwick’s close up documentary photographic exhibition helps us to understand the visual complexity of Irish popular mural art and this goes part of the way to improve our overall understanding.

The photographs included in this exhibition were taken in Belfast 2008-2010, and exhibited at the Liverpool School of Art and Design in November in 2010. Whilst conflict in Ireland is centuries old, the genesis of the troubles of the late 20th century, originated in 1922, when following a Civil War and the passing of the Government of Ireland Act, Ireland was partitioned into the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland.

Unionists had painted wall murals as far back as 1908 and later, at the time of the Troubles in 1981, they became a noticeable feature, marking the Republican hunger strikes. The muralists had no formal artist qualifications and Loyalists and Republicans used the gable ends of residential properties in Unionist and Nationalist areas to further sectarian interests. The impermanence of murals means that many of their messages and themes have been lost. However, some murals are now seen as a semi-permanent fixtures on Belfast’ cityscape, and attract tourists from around the world. The murals commemorate the dead of all sides and they demarcate territory.

Popular art, such as the murals of Belfast, transcend narrow affiliations of particular political and ideologies and without connections to one or another artist schools. According to Gramsci popular art is historical, political and popular to its roots. It must ‘penetrate the soil of the people’. Popular art is the ‘wind of the people’, its a living language. Its a true art of its own time and stands comparison with Picasso’s Guernica, murals of Siqueiros and Orozco.

For those people interested in popular art and Irish history this excellent exhibition is not to be missed; it tells the story of a fraction of the Irish murals, and gives us an insight into the relationship between the past, present and future of the North of Ireland.

The exhibition is accompanied by a well illustrated academic pamphlet which includes a helpful bibliography.

Further Reading: Art & Society: Essays in Marxist Aesthetics, Adolfo Sanchez Vazquez,

Merlin Press, London 1973. See Chp on Truly Popular Art.

LJMU’s recently launched Shang-Pool Arcadia, in collaboration with the University of Shanghai and involving academics, students and the public has been nominated for a Learning Without Frontiers Award for innovations in Further and Higher Education alongside Oxford University and Emantras, USA.
It is now up to the public to decide the overall award winner, leaving an opportunity to vote for this LJMU project.

The voting page here and the deadline is 4th January 2011.

Peter Appleton, LJMU Reader in Creative Technology Artist and Director of the project explained:

“As the impact of academic research on the public is high on the education agenda at present, this brings out an unexpected collaboration between arts and science academics, students and the public which is effectively using ‘Second Life’ live to share academic knowledge with the community and to impact on regeneration and rebuilding of destroyed cultures.”

Read More at LJMU

Liverpool’s National Conservation Centre will close to visitors as a result of government cuts. The city centre venue will close at 5pm on Friday 17 December.

National Museums Liverpool, which is funded by central government, received a 15% cut to its budget in October. This was on top of a 3.5% earlier this year. Managers have been working to maintain its world class venues and safeguard jobs as much as possible.

After reviewing costs of managing all our buildings, it is no longer possible to afford to keep the National Conservation Centre open as a visitor attraction.

“We bitterly regret having to close one of our venues to visitors but this is the harsh reality of government cuts. If you cut public spending there is pain for the public.”

Read more here.

On Wednesday 15th we would like to welcome our current Australian residency artist Catherine Bourne to the city with an open studio event/ mince pie and mulled wine social.

Catherine, from Melbourne, is hosted by Liverpool Biennial for 3 months undertaking a residency funded by the Australia Arts Council, and is based in Static studios. She will be opening her studio up for the evening and sharing her photographic and film work. In the styles of early twentieth century documentary portraiture and occult photography Catherine incorporates monstrous or hybrid bodily grotesques who inhabit impenetrable spaces and are concerned with the visceral response of the spectator.

Join us at STATIC Gallery, Roscoe Lane, Liverpool on Wednesday 14 December from 6.00 – 8.00pm for a evening of mulled wine, disastrously home made mince pies, cheap Christmas crackers and unadulterated festive joy.

For more information please contact Hannah@biennial.com

During March-April 2011 the Cromwell Museum in Huntingdon will be showing Modern Takes on Cromwell. To complement the exhibition the Museum is running an open art competition. Oliver Cromwell’s image has been portrayed in many ways, positively and negatively, over the last 350 years. It has been the source of inspiration for portraits, historical paintings, coins and medals, cartoons and caricatures.The Cromwell Museum was established in 1962 and is housed in the former town grammar school where Cromwell was a pupil. The Museum’s permanent collection includes work by significant 17th century artists, such as Robert Walker, as well as 19th century and later works. The competition invites artists to respond to Cromwell and to submit original work for exhibition. Each entry must be submitted on Friday 15th April and accompanied by a completed entry form. Works cannot be accepted earlier and they must be collected on Monday 18th April. Because of space restrictions two-dimensional works submitted should not measure more than 500mm in any dimension. Three-dimensional works should fit within a cube no larger than 300mm x 300mm x 300mm. Digital works should be capable of being viewed on a standard pc (not Mac format)

The Huntingdon Library and Archive (200m from the Museum) will be the venue for the exhibition of submitted works over the weekend of the 16th and 17th April. The winning works will then be shown in the Museum as part of Modern Takes.The competition has three categories of entry: for young people, schools and colleges and over 18s. Click here for more details.

If anyone is interested in this project and needs to research Cromwell and his image, then there is an important statue of Cromwell in Warrington which History of Art Programme Leader, Emma Roberts has researched for her book on public sculpture. You can email her at E.E.Roberts@ljmu.ac.uk for any of the relevant pages from the book you would like to use.

NME reports that Radiohead have put out a call for fans to join them in making a giant human sculpture on Brighton Beach this coming Saturday. The work is a collaboration between the band, their long time record sleeve designer- Stanley Donwood and climate campaign organisation 350 Earth who have already created many of these large scale artworks. The sculpture is to be of King Canute and aims to be visable form space. Register here if you want to take part – first 2000 only.

The Art & Design Academy’s POD team have been successful in their application to work on the 2011 Liverpool Community Arts Project ‘Four Corners’. They will be working with the neighbourhoods of East Liverpool in producing an iconic piece of public art that will enlist, engage and educate the often neglected NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training) groups. The project will run from now until the end of April – the blog will keep you posted on their progress.

The POD worked with East Liverpool last year on a Health and Wellbeing inspired community project, creating a series of short videos that formed a health calendar. These are now on-line and can be viewed below.

“Draw the Line” is a growing creative Liverpool art social event aimed at the everyman and artist alike to unite under one roof and enjoy a casual scribble together, part networking, part art therapy and all about a love of doodles. Drop in and leave your mark!

This Thursday, 18th November sees the guys from Draw the Line join the ADA for Liverpool’s Long Night celebrations. The evening will host an open doodle event as well as an exhibition of previous works from the past 4 years. Witness some of the amazing artwork created with a pen in one hand and a pint in the other!

Last night saw Liverpool’s Sefton Park lit up by the Liverpool Lantern Company for their Halloween Lantern Parade. Liverpool based photographer Mark McNulty documented the event – see more images below and on his site.

Read the rest of this entry »

Liverpool Chamber of Commerce are looking for the best piece of public art to have been commissioned by business in Liverpool.

The Liverpool Chamber Arts Award was created to recognise, encourage and reward the business community’s long tradition of arts patronage in the city.
The award will be presented to the Liverpool business or organisation judged to have commissioned the most impressive work of public artwork in Liverpool that has been on display since 2005.

View the current entries here or suggest one here.

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design), a nonprofit organisation which hosts events and talks about ‘Ideas Worth Spreading’ and makes them available online, has announced the winner of it’s 2011 prize.

“JR” a 27-year-old French street artist, who works mainly in slums around the world transforming the buildings in poor neighborhoods with huge photographs of the residents, was awarded the $100,000 prize and asked to make…

“one wish big enough to change the world.”

See more examples of his work here.

During December, Stuart Borthwick, Principal Lecturer in the Liverpool School of Art and Design, will be exhibiting a series of photographs of Belfast wall murals in the main Art and Design Academy gallery. The photographs were taken as part of a research project that examined the changing nature and roles of wall murals following the signing of the St Andrew’s Agreement in 2006 by the UK government, Irish government and all the major parties in Northern Ireland.  Stuart Borthwick states;

“my interest in wall murals was sparked by my involvement in the Liverpool Mural Project, who invited artists from both sides of the political divide in Belfast to paint two separate murals in Liverpool. After meeting Belfast artists Mark Ervine, Danny Devenny, Marty Lyons and Micky Doherty in Liverpool, I was invited to their home town to see their work, and became fascinated by the current speed of change within the mural culture, away from paramilitarism but still intricately connected to Ulster Loyalism and Irish Republicanism. I’m currently involved in the search for further spaces in a specific part of Liverpool for a new cross-community mural project”.

TROIKA_SHOAL from Troika on Vimeo.

London based multi-disciplinary art and design practice Troika have unveiled a new public artwork entitled ‘Shoal’. It combines sculpture with architecture and technology. Spanning across a 50 meter long corridor, 467 fish-like objects wrapped in iridescent colours and suspended from the ceiling rotate rhythmically around their own axis to display the movements and interdependency typical to school of fish.

Shoal was curated by PAM (Karen Mills and Justin Ridgeway) and commissioned by TEDCO as a permanent installation for the Corus building located at Toronto’s Waterfront, Queens Quay East.