National Museums Liverpool Blog - walker art gallery

Dusk at Museum of Liverpool (c) Ben Kirkpatrick

There’s not long to go until Liverpool’s one-night arts festival, LightNight this Friday and here at the museums we’ve got plenty to offer.

Museum of Liverpool are celebrating ancient history with Big Heritage’s Roman Medicine Roadshow from 4-8pm. There’ll be the opportunity to join a workshop with a bone specialist who will demonstrate how we can learn about past lives from human remains; then watch Roman Gladiators fight it out and have their wounds healed using Roman herbal remedies. You can even look like you’ve been part of the battle by paying a visit to make-up artists, So Coco Rouge who will be using their skills to inflict battle wounds and scars on willing visitors.

Up at the Walker Art Gallery from 5-10pm there will be a feast for the senses with singing from Liverpool Community Choir and LIPA students taking place amongst the gallery’s artwork. Both groups will be singing songs inspired by this year’s LOOK/13 photo festival theme, ‘who do you think you are’. Then learn more about the gallery and its works with bitesize tours which will be running throughout the evening.

Little ones will be able to join the fun too as Little Liverpool at Museum of Liverpool is open until 6pm and Big Art at the Walker is staying up until 7.30pm.

See the full LightNight programme here.

Sandra Barber © Rankin

This week is an exciting week for the Walker Art Gallery as we open our new exhibition, 'ALIVE: In the Face of Death' by world renowned photographer, Rankin this Friday. The exhibition forms part of the 'LOOK/13: Liverpool International Photography Festival' which sees dozens of photographic exhibitions taking place across the city centre.

The theme for this year’s festival is ‘who do you think you are?’ Rankin’s exhibition explores this theme candidly, with portraits of people who know that their time is running out or people who have overcome great adversity. Though, rather than being morbid, the exhibition is about empowering the people in the portraits, celebrating their life and exploring people’s diversity of character.

On the same day that the exhibition opens, the Walker will also be until 10pm for LightNight, which sees cultural organisations and venues around the city centre throwing open their doors until late. This gives people an exciting and rare opportunity to take in a new exhibition after-hours. Liverpool Community Choir and LIPA students will also be performing songs inspired by LOOK/13’s theme making for an interesting atmosphere in which to discover 'ALIVE: In the Face of Death'.

As well as Rankin’s new exhibition, there will be a further two LOOK/13 exhibitions open at the Walker for visitors to view this Friday; 'Every Man and Woman is a Star' looks at who Merseyside was with photographs by photographic chroniclers, Tom Wood and Martin Parr. Plus 'Double Take: Portraits from the Keith Medley Archive' will display portraits of Merseysiders shot twice using the same glass plate negative resulting in an eerie series of double shots. 

You can see the full LightNight programme here.

One of Andy's tests ahead of LightNight © Andy McKeown Lightworks

I shall be posting a few blogs to round up some of the activities and events the museums have to offer. This week I’m looking at a venue that's sure to wow people.

Light and new media artist, Andy McKeown is heading a project called 'Fragments' which will see a large scale series of projections wrapped across two sides of the Oratory. Originally the mortuary chapel to St James’s Cemetery, the Oratory is a National Museums Liverpool site that can be found within the grounds of Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral.

The projection will be made up of photographs that Andy has taken of the Cathedral’s stained glass windows and will then be transformed into slow moving, brightly coloured kaleidoscopes. Judging from the pictures, ‘Fragments’ is not only going to be stunning to behold but will also showcase a kind of digital craftsmanship.

You can see these spectacular projections from 9.30pm-midnight on Friday 17 May. 

Check out the full LightNight programme here.

A manifesto in paint - Millais' Isabella

Visitors to the Lady lever will no doubt have missed that perennial favourite, Holman Hunt's The Scapegoat. The Walker, despite its positive embarassment of Pre-Raphaelite treasures, is definitely the richer for the return of Millais' Isabella; a painted manifesto of the aims of the Brotherhood itself.

The return of these and other gems makes it a perfect time to visit our three galleries, and not least because we're running something of a mini Pre-Raph festival to celebrate. Whether you're relatively new to the genre, or know your Williamson from your Rossetti, there's a gallery talk or tour for you, covering everything from an introduction to the Brotherhood to the crafting of a replica frame for The Scapegoat. Along with the forthcoming Edward Burne-Jones exhibition, and our extensive collection, there's a lot to see.

There are more details on our website, along with a link to our online shop where you can buy a copy of our new introduction to  the collection - Pre-Raphaelite Treasures at National Museums Liverpool - or pick one up in our gallery shop if you're visiting.

We'll have lots of craft activities

Legend has it that St George saved a princess who was to be fed to a dragon that terrorised a village. Now, we can’t promise a real life dragon, but there will be plenty of medieval themed fun at Liverpool’s St George’s Day festival (the first of its kind!) on Sunday 21 April.

Children’s TV star, Mike the Knight will kick off the day at 11am when he’ll meet a special dragon at St George’s plateau. The Plantagenet Medieval Society will also be recreating the pageantry, excitement and action of medieval combat along with courtly dancing and music.

The festival will be hosted in areas around St George’s Hall and St John’s Gardens where there will also be a fun fair and various themed stalls including a hog-roast.

There will be lots of indoor fun too at the World Museum, Walker Art Gallery and St Georges Hall ranging from medieval arts workshops and storytelling to costume dressing and a knight’s trail.

Children can also come in fancy dress inspired by Knights, Dragons and Princesses with prizes for under-10s and under-5s. I also here on the grapevine that those who take part in fancy dress will be able to enjoy discounts at restaurants in Queen Square and discounted car-parking at Queen Square Car Park.

There's a lot of variety in the artwork included in 'New Works at the Walker' and we think this helps make it a fascinating exhibition. You can see everything from sculpture and paintings to video installations and costume. Here's the curator of the exhibition, Lucy Gardner, to tell us about one of the more unusual sculptures on display...

This unusual sculpture is made from glass, mirror glass and leather suitcases.

This wonderful, slightly surreal piece called 'Shark Fin Soup' was made by artist Johnathan Froud. 

He cleverly uses mirror glass to create an illusion of space within the small confines of the suitcase. Froud is an artist know for using unusual materials to recreate and distort the reality with which we are all familiar. He wants to break away from restrictions, just as this shark fin has broken with convention by appearing to swim in this small case.

This piece is an important work for Froud because it marks the point at which glass became an integral part of his work; he was fascinated with the possibilities it allowed.  In the early 1980s Froud had been experimenting with the sculptural properties of diverse materials as unusual as spaghetti and glacier mints!

Froud was artist in residence here at the Walker in 1984 , but it was not until 2007 that we bought this piece, with the assistance of the Contemporary Art Society. 

Find out what else is on display in the exhibition here.

The Museum of Liverpool's first birthday celebration in July was just one of the events that brought in crowds in 2012

"In 2012 National Museums Liverpool had our most successful year ever, with more than 3.3m visits. We attract more people now than we did during Liverpool's year as European Capital of Culture five years ago, and nearly five times as many as a decade ago.

We are thrilled that the Museum of Liverpool is the country's most visited museum outside of London. We are equally thrilled that it has been awarded the Council of Europe Museum Prize for 2013, proving that the Museum's success has been noticed internationally.

Our museums and galleries are exciting and emotional places to visit - that's the secret of our success. We want our venues to inspire and educate, and also be fantastic for families. Across all our museums we like to try new things and reach new audiences. The big challenge is maintaining this success when public funding is shrinking."

Happy International Women's Day! This day is the perfect time to stop and think about which women might be inspiring to you. Outside of family and friends, one person who I find inspiring is Portuguese artist Paula Rego. Two years ago I visited her dedicated museum 'Casa das Histórias' ('House of Stories') and was blown away by her work. It spans from etchings to installations to dramatic, large-scale paintings. 

I admire her (and her work) as she is not afraid to show the experiences of women, especially exploring subjects which are often considered 'difficult' or controversial. You also get an idea of her personal experiences too, which I also find inspiring as I think she must be quite brave to expose her feelings in this way. Her work often has a sense of fear running through it - a feeling she has recently admitted is still a constant in her everyday life. 

Etchingsfrom Paula Rego's abortion series.

We are lucky enough to have several Paula Rego works in the Walker Art Gallery's collections. Currently on display are three etchings from Rego's abortion series; 'Untitled, 5, 7 and 8'. Two of which are pictured above. These works were part of Rego's response to Portugal's rejection of the legalisation of abortion in 1998. The laws have since been changed. 

The Walker has quite a strong history of collecting work by female artists, having started with a painting called 'Elaine' by Sophie Anderson in 1871. In the 1950s and 1960s the Walker bought over 90 works by women artists, 57 of which were prints. Collecting work be female artists is now a strong focus for our curators. 

Curator Lucy Gardner told me: "Our most recent acquisitions are two pieces by up and coming artist Rachael Goodyear, whose original vision and unique style stand out in contemporary practice today. We are very pleased to be able to show such powerful pieces."

You can see work by Rego and Goodyear along with work by other female artists such as Yoko Ono, Louise Bourgeois and Lubaina Himid in our New Works at the Walker exhibition.

'In the Comfort of the Bonnet' by Paula Rego.