National Museums Liverpool Blog - Friday, August 10, 2007

Roy Irlam, Frames Conservator and Steve Casey clean the glass of the newly installed painting

As part of the Museum of Liverpool on the Road project the painting, 'Unemployment on Merseyside - Campaigning for the Right to Work' by Mike Jones has recently gone on loan to the People's Centre, Mount Pleasant.

The impressive painting, previously on display at the Museum of Liverpool Life depicts the effects of unemployment and the ways in which Liverpool people have actively campaigned for the right to work. The painting will be on display until 2009.

There is a buzz of excitement here at National Museums Liverpool as the momentum builds towards the opening of the International Slavery Museum. You may have heard already, that the Freedom Schooner Amistad, that set sail from Haven, Connecticut, USA on 21st June,  arrived on UK shores yesterday and will be docking in Liverpool on Sunday 19th August, in time for the opening of the International Slavery Museum. Amistad is a replica of the original ship that was commandeered by African captives in 1839, which is why the arrival in Liverpool has been planned to coincide with UNESCO Slavery Remembrance Day and the opening of the new museum. 

Exhibitions officer Lucy Johnson is a handy person to know if you want the news on what's coming up at the art galleries. Here's an update she sent me on the latest exhibition that she's been working on:

"Emily Stainer, a South African artist, has been installing her artwork 'Menagerie' in room 14 at the Walker this week. This intriguing installation is part of the BOUND exhibition. BOUND is a contemporary art project led by curator Predrag Pajdic, which explores human enslavement from a historical perspective through to the modern day.

Emily installing the works at the Walker with assistance from her father, David

'Menagerie' is made up from many unusual items, including Victorian style birdcages with mechanical limbs and mounted owls trapped inside them. The sound of the old fashioned clockwork mechanics, the curious Victorian objects and the dim lighting create an uncanny display.

The Walker is the first gallery outside of South Africa to show 'Menagerie'. Each time it is shown, the set up of the objects differ depending on the space in which they are situated.

The BOUND exhibition is being shown across other venues in Liverpool, including FACT, Tate Liverpool and Open Eye Gallery. It opens this Friday (10 August) and runs until 20 October 2007. The exhibition is then moving to London.

Emily will be giving a talk about her installation this Saturday at 1pm at the Walker and again on 11 October."

Looking for inspiration for writing or for creating your own artwork can sometimes be hard in a busy city, so I tried going out to see the exhibitions at Sudley House, to see if this would help. Having not been at National Museums Liverpool for long, I had never been, even though it is tucked away in leafy Mossley Hill, not far from my house. After getting a brief video 'talk' off a George Holt look-a-like, I started to take in the vast personal collection of work belonging to the man himself. In the Garden Hall, I found what turned out to be my favourite painting in the gallery; Circe and Scylla, by John Melhuish Strudwick.

The painting tells the story of two characters, Circe and Scylla, from the Greek myth as retold by the Roman author Ovid. It is a tale of jealousy and revenge, as the enchantress Circe poisons the water that Scylla is about to bathe in - because Scylla has captured the affections of the man Circe wants. I don't have a degree in fine art or anything like that, but I like the painting because of the mysterious and foreboding feeling it evokes, with the dark and mist and also because of the amazing detail that you can only see if you get up really close. Luckily at Sudley House, you are able to do this!

On the bottom right hand corner you can see the poison dropping into the river, with tiny bubbles and splashes as it hits the surface - I nearly missed the evil looking bat, lurking in the darkness nearby. I think you can tell that Circe is intent on bad things, not only by her expression, but also by the way her hand is clenched at her dress. I think details like these are really great in a painting.

I like to look at paintings before reading about them, to decide what I think the painting is about - my guess was something representing heaven and hell, you can probably see why I thought that. The other thing I like is that Scylla reminds me of Boticelli's Venus as well, with those robes and flowing hair.

It definitely inspired me to look up the myth, to see what happens next - Scylla is supposed to turn into a sea monster! I'd recommend going to have a look as you can't really appreciate it from a photograph and it is really good being able to go to a gallery and see such interesting paintings up close.

In the early 1960s the boom of the One O’clock Gun was the signal for father and I, Stephen Guy, to head for a Kardomah café or Cooper’s Corner for lunch. Many other people, both on ship and shore, must have been spurred to do likewise.

The One O'Clock Cannon outside the Maritime. Image courtesy Liverpool Daily Post & Echo

A huge cannon standing on the quayside at Merseyside Maritime Museum was the first One O’Clock Gun - part of a tradition which lasted more than a century in the Port of Liverpool. For generations its familiar boom alerted people to the correct time - it could be heard for miles. The One O’Clock Gun was fired every day from the river wall at Morpeth Dock, Birkenhead, to give ships a time check. The 32-pounder at the museum was the first (in 1867) of a series of guns.

Ships would set their chronometers by the gun and, despite the introduction of radio time signals, this service continued until 1969. Timekeeping has always been an essential part of safe navigation. In mid-ocean, long before sighting land, the mariner must know the positions of both the ship and destination so that the ship’s course may be calculated. In 1845, an observatory was established at Waterloo Dock to give time checks for setting chronometers by which ships were navigated.

Liverpool had many instrument makers and navigation equipment suppliers, some of whom devised their own improvements to existing instruments. One such instrument in the museum’s collections is Croskerry’s Patent Position Finder. Devised by Captain Croskerry of Rock Ferry, this is a variation of a piece of equipment called a station pointer. If the horizontal angles between three landmarks are measured with a sextant and the arms of the Position Finder set to those angles, the ship’s position will be at the intersection of the arms.

Also in the collections is a sextant by JW Ray & Co of Liverpool presented by the White Star Line to Cadet Barradale of HMS Conway in 1910.  A fine chronometer was made by Richard Hornby of Liverpool. These accurate clocks are designed to be little-affected by temperature changes. They are mounted on gimbals to isolate them from the rolling of the ship. Using both a chronometer and sextant to observe the sun enabled seafarers to discover their exact position. Radio time signals and accurate quartz clocks have superseded chronometers for keeping time at sea.

A new Maritime Tale appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.

Anyone in the area this afternoon will have noticed that the usually tranquil William Brown Street was a riot of noise and colour. Our roving reporter Laura Johnson couldn't resist going to see what all the fuss was about:

Surf's up outside the Walker

So a sandy beach arrived outside the Walker Art Gallery, dancers and musicians performed on the steps to the old entrance of World Museum Liverpool and William Brown Street was invaded with stilt walkers, jugglers, face painters and role players."

Benin artist Romauld Hazoume was at the Maritime Museum today to oversee the installation of his artwork La Bouche du Roi, which goes on show from Saturday as part of the museum's year long programme of events commemorating the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade.

The picture above shows him with some of the 304 masks that make up the main body of the artwork. Each mask, made from a petrol can, represents a real person and they are arranged on the floor packed closely together to show the cramped conditions on board the ships that took enslaved Africans across the Atlantic as part of the slave trade. With film footage, the sounds the the slaves' voices calling out and evocative smells of the tobacco and spices transported as part of the trade, this is an incredibly powerful and moving immersive experience.

Freshly dug King Edward potatoes from the Piermaster's House wartime garden

Over the last few months I've been keeping an eye on the garden at the Piermaster's House, where green fingered attendant Brian Jones grows an incredible range of vegetables, fruit, herbs and flowers, as an example of the types of things people might have grown in their own gardens during the war.

When I first visited the garden in May the crops were barely out of the ground, then in June the runner beans had grown about halfway up their poles. It was incredible to see the difference this morning - the runner beans are now taller than Brian! The recent wet weather has really done the garden good, at least there were some benefits to all that rain last month.

Brian's already planning to cook up some of his produce for a meal with his colleagues at the Maritime Museum. There have been glowing reports from people who have tried some of the peas and runner beans already. It's all organically grown, which Brian feels adds to the great taste. He says the salty air at the docks keeps the slugs away naturally, which is a benefit of the exposed city centre site. People are always surprised by the quantity and the huge variety of things that he grows in the tiny garden in such an unusual location. He hopes that he has inspired some visitors to see what they can grow themselves at home.

There are more photos in a Flickr slideshow of the wartime garden that show how it has developed since May, as well as some of the strawberries, peas and other things Brian has grown there.

The latest in a series of online exhibitions of photos from the Stewart Bale archive is now on the website, featuring some of Liverpool's architectural landmarks. As always, they're all great pictures, but of particular interest to me are three photos showing the city's cathedrals during construction. It's fascinating to see how these now familiar features on the Liverpool skyline actually took shape.

You can zoomify in to see the details of each picture - in the interior shot of the Anglican Cathedral for example you can examine every block in a temporary wall at the back.

The British Bryological Society is holding its annual general meeting at World Museum Liverpool on 29-30 September. If you're new to the world of bryology (the study of bryophytes, aka mosses and liverworts) and want to learn more then the Saturday morning session is for you, with a workshop on identifying bryopgytes - feel free to drop in.  More on the BBS website.