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FREE DELIVERY ON ORDERS OVER £50.00 - TO MOST UK POSTCODES
Exhibition open 16 September 2023 - 25 February 2024
Image courtesy of Walker Art Gallery John Moores 2023 Exhibition
The UK’s longest-running painting competition returns to Walker Art Gallery in September 2023.
Bringing together the best of contemporary painting from across the UK to Liverpool, the painting prize is over 60 years old. First held in 1957, the competition was named after its founding sponsor Sir John Moores. The prize is open to all artists working with paint, who are aged 18 years or over and live or are professionally based in the UK. Showcasing the very latest in painting today across the UK, the competition culminates in an exhibition held at the Walker Art Gallery every two years.
Past prize winners have included Peter Doig, Rose Wylie, David Hockney and Sir Peter Blake, who became the first patron of the John Moores Painting Prize in 2011, after winning the Junior section of John Moores 3 with his painting ‘Self Portrait with Badges’ in 1961.
This year’s jurors are Alexis Harding, Chila Kumari Singh Burman MBE, Marlene Smith, The White Pube and Yu Hong. Tickets available online, with half price tickets for Liverpool City Region residents on the first Sunday of every month.
30 September 2023 – 21 January 2024
Detail from Frans Hals, 'Young Man holding a Skull (Vanitas)', 1626–8 © The National Gallery, London
Four hundred years since they were painted, Frans Hals’s portraits still breathe with life. There’s the hint of a smile, a hand resting nonchalantly on a hip, and just occasionally, a burst of laughter.
Hals was one of the most sought-after painters of his generation. A gifted artist whose deft brushwork was unparalleled, he built his reputation on a new style of portrait – highly unusual in his time – that showed relaxed, lively sitters, often smiling, and even laughing.
17th-century Dutch audiences were enthralled, and the popularity of his portraits earned him the status of Haarlem’s famous son.
This exhibition, the first major retrospective of Hals in more than thirty years, means a new generation can discover why he deserves his place as one of the greatest painters in Western art.
Some 50 of Hals’s finest works will be brought together, including the exceptional, first-ever loan of his most famous picture, ‘The Laughing Cavalier’ (1624), from the Wallace Collection.
From small works to large group portraits, genre scenes, and marriage portraits reunited for the first time from international collections, visitors will see the very best of his life’s work.
Exhibition organised by the National Gallery and the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam with the special collaboration of the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem.
21 Sep 2023 – 18 Feb 2024 A major exhibition opening on 21 September 2023
Jove Decadent, Despres del ball', Ramon Casas, oil on canvas, 1899. Image © Museu de Montserrat
Dispelling our monochrome idea of Victorian Britain. Discover a revolution of colour.
Rediscover Victorian society as a vibrant colour-filled era – from dazzling dyes used in chic corsets, bold experiments by avant-garde painters, and the flamboyant use of nature's beauty in jewellery.
As Britain’s industrial revolution gained pace, new scientific breakthroughs allowed the Victorians to become increasingly revolutionary in their use of colour, with new hues greeted with both excitement and suspicion.
The exhibition will include fashion pieces – from Queen Victoria’s monotone mourning dress to the most daringly vivid clothing and accessories – and works by artists including Ruskin, Rossetti and Whistler, as well as objects from around the world.
Our next major exhibition explores the vital role that colour has played in shaping our art and culture.
Image courtesy of Ashmolean Museum Oxford
Japanese artistTakahashi Hiromitsu creates dynamic, colourful prints showing exciting moments in kabuki, Japan’s traditional dance-drama.
Hiromitsu’s striking designs are not portraits of actual actors, but visualisations of famous kabuki roles.
In kabuki, performers wearing elaborate costumes and make-up use stylised movement and song to enact melodramatic stories about love, loyalty and the clash between duty and emotion.
Gojōbashi Benkei and Gojōbashi Ushiwaka by Takahashi Hiromitsu, 1998.Images above all © Hiromitsu Takahashi / The Tolman Collection
The works recall Japan’s traditional ukiyo-e woodblock actor prints, but are made using a different technique – kappazuri, or stencil printing, originally used for dyeing kimono. This process is complex and labour-intensive and Hiromitsu is one of very few artists working in this way today.
This exhibition showcases a selection of these unusual prints from the Ashmolean's own extensive collection of Hiromitsu's work, generously presented by Philip Harris.
Until 30 September: Monday – Friday: 10am – 3pm, Saturday: 10am – 5pm
Aaron Phipps by Jeannie Coombs, C-Type Colour Print, National Portrait Gallery
This thoughtful show brings together the collections of the National Portrait Gallery and Southampton City Art Gallery and Museums to explore and celebrate people whose stories are linked to this coastal city.
Taking inspiration from these collections, art students from Cantell School in Southampton have worked collaboratively with Hampshire-based artist Pete Codling and the Gallery’s Learning and Engagement Team to explore portraiture and discover people associated with the city.
The artist has worked with the students to explore portraiture through drawing; using charcoal to capture and portray each other and Southampton figures they chose to represent their story of the city. These will be displayed in the exhibition alongside the collections, together with a large-scale drawing called the Kinship, by Codling, inspired by the local story of 4,000 child refugees from the Basque country arriving in a steam ship, SS Habana, during the Spanish Civil War in 1937.
Pete Codling has had an established career as a sculptor and designer of public artworks, receiving commissions from Local Government and for Lottery-funded regeneration projects throughout the UK. He has created community projects commissioned to give local populations a sense of place, engagement, empowerment, and ownership.
Creative Connections, and its engagement programme of events, is funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, Art Fund with the generous support of the Palley family.
Funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund and Art Fund with the generous support of the Palley family.
Image courtesy of Fiona Millais, Into the Evening Quiet, acrylic on canvas 51x 81cm 1995
Combining painting and sculpture, both artists in this exhibition have a deep fascination with the landscape around us, how it has been shaped by previous generations and continues to impact those who inhabit it today. By distilling the essence of natural forms down to their simplest elements, both artists manage to capture the timeless quality of landscape.
Fiona Millais
Fiona Millais paints landscapes and still lifes in acrylic. She lives near Churt and much of her work is inspired by the Surrey / Hampshire landscape.
“I take inspiration from the places and objects that I love. I walk out every day with the dog and often gather additional materials, so that stones, leaves and feathers become visual reminders of my experience. I love the connection between the natural rhythms of the land and how it reflects on our presence, or the lack of it. The way that landscapes are shaped by us and our ancestors, leaving marks and echoes through time.
I usually work on several pieces at the same time, which allows me to explore ideas in a series of paintings. My canvases are often painted and re-painted so that traces of the original images remain present, creating layers of marks, colour and interwoven history.
I studied Fine Art at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, graduating in 1984.
My great grandfather was the Pre-Raphaelite painter Sir John Everett Millais.”
Lucy Lutyens
Lucy is the great great niece of architect Sir Edwin Lutyens. Her sculptures are made from iron resin or bronze in small editions, and can be displayed indoors or out.
“I live and work on an organic farm near Colchester in Essex. The ebbing and flowing of the generations who have lived here since the bronze age and farmed the land are a great source of inspiration to me. My work is inspired by objects and shapes I come across in my rural environment, reduced to abstracted sculptural forms that have a birdlike or botanical essence.
I trained at Colchester School of Art as a mature student and have been exhibiting for the last 10 years.
As soon as I was given some clay and made my first sculpture I knew I was a sculptor not a painter - it is all about being able to feel the piece as I work and letting it come to life of its own accord.”
Please note that the Watts Contemporary Gallery will be closed between 2-3pm on 9 September for a private event but will be re-open from 3-4pm with an opportunity to meet the artists of the Formations exhibition.
Image courtesy of Lucy Lutyens; Silent Meditation, bronze
Image courtesy of Tate Liverpool, Joseph Mallord William Turner Stormy Sea with Dolphins c.1835–40
Experience the power of the sea through paintings, sketches and an immersive sound environment
Take a fresh look atJMW Turner in the new exhibition Dark Waters. For the first time, Turner’s work will be presented within an immersive sound environment created by artist and musician, Lamin Fofana.
Although creating work centuries apart, both artists convey the power and politics of the ocean and explore its relationship to capitalism and colonialism. Turner’s paintings focus on the dangers of the waters around the British coast and Fofana’s sound work looks across the Atlantic.
Tate Liverpool’s location on the waterfront, combined with Liverpool’s maritime history, provides the perfect context for us to consider Turner afresh. The exhibition features some of Turner’s most celebrated seascapes alongside his sketchbooks and works on paper.
Lamin Fofana translates the writing of pioneering Black authors into sound. Fofana’s work explores questions of movement, migration, alienation and belonging.
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This last instalment for 2023 brings us an exciting and varied programme of exhibitions and events; theatre, photography, Fashion, an Open exhibition that is 170 years old and a Renaissance Master, Francesco Pesellino!
Encourage a child who has the gift of creativity by giving the perfect present this Christmas.
Sue Godfrey
October 03, 2023
Love this Ellie, I didn’t realise there were so many beautiful places to visit. I must try and expand my list of places to go to see such amazing art work..thanks for the info. Sue x