Johny and Andrea’s Light Night adventures!
How good was Light Night? Bloody good, is the answer.
LightNight is Liverpool’s one-night arts and culture festival, which took place on Friday night. Over 50 city centre organisations kept their galleries, museums and venues open until late, staging around 100 special cultural events for visitors of all ages.
This year, visitors were able to enjoy the launch of LOOK/13 Liverpool International Photography Festival, the public reopening of Central Library as part of the In Other Words festival, spectacular light projections, street theatre, and a vibrant myriad of walking tours, open studios, live music, hands-on workshops and much more.
I set off on Friday night with Johny, my favourite plus one, Vickie, and him indoors to see what was on offer.
We started with one of the most amazing things this city has witnessed for a long time. The opening of our magnificent new central Library. A glory of the age, the library celebrated its opening on LightNight. I’d been shown around as part of the press launch, but seeing it with people thronged around it was something else altogether. From the moment I saw one of my eldest child’s school chums doing her biology revision in a little corner, I knew that this place is going to be well-loved and well-used as a place of learning.
From there we pootled over to see Izzy Major from Hope Street Ltd performing the Open Culture commissioned “Bookworm.” Izzy was surrounded by books and positively encouraged audience participation, even getting Johny up to read from The Wizard of Oz to the delight of everyone who watched, if not Johny himself.
Johny becomes part of the performance. Bookworm by Izzy Major.
We headed over to the Baltic Creative to see Made Here, a pop-up shop selling locally made artwork and spent a lovely bit of time talking to Andrew Beattie of Give Me Soul Ltd about the upcoming Liverpool Craft Beer festival (more to follow on that one!) and Doctor Who. Always good to meet a fellow fan.
We then headed to cafe 51 just in time to see the wonderful Kaya Hersted Carney of the Science of the Lamps performing a fantastic acoustic set. With time running out to see more, we headed round the corner to Arena Studios, where Paul Bywater’s Sergio Leone inspired exhibition was on show. Pencil drawings of spaghetti western-style characters adorned the gallery’s walls, but were well out of our budget!
Blind portrait by Carol Ramsay
Arena always embrace Light Night and we’ve never left empty handed, and this year was no different. Johny won a trophy playing the rather existentially titled “Mystical Duck Portal of Fate” game, or “Duck Chuck” as my young Arena chum, Flynn calls it. then we had a blind portrait done by Arena artist Carol Ramsay, where I ended up with a rather fetching goatee, which Carol insists was my scarf!
We set off to Camp & Furnace and saw images from the LOOK/13 photography exhibition, including images form my Threshold chum, Michael Kirkham, who is the second most Googled Michael Kirkham on the planet, fact fans.
Edging our way past Camp & Furnace’s enormous bouncers, we sat down for a well earned rest and a little tipple while we listened to some good, old-school dance tunes. It was most definitely a night to remember.
Enormous thanks and congratulations go to everyone who pulled their guts out to make this year’s Light Night so, so good. You are all heroes in our eyes.
With apologies for the quality, here’s some pictures of the night. Can’t wait for next year.
Emma shows a corker at the Corke Art Gallery Aigburth next week.
Not to be missed next week will be a trip down to the Corke Gallery when Emma Tooth shows her solo work ‘Evolution’.
Emma is among the most exciting fine art portrait painters in England today.
Born in Cambridge, now based in rural Derbyshire, she exhibits her breathtaking oil paintings all over the UK and abroard.
This exhibition in Liverpool is powerful stuff, from a powerful emotive, talented artist that should not be ignored. Her depiction of “chavs” and “hoodies” in the style of Caravaggio and the Old Masters has gained her international attention.
This exhibition, brings together some of the artist’s best known paintings of recent years, including a number from her Concilium Plebis collection, showcasing them alongside some rarely seen pieces.
Concilium Plebis (for all you Latin linguists) is a clever collection of portraits of ordinary people, which were started in 2008 with Arts Council funding, in the style of Caravaggio and the Old Masters and which gained her the well deserved attention.
The whole exhibition on show at the Corke runs from March 2-23rd and offers an overview of the development of her earliest experiments with oils in the mid-1990′s and up to the present day.
An example of her robust work on show at Corke is Punch, created on a heavily distressed wooden panel which the artist picked up during a midnight ‘skip raid’. Haunting and memorable.
With lifesize, lifelike paintings, this is an exhibition you will not forget for a very long time!
The Private View for this new and amazing show by Emma is this Friday.
Corke Art Gallery Aigburth Road 2-5.30 Thursday to Sunday.
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Todd White ‘Artist To The Stars’….Rennies……15th June
Californian artist Todd White will be in Liverpool on Saturday 15th June 700-9.00pm, showing some of his fantastic, stunning art work at Rennies Gallery Bold Street.
Todd began his career in a Warner Bros Studios working with Tiny Toons, then forged his own artisic style into what we see today.
You can see Todds originals and signed limited additions at a price you can afford or just wander Rennies and look about captivated by his and the other art around you. Beware though, Todd loves to talk and sketch the people about him. Who knows, you may be one of his next art pieces with a distinctive body, detailed lips, eyes, hair, skin and hands……a trade mark of Todd.
He was the creative idea behind the team that put together ‘Spongebob Squarepants’ and he has gone global ever since, creating more and more wild, wacky, and wonderful art.
Collectors of his work include numerous celebrities such as Abbey Clancey, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Sylvester Stallone to name.
Todd’s accolades too, are so numerous. He has been the official artist for ‘The Grammy Awards’ and was chosen by Warner brothers to celebrate their 70th anniversary of The ‘Wizard of Oz’. Coca Cola has even used his images on their bottles.
This will be a rare opportunity- to meet, chat to and be inspired by a modern artist. Be there and meet him……
Rennies Bold Street Saturday!
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