Zoo Logic by Mark Leckey

The Walker Art Gallery presents two installations by Turner Prize-winning artist Mark Leckey. The installations represent the artist’s long-standing interest in moving image and broadcast technology, and specifically in Felix the Cat.

A Felix doll on a gramophone turntable was the first picture transmitted on TV in America in 1928. Visitors are invited to see Birkenhead-born Leckey’s Inflatable Felix, a huge, blow-up version of the cartoon cat.

The gallery will also display 'FEELINTHECAT', a 70th anniversary Arts Council Collection commission. This immersive installation consists of a large dome, shaped to resemble Felix’s head. Inside the dome, two screens play a film which shows Mark Leckey transforming into Felix.

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Lubaina Himid: Meticulous Observations and Naming the Money

An Arts Council Collection National Partner Exhibition

A powerful new exhibition by 2017 Turner Prize nominee Lubaina Himid MBE, Lubaina Himid: Meticulous Observations and Naming the Money features works selected by Lubaina from the Arts Council Collection, along with 20 figures from her major installation, Naming the Money. 

The pieces selected by Lubaina are all by women artists, and will occupy one room within the gallery. At the centre of this display is her 1987 series of watercolour drawings, ‘Scenes from the life of Toussaint L’Overture’, about the former slave who led the Haitian revolution. The meticulous detail within this series, and its focus upon some key moments and everyday happenings in L'Ouverture’s life, has inspired Lubaina’s selection of other works by artists including Bridget Riley and Claudette Johnson.

The full installation Naming the Money was gifted by the artist to the International Slavery Museum. It addresses how Europe’s wealthy classes spent their money and flaunted their power in the 18th and 19th centuries, by using enslaved African men and women. The highly individual sculptural figures, each with their own profession and life-story, demonstrate how enslavement was disguised and glamorised. The enslaved people were made to look like servants or dressed in the clothes of courtiers. Visitors to the Walker will find groups of these figures positioned around the gallery in configurations determined by the artist.

Find out more about the ehibition and related events on the Walker Art Gallery Website

 

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Leo Fitzmaurice: Between You and Me and Everything Else

An Arts Council Collection National Partners Exhibition

As part of the Arts Council Collection National Partners Programme, Liverpool-based artist Leo Fitzmaurice will create an assembly of portraits within Room 9 at the Gallery. 

The artist will gather together artworks from both the Arts Council Collection and National Museums Liverpool’s own collections, with a painting from the Lady Lever Art Gallery called Psamathe (1879-80) by Frederic, Lord Leighton as a key work in the exhibition. This image shows a female nude from behind and the subject appears to be looking out to the sea in front of her. Fitzmaurice will aim to expand upon this “tone of inquisitiveness in the world beyond” through a selection of works dictated by the direction in which the sitters seem to be looking. At first glance, Room 9 may look like many other rooms in the Gallery. However, on closer inspection visitors will notice something unusual about the placement of the portraits and the direction in which the sitters appear to be looking.

More than 30 portraits by artists including Frank Auerbach, David Bomberg, Milena Dragicevic, Ken Kiff, Marie-Louise von Motesiczky and Philip Sutton will feature in the exhibition. 

Leo Fitzmaurice said: “Almost always, in my work, I try to frame the everyday and the overlooked in a new light. I would think an artwork successful if the work could give the feeling of encountering something familiar for the first time.”

Walker Art Gallery's exhibition page.

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The Arts Council Collection : Leo Fitzmaurice: Between You and Me and Everything Else
The Arts Council Collection : Leo Fitzmaurice: Between You and Me and Everything Else

Coming Out: Sexuality, Gender and Identity

An Arts Council Collection National Partners Exhibition - Coming Out tours to Birmingham from the Walker Art Gallery

A ground-breaking and vital exhibition which marks the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of male homosexual acts in England and Wales (1967 Sexual Offences Act). 

In Birmingham, this major exhibition will feature over 80 modern and contemporary artworks by internationally renowned artists who explore themes of gender, sexuality and identity in art. Taking 1967 as a starting point, the exhibition will reveal new research into LGBT history and visual culture showcasing artworks from The Arts Council Collection, National Museums Liverpool and Birmingham’s collection.

Conceived by The Walker Art Gallery, and in partnership with Birmingham Museums Trust, Coming Out will be reimagined for audiences in Birmingham. The exhibition includes art works by many well known artists.  Visitors will see works by Sarah Lucus, David Hockney, Andy Warhol, Grayson Perry, Francis Bacon, Linder, Derek Jarman, Tracey Emin. Steve McQueen, Gillian Wearing, Margaret Harrison, Chila Kumari Burman and Charlotte Prodger. 

The public launch of this exhibition will be on Saturday December 2nd where we will be partnering with Shout Festival and Birmingham LGBT for a series of specially commissioned performances and activities to celebrate the opening of the exhibition. Please check the website nearer the time for event listings. 

To keep up-to-date with the exhibition, read the Coming Out posts on the BMAG blog.

Find out more about Coming Out at the Walker Art Gallery liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/walker

 

Exhibition credit

Coming Out is a touring exhibition conceived by National Museums Liverpool, in partnership with Birmingham Museums Trust as part of the Arts Council Collection National Partners Programme 2016-19.

 

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Store to Tour is a new series of films produced to celebrate our National Partners Programme, which brings together four major galleries and museums to create collaborative exhibitions and events and providing a permanent home for ACC works between April 2016 and June 2019.

This film explores Anya Gallaccio’s can love remember the question and the answer (2003), a central work in Walker Art Gallery’s latest National Partners exhibition, Coming Out: Sexuality, Gender & Identity.

The film looks at the installation process behind this unusual work, as well as how it fits into the wider exhibition, and featuring Laura Rooney, the Liverpool-based florist, tasked with sourcing 60 red Gerbera flowers for Gallaccio’s work.

Explore this Exhibition

Putting Engagement Centre Stage

Angelica Vanasse, Education Manager, Arts Council Collection at the Walker Art Gallery explains how the Gallery worked to put engagement activity centre stage as part of their major National Partners exhibition.
Artist Profile: Anya Gallaccio

Charlotte Keenan McDonald, Curator of British Art at Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, looks at the work of Collection artist Anya Gallaccio.

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Walker Art Gallery Exhibitions

Explore the exciting range of National Partner exhibitions produced as part of Round 1 of the National Partners Programme.

As Seen On Screen

An Arts Council Collection National Partners exhibition.

The exhibition will explore the relationship between art and cinema, delving into the fascinating question of what inspires artists. Featuring work by artists including Fiona Banner, Anthea Hamilton, Hardeep Pandhal and Sam Taylor-Johnson, the exhibition considers the influence of cinema on art across more than 20 artworks. The works represent a broad range of media, including screenprints, photography and film.

‘As seen on screen’ showcases Merseyside-born artist Fiona Banner’s ‘The Desert’ - a five metre-wide screenprint which retells the epic 1962 film ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. The large scale of the artwork brings to mind the experience of gazing up at a cinema screen.

Well-known film characters feature, as in Stuart Pearson Wright’s ‘Woman Surprised by a Werewolf’, while iconic films are referenced in artworks such as ‘A Nightmare on BAME Street’ by Hardeep Pandhal, and in Stefan Themerson’s series of photographic stills from his 1932 film ‘Europa'. Michelle Williams Gamaker’s ‘House of Women’, a film in which actors audition for a re-make of the 1947 film ‘Black Narcissus’, also features. Both Banner and Williams Gamaker reimagine films to explore their impact.

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The Arts Council Collection : As Seen On Screen
The Arts Council Collection : As Seen On Screen

Featured Works

Benedict Drew: Kaput

A large, fluorescent image of Richard Branson, with orange cables protruding from his eyes, takes centre stage in Benedict Drew: KAPUT. This recently acquired Arts Council Collection work explores the concept of space tourism through a thrilling multi-faceted installation.

Using a combination of video, audio and sculptural elements, artist Benedict Drew reflects on society’s uncertain relationship with technology. Beneath the image of Branson – who founded Virgin Galactic, the first company dedicated to civilian space travel - Virgin spacecrafts soar across two screens, a foil backdrop flickers and the room buzzes with the sound of feedback, accompanied by the ecstatic sound of a saxophone.

Psychedelic colours and music combine to create an environment that appears to be straight from the artist’s imagination. KAPUT (2015) presents a dark, dystopian response to what Drew describes as ‘the horrors of the modern world’.

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The Arts Council Collection is the UK's most widely seen collection of modern and contemporary art.

With more than 8,000 works by over 2,000 artists, it can be seen in exhibitions and public displays across the country and beyond. This website offers unprecedented access to the Collection, and information about each work can be found on this site.