The Spectacle of the Lost
Victoria Gallery and Museum, Friday 1 June-Saturday 25 August 2012.
Events: Culture Bites Wednesday 18 July 12.30 - 12.45pm (no booking required): Curator Laura Robertson discusses one of the photographs from the exhibition.
Family Saturday To mark the last day of The Spectacle of the Lost exhibition, artist Laura Robertson will hold a drawing workshop using taxidermy birds from the VGM collections.
Retracing ornithologist John James Audubon's journey from New York to Liverpool, The Spectacle of the Lost exhibition sees contemporary artists engage with Audubon and his rare works for the first time at the Victoria Gallery and Museum.
This exhibition is a special installation of new work by contemporary artist group, Birds' Ear View collective, along with a selection of rarely seen Audubon reproduction prints from the Victoria Gallery and Museum's collection.
From prehistoric cave paintings to zoos and television programmes, animals have always been considered a spectacle. Despite today's knowledge, the natural world remains mysterious, unfathomable and utterly fascinating. We have a better understanding than ever about the ways in which our lives can impact the natural world, yet our cities and actions continue to have a negative effect. Will the human race ever be able to live in balance with animals and the natural environment? What will humanity's relationship with nature be in the future?
In 1826, Audubon sailed from New York to Liverpool with his giant tin box of life-sized watercolours of American birds. He sought buyers for a series of engravings of his work, to publish and share his observations as artist and ornithologist. Whilst in Liverpool, `The American Woodsman' stayed with the Rathbone family at Greenbank House by Sefton Park where he painted many of the works, which are on display in the Audubon Gallery.
Birds' Ear View collective is Alexandra Wolkowicz (NYC), Jon Barraclough (Liverpool) and Robert Peterson (NYC). Formed in 2008, they have a mutual fascination with the thousands of birds that fly into skyscrapers during migration season every year in New York alone. Since then, the collective has gathered 'evidence' and traces of these collisions and the birds in flight, through installation, photography,drawing, performance, sculpture, film and sound.
PRESS
Review, Linda Pittwood, Liverpool Daily Post
Review, Stuart Ian Burns, Feeling ListlessReview, Andy Johnson, ArtinLiverpool.comReview, Lesley Taker, Sevenstreets.comPreview, Catherine Jones, Liverpool EchoHierarchies of Allegiance
The Royal Standard. Thursday 16 September 5-9pm including live performance WE by Pil and Galia Kollectiv. Exhibition opened 17 Sept -17 October 2010
Hierarchies of Allegiance was the first of two exhibitions during Liverpool Biennial 2010. This group exhibition brought together U.K based artists whose work encompassed film, performance, drawing and installation. Linked as much by the artists interests in examining art historical figures as by their sensitivity to myth, custom and symbolism, the works in Hierarchies of Allegiance shared a rich aesthetic that referenced the uncanny, the darkly humourous and the melancholic.
Each artist engaged with a particular socio-cultural subject with which they strongly identified, reconfiguring it in unique ways, to parody social traditions and mediate on the relationships between ceremony, theatre and arcane ritual.
Events
Saturday 2 October 6pm A screening of Pil and Galia Kollectiv's films including 'The Future Trilogy' series (2006-2009), 'Conflict Within the Organization' (2010) and 'Co-Operative Explanatory Capabilities in Organizational Design and Personnel Management' (2010).
Saturday 16 October 2pm Artist talk. Jonathan Baldock in conversation with curators Laura Robertson and Lucy MacDonald.
For more details see The Royal Standard programme archive
PRESS
Review, Mike Pinnington, Sevenstreets.com
No Soul for Sale Tate Modern
14 May-16 May 2010, Tate Modern, London.
To celebrate Tate Modern's 10th anniversary, No Soul For Sale - A Festival of Independents brought together over 70 of the world's most exciting independent art spaces, non-profit organizations and artists' collectives, from Shanghai to Rio de Janeiro, to take over the iconic Turbine Hall with an eclectic mix of cutting-edge arts events, performances, music and film. The Royal Standard exhibited a selection of its studio members work in an interactive 'Ideas Station', collecting ideas and collaborations from visitors and artists alike.
Ranging from monumental structures to witty interventions, epic performances to interactive installations, participants exhibited alongside each other without partitions or walls, creating a pop-up village of global art for visitors to explore. The festival is an exercise in coexistence, or as New York Times dubbed its first iteration, NO SOUL FOR SALE is the 'Olympics of non-profit groups'. For more details see www.nosoulforsale.com
Photo archive of the whole weekend, courtesy Mike Carney, here
For more details see The Royal Standard programme archive
B A D I G L O O L U S T
The Royal Standard. Friday 16 April-Sunday 2 May 2010
What does it mean to be a local or an international artist, if it means anything at all? BAD IGLOO LUST directly responded to Global Studio at the Bluecoat, in which The Royal Standard also exhibited. Showing cocurrently, opening up a dialogue and cross-fertilisation between audiences at the two Liverpool art venues, the attempt was made to unravel the wider implications of being a 'global' artist.
Yuko Nasu, Nick Cass, Pio Abad, Tim Foxon, Tom Varley, Michael White, Del Hardin Hoyle, Daniel Mort, Matthew Hahn.
For more details see The Royal Standard programme archive
All Change
The Royal Standard. Sunday 21 June-Saturday 4 July 2009
All Change garnered and borrowed five artists from the rain-soaked cobbleways and warrens of Manchester's Rogue Artists Studios, to the seagull squawked, windswept sea air of the industrial sanctuary that is Liverpool's The Royal Standard. In exchange eight Royal Standard artists juttered eastways to reciprocally hydro-charge a solidified dialogue.
Magnus Quaife and David Gledhill adopted images scoured and pilfered from small town Europe, here and the internet, while Dave Griffiths presented speed drenched, flashpoint cue-dot epics born out of pseudo-astronomical impulses. Andrea Booker rehashed signage wharf-ratted from beyond warehoused Manchester into new scrabbulated narratives; whilst notions of uncovery and scurrying fascinations with material matter were also evidenced in Maeve Rendle's photographic sequences of now absent-sculptural formulations.
For more details see The Royal Standard programme archive