John Lennon Art & Design Building: Snapshot 01: Painters Posting Paintings

Snapshot 01: Painters Posting Paintings
November 2 – December 1, 2023.
Reception Corridor, John Lennon Art and Design Building, Liverpool School of Art and Design.

This November, Snapshot presents Snapshot 01: Painters Posting Paintings; a collaborative project initiated and curated by artist Joe O’Rourke. The display features selected works by 18 artists, many of whom met when exhibiting alongside each other at the 2018 John Moores Painting Prize.

‘Painters Posting Paintings’ was born out of a desire to reignite and foster creative connections. With several of the 18 artists experiencing post-graduation blues due to the sudden absence of a collaborative space, the project came about as a soluble creative outlet to stay in touch. Over the course of a year, they were tasked with creating paintings to send via the post to one another. Each piece was developed and extended by at least two to three different artists and formed a tangible manifestation of their connection.

The diverse outcomes of ‘Painters Posting Paintings’ are evidence of the creative freedom the artists were provided within the project guidelines. The only limitations issued were the materials and size of each piece to allow successful postage. The artists were further unabashed in creating their paintings knowing it would not remain in the exact form they sent it out in, as it would later be reworked by another artist.

MA Exhibition Studies students have carefully drawn a curated selection from the original collection of 250 pieces. Their choices were determined by thematic connections of current pop culture, comedy, and controversy that they observed in the wider body of work. The display highlights the contrasting subject matter chosen by the artists, juxtaposing works of both trivial and significant content besides one another. By doing this, the students aim to provide an exciting glimpse into the breadth of ideas and processes used by the practicing artists.

Exhibiting Artists Include:

• Ned Armstong
• John Brown
• Billy Crosby
• Lara Davies
• Emma Fineman
• Jacqui Hallum
• Gareth Kemp
• David Lock
• Olivia Norris
• Joe O’Rourke
• Michal Raz
• Jesse Rivers
• Francisco Rodriguez
• Milly Rose-Stephen
• Jake Russell
• Jamie Scott-Dyson
• Georgia Sowerby
• Alex Weir

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Snapshot is a permanent display programme of sequentially changing creative outputs. It provides an impression of each participant’s practice located in a liminal space in the School, where visitors only spend fleeting moments travelling to other spaces or waiting to enter classes

The project is the result of an ongoing open call to all visiting researchers and practitioners, staff and students of all levels on all programmes at Liverpool School of Art and Design. It presents incomplete, transitory views of research-and-practice-in-progress; a window into a brief moment in time of a given academic year. Utilising redundant gallery furniture stored in the public space of the reception corridor, the displays are selected on aesthetic criteria of how to best animate the space they occupy, projecting forwards in time the potential each work holds.

As the year progresses a living archive will develop on the concrete pillar next to each pair of vitrines, providing information about past and current displays.
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Developed by Dr James Schofield, Dr Hana Leaper and Dr Christine Eyene (Exhibition Research Lab), and managed by students from the MA Exhibition Studies programme.

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