Discover what it’s like to be a bee, help create a sculpture from 100 cubes or reclaim the city’s unused spaces – just a few of the things you can do in Laura Davis’ picks of must-see exhibitions this month
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Bees: A Story of Survival, World Museum Liverpool, May 4, 2024 to May 5, 2025
Bees are the canary in the mine, say the team behind this genuinely ground-breaking exhibition that fuses art and science to allow us to consider the devastating impact of a world without them.
Existing for more than 120 million years, the insects are uniquely tuned to their environment. When they start dying in precedented numbers, as they have in recent years, we should take it as a portent of a suffering Earth.
There are eight immersive audio-visual rooms to explore, with shifting soundscapes leading the way from trees to wildflower meadows and a hive-like space with a live stream from the heart of a living colony.
The exhibition draws on a decade of collaboration between artist Wolfgang Buttress and Prof Martin Bencsik, a specialist in bee communication, who together aim to help visitors love and respect bees more so that they will consider their own impact on the survival of these creatures – and ultimately on the planet we share.
Michelle Williams Gamaker – Our Mountains Are Painted on Glass; Dahong Hongxuan Wang – Role Model, Bluecoat, May 3 to June 30
A fantasy adventure based on the 1924 silent film The Thief of Bagdad and its 1940 colour remake is the centrepiece of Our Mountains Are Painted on Glass by British-Sri Lankan artist Michelle Williams Gamaker.
Thieves reimagines the marginalised characters of the original as reclaiming the story as their own, challenging the racial discrimination of the film industry which often replaced actors of colour with white actors.
Told as a movie within a movie, it tells how Chinese-American actor Anna May Wong is trapped in black and white, while everything else is in Technicolor. She and a fellow cast member, Indian-born American actor Sabu, join forces to escape their screen images and overthrow the set.
Williams Gamaker draws on and celebrates the classic movies she watched growing up, and takes inspiration from early Hollywood and British cinema. Her work interrogates 20th century cinema by suggesting critical alternatives to colonial storytelling in British and Hollywood studio films.
Thieves will be shown alongside new film Role Models by Dahong Hongxuan Wang, who plays the role of Anna May Wong in several of Williams Gamaker’s works.
It follows a journey made by Wong to her ancestral hometown of Taishan, Guangdong, after being rejected by Hollywood in favour of actors in the racist make-up technique of yellowface. There, she found herself sadly “rejected by the Chinese because I’m ‘too American’ and by American producers because they want other races to act Chinese parts”.
Infinite Encounters, Liverpool Cathedral, May 10 to June 2
Our five senses – sound, sight, touch, smell and taste – are the inspiration behind a new group exhibition opening at Liverpool Cathedral as part of the building’s centenary celebrations.
Inviting us to pay attention to everyday encounters, it aims to reconnect us with the way our bodies naturally perceive the world – and each other.
Visitors can take apart and remake an art work built from 100 cubes in Zero to Infinity by minimalist sculpture pioneer Rasheed Araeen. His work was staged in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern last summer so it will be interesting to see how differently it appears in a less industrial setting.
The gaming continues with Liverpool-based artist Frances Disley’s piece Holodeck Programme 106 – communal games of dominoes and jigsaw puzzles, while she also offers a glimpse of the Cathedral’s Lady Chapel in a ‘specially scented environment’.
There’s also a hypnotic video work by Dusseldorf and Zurich-based artist Myriam Thye, and Lithuanian filmmaker Neringa Naujokaite’s poetic piece Horizon, which tells the story of a young girl’s relationships with the city, friends and music through sound.
Finally, the sense of taste is catered for by the Cathedral’s Welsford Bistro, which is serving a bespoke menu inspired by Frances Disley’s new installation.
David Clapham: The River Runs Through, Williamson Art Gallery until June 15
It’s been two decades since Harrogate-born artist David Clapham last worked in Merseyside, where his time included a 12-year spell living in Birkenhead in the 1980s and 90s.
He’s still known here for his not insignificant contributions to the region’s arts scene – he spent 20 years as a Fine Art lecturer at John Moores University as well as co-founding and managing the Bridewell Artists Studio on Liverpool’s Prescot Street.
Many of the majority of works in this solo exhibition hail from elsewhere however, from other places he has lived such as London and Portugal. Yet their unifying theme of water is one that links back to Merseyside and its connection to the river that divides it.
Created in a range of media, including ephemeral large hanging installations, the pieces span 20 years and aim to capture nature filtered through memories, provoking feelings that transcend the images we see.
Shuffle, Tobacco Warehouse at Stanley Dock, until May 12
If you like cake with your art then add a daytime visit to Shuffle to your diary for this month. Liverpool-based artists Josie Jenkins and Max Mallender have joined forces to encourage the city’s property owners to unlock the potential of their unused spaces by transforming them into cultural spots showcasing art, design and music.
They’re continuing their ‘cultural revolution’ by taking over a space at the Tobacco Warehouse, where exhibiting work includes large scale sculpture by Manchester-based Joe Hancock, and painting by Karol Kochanowski (also from Manchester), and Liverpool’s Gareth Kemp and Colette Lilley.
There will be work available to purchase, as well as tea, coffee and cake if you visit during daytime hours.
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Laura Davis is the writer of Stored Honey, a twice-weekly newsletter celebrating the arts and culture scene in Liverpool and the whole of the North West. You can read and subscribe for free at www.stored-honey.com