Laura Davis picks out three shows opening this month – and two you still have time to catch.
The Holly Johnson Story, Museum of Liverpool, September 14 to July 27
It’s 40 years since Frankie Goes to Hollywood released the album Welcome to the Pleasuredome – one of the few to genuinely earn the too often bandied about title of ‘iconic’.
The perfect excuse – if one should be needed – to dedicate an exhibition to the main man behind it, Holly Johnson.
Time has a softening effect, and it is perhaps hard today to truly appreciate the strength it took for him to become one of the first openly gay and openly HIV+ high profile artists. Hearing the show’s audio recordings of people, who experienced the devastating impact of HIV in the 80s, and the prejudice that came with it, will be a stark reminder.
But we can expect much joy in the exhibition too, as visitors are taken on a journey through Johnson’s incredible career, from his early years in Liverpool to international celebrity at a time of rebellion and cultural revolution.
The Flowers Still Grow, Open Eye Gallery, September 13 to October 27
Two stories of life in North Liverpool are at the centre of the first part of this exhibition, People of Anfield, developed and delivered with residents by photographer Emma Case and writer Pauline Rowe.
One is of a place eroded by many decades of decline and neglect, where life can feel precarious. The other is of a vibrant community surviving and bringing joy, just like the wildflowers that grow on the area’s stagnant pieces of unused land.
Alongside it will be the outcome of a second residency, Childhood is a garden, which considers the ingredients of an ideal neighbourhood through the lens of nostalgia, memory and dreams. Socially-engaged artist Miriam Flüchter worked with adults and young people in Garston to explore storytelling through experimental analogue photography and textile crafts.
Images from Next Up, Open Eye’s annual graduate showcase of work from the Socially Engaged Photography MA course at the University of Salford, will also be on display.
Anish Kapoor, Monadic Singularity, Liverpool Cathedral until September 15
This much-anticipated show is best appreciated without too many other people around snapping Insta photos so its final two weeks, after the school summer holidays, make a good time to visit.
Initial impressions are all about scale – of the art works and their location inside Britain’s largest cathedral – but once they’ve sat in your memory for a while it’s the little details that leave the greatest impression The curled scrapings of red wax gathering at the edge of the slowly moving blade that is constantly shaping Kapoor’s bell-shaped Untitled 2010 or the meditative sensation of vanishing you feel when staring into Spire’s reflections.
There will be other opportunities to see these works, but not here, in this place, where the architecture gives them a new significance.
Into The Wyld: Nature, Williamson Art Gallery, until December 21
There may no longer be any wolves in Wirral but what about descendents of the “woodwose” wild men encountered there by Sir Gawain in the late-14th century poem that bears his name? Surely they would be made especially welcome at the Williamson Art Gallery, which is hosting a contemporary art festival exploring the links between St Gawain and the Green Knight and the Merseyside peninsula.
Led by the Material Matters Collective, it features the work of 20 artists in three exhibitions, the first of which is on the theme of “nature”, alongside a programme of performance, talks, workshops and readings.
Among the pieces in Nature, curator Patric Rogers uses intertwining threads of mycelium to symbolise forgotten stories that become a blend of myth and reality as time passes. Angelo Madonna invites us to look through a vintage slide viewer to see Lud’s Church, a deep moss-covered cavern on the Staffordshire border that is often associated with the Green Chapel in the poem. A nice addition is a 1978 landscape by Wirral artist Olaf Rosenvinge, who died in 1980 – a serene yet foreboding work that belongs to the Williamson’s collection.
From September 19, the exhibition turns to the theme of Chivalry, curated by John Elcock, and from November 7, Angelo Madonna takes over as curator as attention turns to Spirituality.
Brickworks, Tate Liverpool and RIBA North, until January 12, 2025
Ever since Tate Liverpool closed its Albert Dock gallery for major refurbishment, visitors have been asking to see works from its collection.
And while exhibitions shown at its temporary space at RIBA North so far have tackled important questions in an innovative way, they have felt like nice-to-haves rather than core Tate activity.
Brickworks, which features 21 works from the collection, is more like a boutique version of a Tate Liverpool third-floor show. Curator Tamar Hemmes has made the most of the smaller space, using it as an opportunity to explore a subject that might not fill its usual sweeping gallery.
Bricks are part of our everyday lives, yet we give little thought to their social and cultural significance. Brickworks invites you to think again about apparently neutral sights, such as a bricked-up gateway in a wall, and challenge our assumption that everyone experiences the world around us in the same way.
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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