With 6 weeks to go until Threshold Festival 2014, an exciting visual arts programme has been revealed with the return of some of their favourite names as well as some innovative new comers to the field. The exhibition, entitled ‘FUTURE | VISIONS’ which takes place on 28 – 30 March will spread across the 11 festival venues in Liverpool’s Baltic Triangle.
Returning to the festival for the fourth year is award winning artist Robyn Woolston. Robyn is an artist who works across installation, photography, moving image and print.
In 2012 she won the Liverpool Art Prize and was awarded a solo show in 2013 at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, during which she exhibited 3.6 tonnes of post-consumer waste prior to recycling. She has shown across the UK, Europe and Australia.
“Robyn’s large scale installations have featured at every Threshold Festival, she’s a genuine success story of grass roots arts in Liverpool and we’re very excited that she is returning.” Chris Herstad Carney, Festival Producer.”
FUTURE | VISIONS will present a range of work from artists across the UK, responding to the festival theme of retro-futurism; visions of the future imagined in the 1950s and 60s.
Baltic Triangle residents and award winning creative Motion Graphics and CGI studio Sparkle* VFX will be teaming up with Adam Irwin from Splinter to produce photo real prints of Liverpool landmarks exclusively for the festival, with a “Jet Punk” twist.
Johanna Wilson, aka That Girl is an illustrator and designer working in Liverpool. She has recently created artwork for Dan Croll and the SevenStreets Almanac. Johanna will be screen printing live during Threshold and festival goers can create their own screen prints to take away as a souvenir!
The exhibition will span across the Baltic Triangle, with work presented in venues including Unit 51, 24 Kitchen Street, Baltic Bakehouse, The Baltic Social, District along with new venues Mat Hatter Brewery and 90 Squared.
FUTURE | VISIONS will also feature a companion exhibition at Arena Gallery and a collection of work displayed in The Hatch at Hopskotch Liverpool.
Joining the live art line up is yet another award winning artist Tommy Graham, who specialises in darkly humourous, comic paintings often juxtaposing robots and surveillance technology. Tommy will create new work throughout the weekend at District.
Painter and Installation artist Leon Jakeman will produce a site specific installation interpreting the flipside to future modernism from the 50’s & 60’s with a piece visually stripped bare of any technology; an exploration of the notion that retro-futurism is not universally optimistic.
Pack of Wolves, an artistic collective from across the UK, will present a series of utopian/ dystopian works inspired by jet punk. Works will incorporate altered found paintings, dolls/ puppets and surreal paper collage.
Adam Collier is a student at Leeds College of Art and will be returning to Threshold after exhibiting with us in 2013. A favourite of the team, Adam will create paintings for the festival to reflect the retro-futurism theme.
Sarah Nicholson, a sculptor and graduate of Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, will create a biomorphic organic work for the festival which introduces whimsy and fantasy to create a “vehicle” for contemplation. The work will explore the concepts of remembering and forgetting at once, triggering an unease – a threat of stealthy slender fingers reaching into your mind to find your inner-most secrets.
Photographer Wesley Storey will display a set of photographs that explore and question the ways in which visions of a futuristic world have been historically expressed through Modernist and Brutalist architecture.
In partnership with Arena Gallery will be a companion exhibition “Hello and Goodnight” – an selection of photographs from the early 1980’s Liverpool music scene by Graham Smillie. Driven by a love for music, Graham immersed himself in the scene and captured images featuring some of the greatest musicians in Liverpool at that time; including Pete Wylie, Echo & the Bunnymen and the Pale Fountains. A must see for retro music fans!
With more to come on the visual arts programme next month including commissioned venue dressing from Mr. Wolf Collective and exciting street art from Tristan BradyJacobs & Pamela Sullivan, Threshold Festival is shaping up to be a huge celebration of a great cultural era for Liverpool.
The full line up will be released soon…
Advance weekend tickets are now on sale through Skiddle & at Made-Here & 3Beat Records priced at just £25/£20 nus with Day Tickets also available.