I went out to Smithdown Rd today, the South end of the road seems to be relatively thriving these days. I wanted to check out what was happening in the LIssue gallery which is in the Urban Coffee Lounge. The ‘Incredible Indelible’ exhibition finished recently so no surprise to find Lis Edgar there busily hanging pictures for the next show which starts on Saturday 29th, private view on Friday 7-9pm but I don’t have full details yet. In April there’ll be an exhibition by photographer Ben Zuhlcke, after that things change as there’ll be a series of shows curated by art students. Should be interesting.
Then just over the road I took my first look at the new South Bohemian gallery which opened in December. Its quite a large double-fronted shop space which seems to extend a long way back and its full of art of various styles and standards. There’s some good stuff by professional artists alongside some not-so-good amateur stuff but everything is reasonably priced and affordable and things seem to be turning round quite well.
The proprietors of both these places, Rosie at Urban Coffee and Peter at Bohemian are keen to involve the local community as much as they can. There’s craft workshops at Urban and painting classes at Bohemian. I’m sure I’ll be writing about them again soon.