Artwork of the Week – Tom Fairclough

Liverpool artwork of the week 2009-30. ‘Find a River’ photograph by Tom Fairclough in Fab Collective’s ‘Up To Something’ at St Luke’s Church 1-30 August 2009

“Every phase of my life has been touched, sprinkled religiously perhaps, by the waters of the River Mersey.” Anthony Wilson

There are over 20 excellent images of Liverpool and its people each by a different local photographer in the this  exhibition in the ‘bombed out’ church. Each has a quote attached. This combination works particularly well.

The photographer, Tom Fairclough, says

“It took a Salford lad, and a pretentious one at that, to capture the significance of the river in words. In the book Mersey the River That Changed the World , Tony (still can’t call him Anthony) wrote a wonderful piece, all about time and change, music and culture, the city and the region. On the other hand, rivers just don’t photograph too well. Sometimes though you get lucky and the weather astonishes you, it lights up a landscape like you’ve never seen it before.

A deep thick mist with a clear, crisp sunlit sky above and all of a sudden a river that can look dull and grey is re-lit with all the things that define it along its banks brought out as well . Smoke, steam, mist, light, shadow, buildings, docks, shipyards, history, mountains, skies, all together. The image only captures a part of it, my own mind still retains an even better picture. Having an extract from a great piece of writing up alongside one of my pictures, good enough for me.”

‘Up To Something’ – The Fab Collective
1 – 30 August 2009
at St Luke’s Church, Leece St.

Open 12-4pm, Thursday to Sunday
Further details of the Fab Collective, visit the website www.fabcollective.com