Liverpool, Tuesday 19th August

During Rich's stay at mine, we had a trip into Liverpool and my Dad had recommended going into the Bluecoat and the Tate. I wasn't really that bothered at first but thought it would come in quite handy and, you never know, there might be some interesting stuff there!

So, as I was walking Rich down through town and towards the dock we nipped into the Bluecoat. It' such an amazing building and doesn't look like its open to the public; a little intimidating really. But hey, I belted up and went in. The building itself is really beautiful, with a courtyard in the middle, with a little garden and benches. Very pretty, as was the front of the building with another little courtyard with a few little shops on either side as you walk up to the entrance.

Anyway, I found my way into the gallery section of the building as there was an exhibition on called 'Slow Magic'. It wasn't really my kind of thing, and a lot of it was contemporary and didn't seem to have taken much effort, although I am sure that there was a lot of thought and meaning behind it. But I did like one piece of work in particular, Andrew Bick, and I have put an image below of a similar piece of work to the one that I liked. Even thought it is still all simple lines and a bit contemporary, I liked the distinction between the images and colours behind the perspex and the images on top and the frosty kind of distinctio

n between the two.

In my journal, I will document this with the leaflet I got given at the entrance and another leaflet I picked up about the history of the building, as it is a truly remarkable building! I will also talk more about the work in that!!We left the Bluecoat and headed down to the docks, passing the old Quiggins building on the way... sad times. Anyway, we got down to the docks to see what was on at the Tate and it didn't look TOO contemporary, so we went in and had a look around. I wrote down some names of artists and the name of that particular piece of work because some things in there were totally inspirational! We didn't bother looking on the top floor, which was the paid exhibition, which was named "Colour Chart: Reinventing Colour, 1950 to today". I wasn't quite sure what that would entail and whether it would be worth paying for, so we passed the chance on that one. It's on until the 13th of September, so if I change my mind, I can always go back! But anyway, I found some AMAZING artists there!!!

Like this:

This is Eva Rothshcild, and the piece of work is called "knock knock". It is amazing! Took me a while to figure out how it was standing because it blatantly wasn't hanging from anything! The leather work surrounding the steel frame was also very well done and done to such a high standard.

This was another brilliant example;

This is "The Passing Winter" by Yayoi Kusama. It's brilliant. In the Tate where we saw it, the walls of the room where painted bright pink, so all of the holes shown here where bright pink and it looked brilliant. So impressive, and so simple!

I just looked up some of her other work whilst looking for the above picture and found another piece of work she's done that I love;

I'm unsure as to what this is made of, but it is beautiful. I love the depth of field/depth perception here and the correlation and the way the light hits it. It's lovely. Definitely an artist worth looking into!!

There were a few other artists, but I will mention them in further detail in my journal along with the leaflet from the gallery. But in general, I was impressed with the work and found some of it really inspirational!

Well worth the visit!