If you just want images, they are below, but before that, we need some context… In my last blog post, I looked back at previous Eurovision Song Contests while we were waiting to hear who the host city would be in 2023. You can read about that HERE. Well… the news is now in, and against all odds, or certainly …
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It’s official, the Eurovision Song Contest is coming to the United Kingdom in 2023 as a replacement host for Ukraine which tragically remains under attack from Russia. The cities shortlisted have now been published; Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and Sheffield and we’ll find out more in the autumn. These seven cities are all places I’m familiar with and …
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February is LGBT History Month, and at the end of last year Museum of Liverpool sent out an online call for local LGBT personal histories with plans to display a curated range of seldom-told tales of the city in commemoration of the month. The brief was to use visual and written media to tell a personal story about one’s life, to …
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At the start of 2020, Soft Octopus Design Studio was commissioned by Liverpool Hope University to work on a collaboration with Tate Liverpool. Titled Hope and Resistance, the exhibition’s aim was to present the artefacts, stories and artwork of young people living on the Palestinian West Bank who had responded to the question – What do you want to tell the …
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Last week I headed into Liverpool city centre for the first time in more than half a year. It felt peculiar. I believe that many of us have now become so used to consuming art in all its forms as an online activity, that it feels genuinely strange to set foot inside public spaces once again. With every show cancelled …
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I’ve been a fan of Keith Haring’s work since I was a design student in the 1980s. Pre-internet, it wasn’t easy keeping up with art trends, particularly those outside the UK. I came across his work in The Face magazine which was something of a style bible – the art and fashion Ying to the Yang of Smash Hits magazine’s pop and frippery.
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It was interesting to see another of those reports about cities in the UK published this week. This one was of interest because it was specifically about the UK’s most creative towns and cities to live, work and play in. I expected my home town of Liverpool to be in there somewhere and was pleasantly surprised to see it at number two, just behind our good neighbour, Manchester. LINK to full article.
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Yesterday I visited Tate Liverpool to see the much publicised René Magritte exhibition – ‘The Pleasure Principle’. Very pleasurable it was too. The show focuses on the less explored aspects of Magritte’s life and artistic practice, and on themes including the artist’s use of pattern and artifice, ideas and revelation, and visual fracture and eroticism. The exhibition also investigates the relationship between Magritte’s painterly work and commercial design, and the inspiration he drew from mass market literature and popular culture.
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