Allotments exhibition aims to cultivate conversation
Allotments are the subject of an exhibition running at the Victoria Gallery & Museum until the end of September.
The Allotments, part of the LOOK Photo Biennial 2019, features work by photographer David Lockwood, poet Pauline Rowe, and painter Arthur Lockwood who passed away while he was working on the project. He was 85.
The three consider and celebrate Dingle Vale allotments in Aigburth, collaborating with the allotment holders - one of 25 working allotment communities in the city – to share their stories and experiences.
The Allotments reflects on place and people and offers a meditation about plots of earth that remain places of belonging away from home. Allotments themselves are places set apart from the hurly burly of modern life and offer opportunities for friendship and exchange, lessons in the seasons and time to reflect.
The exhibition is also an exploration of collaborative artistic practice.
David Lockwood is an award-winning Liverpool-based photographer who is currently course leader on the BA Hons Digital Imaging and Photography degree course at Hugh Baird University Centre.
The Allotments. Untitled by Arthur Lockwood. Top: photo by David Lockwood
Pauline Rowe is a Liverpool-based writer, poet and tutor and a member of the Society of Authors and the National Association of Writers in Education, as well as founding Liverpool charity North End Writers in 2006.
She has worked with Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust as poet-in-residence since 2013 and as writer-in-residence at Open Eye Gallery from 2016-2018. Her latest poetry pamphlet, The Ghost Hospital, is released in November.
Arthur Lockwood, son of painter and designer Frank Taylor Lockwood, studied at Bournville School of Art, Birmingham College of Art and the Royal College of Art. He worked to capture the architectural and industrial heritage of Britain’s second city before it disappeared.
He donated more than 1,000 works by himself and his father to Birmingham City Art Gallery & Museum, more than 350 paintings and drawings of Black Country Industry to Wolverhampton City Art Gallery and 30 drawings of the coal mining industry to the Herbert Art Gallery Coventry.
The Allotments is at the Victoria Gallery & Museum until September 28.