Liverpool Bluecoat reveals 2020 exhibitions

Liverpool’s Bluecoat has unveiled its programme of exhibitions for 2020.

The School Lane centre for contemporary arts will be one of the venues for the Liverpool Biennial in the summer.

And surrounding that it will stage a number of solo and joint shows by artists from home and abroad in its special exhibition spaces.

The year opens in March with work by artists Jonathan Baldock and Warrington-born Frances Disley.

Baldock is a former Bluecoat artist in residence, and his show Facetime has a title inspired by George Orwell’s dystopian classic 1984.

Visitors will experience a landscape of ceramic columns inspired by cuneiform-inscribed tablets - an early system of writing - dating from 2500BC. Baldock’s version presents an alternative history of clay as a tool of communication; his ceramic columns feature expressive faces, emoji symbols and make audible groans, whistles and chuckles through concealed speakers.

Frances Disley - Activation. Photo by Livia Lizar

Meanwhile Disley presents Pattern Buffer, which will layer multi-sensory elements to create an environment that invites gallery visitors to make use of her art works, whether that is to pause and rest in comfort, share a hobby or take something from the space.

Both shows run from March 13 to June 21.

Suki Chan's Conscious, from March 27 to June 13, includes a strand of reseach about dementia in a show which brings together diverse, subjective perspectives of scientists and ordinary people, whose stories unwrap layers of thinking and preconceptions about individual and collective consciousness.

The Liverpool Biennial show is yet to be announced but will run concurrently through the summer (from July 11 to October 25) with an exhibition of work by Tony Phillips.

Tony Phillips - Dawn of the Century

Phillips’ etching series 12 Decades continues a survey of modern history that has occupied him over the last 40 years.

It complements a new installation, 20th Century Chapel that he is working on for Liverpool’s Bombed Out Church later in 2020, and a proposed pedestrian trail of public artworks between the two buildings, which were both badly damaged in the Second World War.

And then in November, Bluecoat welcomes Wales in Venice 2019 artist Sean Edwards to Liverpool with a solo show relating to memory and place.

The exhibition – Undo Things Done - will be accompanied by a programme of events which reflect on the contemporary and historic associations that Liverpool has had with Welsh culture.

For more details visit the Bluecoat website HERE