Visiting Art Galleries

I decided to spend a day looking around some art galleries in Liverpool, to see if I could get some inspiration for future concepts. I tried to bear in mind that inspiration could come in many forms, so kept my eye out for anything interesting. 

My first visit was to the Bluecoat to see Babak Ganjei’s exhibit “Thanks for Having Me”. I have included a link below for more information on the exhibit, and some pictures I took with my thoughts.

https://www.thebluecoat.org.uk/whatson/babak-ganjei-thanks-for-having-me











The exhibit was supposed to show an exploration of Ganjei’s creative journey through his life, I looked into what art he makes online after looking at the exhibit, because while the exhibit showed some insight into his creative life I couldn’t really figure out what he did. From looking through Ganjei’s website he seems to do a lot of poetry, which makes sense given a lot of the work on the walls at the exhibit.




I honestly feel like this exhibit annoyed me more than inspired me, I love poetry and I see real value in it - but having an exhibit all about your creative life, and selling poetry written on paper for hundreds of pounds feels a bit pretentious to me. But maybe that’s the reaction he wants from people? I am not too sure, it was an interesting exhibit that’s for sure. 

I moved on to look at the Bluecoat garden and shop, and felt like I saw a lot of interesting pieces in the shop itself, I was really on the lookout for interesting patterns and colours here.













The garden was also really nice to walk through, I always like being around nature, and it is a great place for getting inspired.




After finishing up at the Bluecoat I moved on to TATE Liverpool, sadly one exhibit was just a children’s crafting event, so I only could look through one exhibit (which as the TATE has temporarily moved building, was very small). So I had a look around the exhibit, “You Get a Car [Everybody Gets a Car]: RESOLVE Collective”. 







The focus of the exhibit was essentially to showcase the work that RESOLVE Collective has done with TATE Liverpool to redistribute and reuse materials and furnishings throughout the refurbishment of the TATE. It was interesting to learn about the work being done for local communities through this project, but while it was definitely inspiring in a social sense, I didn’t see much artistic and design inspiration. 

I went to the shop before leaving to see if anything caught my eye there, I have popped a few pictures below of what I found interesting. 




I saw a book about Mildred, who apparently was a previous resident cat at the TATE Modern! The book by Jono Ganz is really colourful and had lots of exciting illustrations.

https://jonoganz.com/portfolio



I also saw Josef Albers “Interaction of Color” which I actually read for my first essay on this masters, I did end up buying that to take home!

That’s everything that I saw on my trip around the galleries! I definitely am understanding the sentiment that inspiration can come from anywhere, because I felt more inspired in the shops of the galleries than the galleries themselves!

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