This week the Creative Stars had their very first field trip to Liverpool, visiting Tate Liverpool and FACT.
We gathered at Cornerhouse on Thursday at 11am and from there headed off to Liverpool on the coach. At Tate Liverpool, we visited the current show, A Sense of Perspective, which is an exhibition that has been curated by Young Tate- a group of young curators aged 16 to 25. They spent a year and a half completing the show from start to finish. The process began with them deciding on a message they wanted to deliver to the audience and then they chose the works that fitted to the theme from thousands of pieces in Tate’s collection. The young curators also designed the brochures for the exhibition and launched an online competition open to the public. We were fortunate to meet Joe and Nia, two of the young curators, who put on a small tour for all the Creative Stars. The artworks on display in A sense of Perspective reflect the young curators’ views towards cultural differences and integration. They explored the intercultural essence by exhibiting multi-disciplinary art works which included paintings, installations, sculpture. There was also a mysterious steam curtain that refused to show its awesomeness to the Creative Stars on the day due to technical difficulties.
We were amazed by the work that the Young Tate had achieved and through the tour we got a deep sense of the story and language behind the art pieces. It was evident that the young curators did a good job in creating ‘a sense of perspective’ through the work they chose to be in the exhibition. They did this through appropriately finding themes to relate all the work to the title and each other resulting in an outcome that is both professional and compelling.
Later in the day we visited FACT, here ideas became more relaxed and interesting. The Social Playground is an exhibition that is displayed in the main gallery space, using architecture with multi-media works to create a space that people can easily engage and interact with. There were egg running races in the gallery which all the Creative Stars had a lot of fun with. We also got the chance to visit a smaller gallery space where a room that hasn’t been visited for more than a hundred years was creatively interpreted into a gallery space by exhibiting photography, antique furniture and a typewriter which was connected to twitter! The space once again was quite easy for people to engage with, even just by sitting on the sofa and old chairs, you could feel the old story behind them. The photographs on the walls recorded the history and details of the room, which made a great contrast to the technology that was integrated in the interactive pieces.
The two galleries both have their own qualities, at Tate Liverpool we got a closer look at a serious fine art show with strong a curating direction, whereas the two interactive spaces at FACT were more engaging and fun. We all had our own favourite; some loved the eggs in FACT while others were inspired by the achievement of Young Tate.
Next January, we are going to be curating our own exhibition in Gallery 1 at Cornerhouse. This field trip has given us some great ideas for what we could aim to do with our show. The thing that makes the Creative Stars unusual is that we all have different talents in different fields. We have got singers, painters, sculptors, filmmakers, photographers, illustrators, you name it. It is very exciting to think about what an amazing cross-disciplinary show we could produce!!
Do check out our blog regularly to get a fresh update of what the Creative Stars are up to!
Written by Creative Star, Zack Peng (June 2011)