John Moores Painting Prize 2018 - Walker Art Gallery

The John Moores Painting Prize 2018 is an exhibition held at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool over a selected number of months to display and exhibit all types of paintings. 60 artists were chosen to present their work in the exhibition after submitting their best pieces of artwork and the public were allowed to choose their favourite, this made the whole showcase very inclusive to the public as well as art lovers.
Walking around the exhibition I witnessed  a vast  assortment of unique, pieces exclusive to this exhibition. These paintings included several different styles of artworks including abstract expressionism, Contemporary, impressionism and many other styles.





My favourite piece from the whole exhibiton was a piece called 'No ball games' by Liz Bailey. This artwork stood out to me as it resembles a photograph due to its realistic nature.

The Walker Art Gallery

Recently we visited The Walker Art Gallery as a group to explore and analyse the outstanding work that is currently on display within the Gallery. We discussed how to analyse and discover all of the small singular ways regarding how to assess the paintings, this included the individual techniques used in the production of these art works. This visit was initially to accustom ourselves with the surroundings and pieces of artwork within the Walker Gallery, to enable us to comfortably know what treasures it holds within its walls.

Our lecturer guided us around the Gallery and introduced us to a number of incredible, compelling pieces of work including 'Isabella' by John Everett Millias, 1849. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to a reading of this piece as i found the story behind the painting extremely riveting. The rivalry between Isabella's scheming brothers and her apprentice lover caused tension within the atmosphere of the paining. There are so many hidden treasures within this one image which signify a whole story behind Isabella and her lover, Lorenzo from the start of their affair to Lorenzo's doomed fate. 

Joseph Noonan-Ganley

Joseph Noonan-Ganley is an Irish artist who visited us to present his work and practises as an artist. He was an individual who challenges the social constructs of texture and sexuality within art and surrounding the artists who produce these pieces.
His main project was focused around the life works of Joseph Cornell who was an artist who passed away in the 1970's. Noonan-Ganley produced artwork around the comments this artist received throughout his career he found in his archive. He created a film called the 'Sess pool of rapture' where he visited Cornells's hometown and interviewed his close friends, here is where he received 30 hours of footage Joseph Cornell recorded while he was at the peak of his career.

I enjoyed Joseph Noonan-Ganley's lecture due to the individual, qualities of his film he created. I have never seen such an artistic directorial style in a video combining the simple structure of voice and physical items. This lecture has made me think more in-depth about artists and their personal lives, how this may have affected their work and influenced certain greatness within artwork we may have never known about.

Jade Montserrat

Jade Montserrat is a Uk based reteach-led artist who's main focus surrounds racism and sexuality within colonialism. She broadly addresses desire, sexuality, race and class within the context of colonialism, history of art and archives. This is practised through expressionist forms of film, performance, print, text, installations and sculptures which are all extremely unique to her own style. 

Jades presentation was majorly focused on her performative drawing project named 'No need for clothes' where she was given a holding space to create a piece of art covering the wall in charcoal. This took place in the spring of 2017. She filmed the whole process from start to finish and produced a movie of the artwork being created and then destroyed, followed by being covered up shortly afterwards. Her project was based around Josephine Baker who was an inspirational artist she held dear to her heart. Similar to Montserrat's own morals and practises within her work, Baker used her body in artwork, performance and dance to expand the views of everyone who witnessed her work. 

The performance of the presentation was interesting although was confusing at times, it was very fast paced and hard to keep up with at some points in time. This could have been due simply to nerves or sheer excitement to deliver to an auditorium of people everything she has accomplished so far in her career. I enjoyed the presentation due to her extremely apparent passion for the subject of freedom within race, sexuality and class. I can relate Jade Montserrat's artwork and passions to my own work within Art History as it is all about the broad freedom of interpretation within art. There is no right answer when analysing art unless you have provided a reason regarding your statement, this makes it an extremely broad subject with no limitations. 

Heath Bunting

Heath Bunting is an artist of many practises. Throughout his career he has developed a deep interest in Commercial, Political and Military Art due to his intense devotion to explore the limits of the government. When he visited the university to introduce us to his work and life stories, I found Heath's presentation to be extremely profound as he openly shared his existential struggles with an auditorium full of students he had never come in contact with before. 
Heath always had an abnormal background from a young age as he found that he spent a large majority of his youth homeless after being recurrently rejected from the education system, this is how he developed a love for street art. His pioneering project called BorderXing landed him in severe trouble with the authorities as he attempted to explore and document the limits of entering and travelling the European Union without any documents. This was attempted by jumping trains, this was a popular route of journey to many but this led numerous individuals to their deaths as it was often a very dangerous alternative. Through this project he was classed as a Terrorist by the British Government and was subsequently interrogated regularly by the MI5 anytime he attempted to travel.

I thoroughly enjoyed Bunting's presentation as I feel he constantly captivated the audience, there was seldom a dull moment and i admire how he kept each person interested with each different story he told. I enjoyed listening to how he pushed the boundaries of the boarders around the European union, I related to this certain topic of interest as I enjoy expanding the boundaries of contextual interpretation of all types of artwork within Art History. This creates a whole new world of possibilities regarding what a piece of art once was or could have possibly been. After this particular lecture I researched Heath Bunting and his past projects to see how peculiar and interesting each one has been.