2023 was a big year for dot-art! Mainly because it saw the return of Liverpool Art Fair after a couple years on pause from COVID.
dot-art produced exhibitions in dot-art Gallery, The Everyman, Royal Liver Building and INNSiDE by Melia as well as online in our Virtual Exhibitions space.
The Creative Course programme has seen lots of new venues, tutors and course titles added to our continuous offer for the public.
This time of year, like everyone else, we want to reflect on all we have achieved for our creative community in Liverpool during the past 12 months.
Back from our festive break we were excited to get to work on our exhibition programme and events in 2023.
The Liverpool Collection is our annual exhibition and it continued into the new year. Scenes of our great city and Wirral landscapes could be seen, created by long standing and new Artist Members.
High tides and rolling waves came sweeping into the Gallery in late January as we changed over exhibitions to ‘The Sea’. The great beauty of the deep can represent many things; endless possibilities, brewing storms, a calm horizon, or a place of pollution – the artists in this exhibition take on some of these concepts in their artwork.
Out in the city, we had Wirral Society of the Arts exhibiting in the ‘Art in the Ev’ space in the magnificent Everyman Theatre on Hope Street. This exhibition comprised of the WSA prize winners and the committee’s selection from the year’s open exhibition.
The Wirral Society of Arts (WSA) has been in existence since 1948. Each year, the Williamson hosts a WSA prize exhibition and we were honoured they chose to work with dot-art for their 2023 edition.
February was a month packed with creative courses and saw the beginning of the Flower Street Mural Project in Kirkdale with our very own Artist Member, Madeleine Pires.
The winter period is full of promise for this year to be better than the last and that includes our creative skills! Our creative courses across Liverpool were in full swing with some returning favourites and more.
Madeleine Pires held free workshops with the community of Kirkdale to begin consultation processes for the Flower Street Murals which are nearly complete. This project is in partnership with the Liverpool City Council and has had the support of many volunteers from the community, artists and art students from universities such as Liverpool Hope.
In March, we rolled out the carpet for not one, not two, not three but four exhibitions in Liverpool!
In the dot-art Gallery down the Grade II listed Queen Avenue we invited to come ‘Around the World in Black & White’ featuring monoprints, photography and monochromatic paintings of iconic places across the globe.
Just a short walk away you will find our partner hotel, INNSiDE by Melia. Upstairs on the first floor we hosted a star studded display of ‘Icons’. These large scale vibrant portraits of silver screen divas and musical heroes were widely celebrated by visitors and customers.
The ‘Art in The Ev’ programme featured lots of great artists in 2023 including in the month of March, one of our Artist Members Susan Cantrill Williams with her graphite strata drawings and mixed media paintings from geographical and geological layers. Layering painting, drawing, print and photography. The way the land has been formed, informs the process of her image making.
In the last week of the month ‘Art In The Ev‘ welcomed the work of Vlad Samoilik. Emotive and colourful, visitors could let go and not overthink in the space.
April was the month to be competed with, literally! We closed the Open Call for The Liverpool Plinth and the Public Vote for dot-art Schools. As well as picking the artist for our Flag It Up project with Homotopia.
dot-art Schools celebrates children and young people’s creativity, builds their confidence and improves well being. The annual competition for schools in the Liverpool City Region closed the public artwork vote in April. Find out more about the amazing work dot-art Schools is doing to support the next generation of creatives here.
Flag It Up is a partnership project between dot art and Bruntwood to create an exciting new platform for public art in Liverpool – using flags! This, the fourth ‘Flag It Up’ was designed by Millie Chesters, a local illustrator. We really enjoyed collaborating with Homotopia on the open call to find a design representing the LGBTQIA community in Liverpool.
The Liverpool Plinth call out this year was particularly exciting as we expanded our criteria from just the North of England to include the Midlands as well.
You can learn more about this public artwork and it’s artistic legacy here.
May meant supporting our dot-art Schools winning Primary from 2022, dedicating some time to ‘Reflections’ and returning to ‘Art in the Ev’ for two incredible exhibitions.
For the winners of dot-art Schools in 2022, Blackmoor Park Junior school we produced an exhibition of the children’s artwork at Calderstones Mansion House as part of their prize. Years 3 – 6 contributed beautiful artworks for all the visitors to admire and leave comments in the visitor book.
‘Reflections’ was our next show in the programme of 2023 at dot-art Gallery. The works of Clare Wrench, Carol Miller, Lorna Morris, John O’Neill, Rob Edmondson and Jacob Gourley contributed various perspectives on the theme. From serene scenes to mirrored illusions.
Karen Gilbert had an exhibition at ‘Art in The Ev’ in May. The pastel toned paintings inspired by from gardens, plants and flowers and the sea and water come from her process of painting techniques.
Then, the maximalist collages of Daniel Meakin landed at ‘Art In The Ev’ later that month. Daniel Meakin is a dot-art Artist Member.
“Daniel’s paintings are exceptionally multi-coloured, overjoyed, and stimulating – waking us from our unaware slumber. Not only are his paintings fused with academic fundamentals of art, like form, colour, and texture, but also screech the maximalist style in a fashionable sensibility. There is no dearth of concepts, meaningful identities, and multifarious objects. Instead, each painting is a disclosure of a new tale and experiences.”
dot-art Studios moved from Crosby to Liverpool City Centre in June and we announced the return of Liverpool Art Fair to a brand new venue, the iconic Royal Liver Building.
Working with our friends at Liverpool One, we were able to relocate our Artist Studios to the heart of the city centre. Based on Lord Street we have a range of open plan studios and private spaces from £95 per month. Currently, the studios are at capacity but we have a waiting list here.
While Liverpool Art Fair preparation was underway, we also hosted the dot-art Schools Prize Giving Ceremony at St Georges Hall and Exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery, welcoming students, teachers and parents to celebrate their creative winners!
June also saw the second year of Art Bytes Celebration Events, in our 9 partner venues across England. Art Bytes is our national inter-school art competition, building on the success and impact of dot-art Schools in the Liverpool City Region. Find out more here.
July was a huge month for us at dot-art! Launching the Liverpool Art Fair after a break since 2019 was an exciting endeavour and we were welcomed by our supporters at Royal Liver Building. But the launches do not stop there, we also unveiled the new Liverpool Plinth.
dot-art is the organiser of Liverpool Art Fair which launched in 2012 with the aim of bringing local, affordable art to the city residents and it’s visitors. All artworks were under £2,000 with specially curated under £200 rooms. We curated guided tours of the works and partnered with Cass Art to deliver Saturday creative workshops.
The new Liverpool Plinth ‘Boy with Carnations’ by Wirral based artist Brigitte Jurack was unveiled!
The sculpture serves as a meditation on the ongoing conflict in Ukraine showing the inner turmoil to the path of peace in times of conflict. The carnation colour will be replaced throughout the year it is placed, to symbolise different feelings and emotions. You can view the piece at The Liverpool Plinth at the Liverpool Parish Church until Summer 2024.
August was the final month of Liverpool Art Fair 2023 in the Royal Liver Building, our most successful year to date! Plus we opened ‘The Kitchen Table’ exhibition at dot-art and ‘Space / Line / Colour 2014-2023’ at INNSiDE.
Liverpool Art Fair was visited by hundreds of people each day from when it’s doors opened until they closed on 20th August. During this time we sold works by artists from Liverpool, Wirral, Manchester, Blackpool and more places in the capture area. Hilary Dron, a dot-art Artist Member, was announced as the People’s Choice Winner!
The People’s Choice Award was voted for by visitors to the Art Fair selecting their favourite artist and artwork. The winner received an array of prizes from dot-art, CASS Art, CBRE, Open Media BIPC and RLB360.
Down at dot-art Gallery we opened ‘The Kitchen Table’ which explored domestic scenes and still lives in the home. Paying homage to the classic still life genre of art, the artists in the exhibition capture the stillness and beauty of this style.
Continuing our exhibition offer at INNSiDE by Melia Hotel on Old Hall Street, we showcased the work of John Petch. Nearly a decade of Petch’s geometric imagery and pattern paintings were on display in ‘Space / Line / Colour 2014-2023’.
dot-art and The Everyman announced in September that Ali Barker was the next Artist in Residence at the theatre company. ‘Degrees of Abstraction’ brightened up the walls of dot-art Gallery and we featured the work of Charlotte Weatherstone on our socials and blog.
Ali Barker was announced as the artist from dot-art to undertake a 6 month Artist Residency in the Everyman Theatres.
“I plan to identify architectural details/spaces/views of both the publicly accessible areas within the buildings and the distinctive external theatre buildings, then combine them with the colours I experience through my sound-colour synaesthesia whilst working in those spaces.” – Ali Barker
Hilary Dron, Jessica Slack and John Sharp; pushed the boundaries of gestures and natural forms in ‘Degrees of Abstraction’ at dot-art Gallery. This show comprised of large, vibrant paintings closed the door on reality and centres you in the realms of abstraction.
We love spotlighting the work of our dot-art Artist Members and in September, Charlotte Weatherstone was our Featured Artist. Weatherstone is an illustrator, designer and print maker based in Liverpool. Charlotte studied Graphic Arts at LJMU. After graduation she joined established brand / marketing / web agency NONCONFORM.
She’s a versatile illustrator and work on found objects, paper, wood, a computer and brick walls. Inspiration comes from an interest in: Astronomy, Art Nouveau, Nature, Calligraphy & Classical Ballet.
October saw Art In The Ev being taken over by the North West Artists Support Group and a whole range of creative courses taking place across cultural venues in Liverpool led by our fantastic artist tutors.
11 artists came together under the North West Artist Support Group to present ‘Summer Memories’ in the Art In The Ev space on the first floor of The Everyman Theatre. In the format of a fortnight long exhibition for each half of the group, the artists collaborated to capture the essence of Summer through their unique perspectives and styles.
During October, we offered 13 different creative courses in our partner venues. These included dot-art Club, Life Drawing, Landscape Painting and our Darkroom courses. We are Liverpool’s consistent creative course offer and we constantly add new tutors, techniques and topics. See our current programme of courses here.
How do we know the creative courses are a great offer? By our student feedback of course! Here are some feedback quotes from our previous programme:
“I enjoyed having dedicated time to do art and I enjoyed painting from a live model.”
“Excellent tutor, very skilled, and it was a well paced course with lots of support and detailed tuition.”
“I enjoyed meeting the other students each week and seeing how well we all progressed through the course. “
In November, we had an exciting return to the Royal Liver Building for ‘Joy’ by Faith Bebbington. Launched our annual Christmas Exhibition ‘The Liverpool Collection’ and had some nice feedback from our framing customers.
‘Joy’ by Faith Bebbington was a week long exhibition of her new and existing recycled sculptures. You may recognise the work of Faith as she was not only the most popular ever seen on The Liverpool Plinth in 2021 but was also one of the selection panel for Liverpool Art Fair, has various public artwork sculptures in Liverpool, London and other cities, and leads workshops in schools.
‘The Liverpool Collection’ celebrates the best of Liverpool and our local artists portrayal of the city every year.
Liverpool has always been packed with culture; home grown often, as we are sure you know. We support local artists to continue the beautiful ecology of the arts in the city and have done for 18 years and counting. This, our final exhibition of the year before we welcomed in 2024, shows over 20 artistic voices capturing the parts of Liverpool they love and that seep into their creative practice.
Bespoke framing has been offered by dot-art Gallery for a number of years and we constantly have great feedback and returning customers. Customers range from our artist members to the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic to recently Central Library for the King’s coronation visit to Liverpool!
Google reviews help customers find us and our service and in November we had a very nice review – “Had two paintings recently framed and very happy with how they now look and of course the price was good.”
We appreciate all our gallery and framing customers and guarantee a tailored service for your needs at affordable prices.
Ending 2023 on a high in December we gave back to our customers with great offers in a 12 Days of Christmas campaign and announced our Winter Programme of Creative Courses that include a new approach to our offer.
Understanding the cost of living crisis impact on everyone this year, we created a campaign to help people to continue to support our small business in their gift giving. Over 12 days of Christmas we had offers on all our services from Artist Membership discounts to free print with an art purchase to 10% off fine art printing.
This gave us the opportunity not only to give back to our supporters and customers but also to shout about all the great things we offer at dot-art. From framing to fine art original works.
In late 2023 we announced our Winter programme of courses for the new year. We find this time is perfect for gift giving as you can book on behalf of other people and buy Gift Vouchers for all our courses and customise the amount.
This programme stands out from all the rest as we are broadening our offer to include taster sessions, an evening to get to know our tutors and content of our 10 week courses. We partnered with our neighbours R&H Fine Wines to bring ‘Sip & Sketch’ in the gallery and will be delivering ‘ Sketch the City’ combining walking, architecture and sketching tips.
See our upcoming Art Classes here.