Yesterday, we went to Liverpool for the day, as you do. We went to see the Jackson Pollock exhibition at the Tate. I am really glad we went. It was a great exhibition which had some of my favourites ie the standard poster paintings plus some black drawings – large.  Lots of things to think about. No photography allowed.

The Tate Liverpool like to set up their major exhibitions so they lead into a lesser exhibition. I have been to two set up this way and I personally don’t like it. In both cases, I came out of the main exhibitions, this time Pollock, last time Mondrian, with my head full of fabulous images into a lesser not so good show.  And they set it up so you have to walk through the second one to get out. I am sure they have a reason!

The second one was an artist called Glenn Ligon and works of well known artists who have inspired his work. I know some of Glenn’s text work but had never had a name to put it to. There was some iconic work hung with his work, a Boetti world map and text embroidery, an Andy Warhol, a Chris Ollifie’s elephant dung and so on. The work wasn’t hung well and there appeared to be no logic or explanation as to why Glenn had chosen the works.  

Today, we went to Birmingham and saw another interesting take – Andy Warhol and William Morris. The reason behind why the two artists’ work was hung together was too aserteric for me!! But there were some great works, iconic Andy Warhol pieces and beautiful very large tapestries made in William Morris’ factory. There was a set of Andy’s screen prints that I need to get copies of. There were four in different colourways and the resulting pieces looked quite different – an interesting colour study.

Again, no, photography.