Having had to travel west to help a family member move house we decided to carry on and spend the night and following day in Liverpool. I don't think I've been since my friend was at uni there so that's probably about 40 years ago!!
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| yes i have discovered the panoramic setting on my phone!!! Albert dock |
We had some mispent times in Liverpool - ooohh those crazy days of youth - arrested for hitchhiking on the motorway - my - we were wild!!!
I remember going to the newly opened Tate Liverpool and being very underwhelmed by some of the 'modern' art in there - there was a passing craze for very minimalist white canvases and it just didn't cut it for me. I felt 40 years on it was probably worth another look!
So after the fiesta fulfilled its duty as a pantechnicon we headed to the docklands of Merseyside .. booked a cheap no frills hotel for the night and had a little explore.
We hit lucky on a funky bar 'The Baltic Social' quiet as it was early evening but nice ambiance, all wood floors reclaimed tat, very fashionable but with decent beer and reasonable grub so we whiled away a couple of hours playing at being cool old things before hitting a fairly comfy bed and then exploring the docks the next day.
Surprisingly I don't recall any of this landscape from 1988 - I've slept a bit since then but it was very pleasant... could have been warmer, sunnier but the whole dock area is very interesting. Its nicley if quite commercially played out. There are quite a lot of quirky bits left standing and its only marred by the massive hotel blocks which are not at sympathetic to the original lovely Victorian (and earlier) buildings.
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| Andy Warhol self portrait not long before his death - say what you like he was very influential... |
We visited the Tate and it was good! Not amazing but better then some and the range of art was quite wide from the classic Andy Warhol to the amazing vinyl tape floor by Jim Lambie. This floor was a total optical illusion and in places the absolutely flat surface really looked curved and undulating.
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| all individual lines of tape it must have taken days to install... |
There was alot of good stuff to look at as always very little textile art but quite a lot of sculptural exhibits... very tactile in a different way - though I hasten to add no touching allowed.
I.m also getting a little more interested in some of the film installation arty stuff.. this never grabbed me before bot recently i've seen a couple of really interesting ideas. This one in the Tate was a short film part of an over all exhibition by Moon Kyungwon and Jeon Joonho... Weird and I didn't understand it at all but it was strangely compelling. https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/exhibition/moon-kyungwon-and-jeon-joonho-news-nowhere
As we walked along the dock s towards the Tate there were some great big photos of places of Britain Taken From the Air. They were quite outstanding especially displayed large... they would never look so good just in a book. The most coincidental thing was that as we were wandering and wondering how many of the places we had visited, we stopped in front of one taken in Wigan to find it was the exact building we had just relocated said move into!! How weird was that! Only been to Wigan twice and there it was glorious Technicolor exactly where we had parked....
It was a cold grey day but we felt we would like to see more of Liverpool from above so taking advantage of pensioners rates we went on the Liverpool eye wheel thing.
It was fab and best thing was we were sat right at the top for ages as they emptied the opposite pods. The views were pretty good even though it wasn't as clear as we would have liked.
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| almost 360 view with panoramic |
There's definitely a lot more to see in the city but we always try and overload our sightseeing so we decided to get the car and go up the coast for a walk on Crosby beach home to ' Another Place' an Anthony Gormley installation.
I had been wanting to see this for ages and it didn't disappoint. 100 individual iron statues embedded at random intervals along a 3 kilometer stretch of beach looking stark, lonely, resilient, haughty and sometimes a little spooky yet still very atmospheric.
It was a slate grey sky and sea and it was quite fresh as we wandered down the beach. Some of the statues were way down at the waterline - it was low tide - the sign advised against going down that far as the sand was less stable but they looked amazing as they drifted into the distance.
I tried to get Dr Fred to shed his clothes and pose next to the statue but surprisingly he declined quite vehemently.. spoil sport but to be honest even with several layers on we soon got very cold and I have been suffering with quite a bad throat and now chest infection so I didn't really want to over egg the outdoorsy stuff - it was time for home.
I.m glad we made the effort for a little day out in a different city. I'm glad we didn't try a pack the whole of Liverpool sightseeing into one day. And it was really nice to see something of Merseyside that wasn't footie or those allegedly iconic fab four !!! (and I don't mean the Smiths)
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