Opening Culture: Warrington Contemporary Arts Festival 2013

A small industrial town flanked by Liverpool and Manchester, Warrington is probably better known for its successful Rugby League team, Warrington Wolves, than for its visual arts scene. But the Warrington Contemporary Art Festival, now in its third edition, is eager to boast about the culture this town has to offer.

The theme of this year’s festival is ‘be curious’. Encouraging visitors to open their minds to new possibilities, the programme offers a mix of local and international artists served up on an explorative platform. Taking place over three main venues – The Gallery at Bank Quay House, The Pyramid, and the Warrington Museum and Art Gallery – this year’s highlights include the internationally renowned Jeremy Bailey and Polly Morgan, and local artists David Ogle and Emily Speed.

One of the festival’s founders, Emma Kelly, who’s also the curator of the Gallery at Bank Quay House, explains how the festival came about: “Myself and Derek Dick [chief curator at Warrington Museum and Art Gallery] saw the active arts and culture scene within Warrington and decided to start up a festival as a way of celebrating the local talent. Over the past three years this has grown to include international artists mixing with and embracing the local arts scene.” As with the previous two editions of the festival, the town’s local talent is celebrated through its Open Art Competition, with selected works carefully weaved throughout the festival’s commissioned exhibitions.

Like any self-respecting arts festival, the programme commenced with a launch party, providing a taste of what the festival has to offer in the form of a cultural crawl across the three venues. Coming along to join the crawl – sort of – was media artist Jeremy Bailey; although not attending in person, he was present virtually by the means of his anonymous lycra-clad slave, who wears a bulky helmet with a screen over their face acting as the absent artist’s body for the evening to enable ‘Bailey’ to circulate the party. “I’m thrilled to be involved in the festival,” Bailey says. “The Northwest is my favourite area of the UK, an area that I find very enthusiastic about art.” He continues to explain that he “made these Master/Slave units specifically for the Northwest as a comment on the area’s historic connections to the slave trade.” Bailey's Master/Slave Invigilator System project – which he talks to us in more depth about here – returns on 9 November from 12-2pm at the Golden Square/Town Centre. 

The inclusion of Bailey’s experimental work Master/Slave was initially proposed by FACT Liverpool’s CEO, Mike Stubbs. “The work is asking some interesting questions about our lives today,” says Stubbs. “It’s also accessible to all, fun and has the ability to create maximum engagement. It’s mobile, sits within the public realm and is a comment on our current state of ‘glocal’ communication.”

Also exhibiting is local sculptor David Ogle (our Showcase artist this month). Originally from Lymm but now based in Liverpool, Ogle describes his work as an event or intervention rather than sculpture. “Each of my works is site specific; I use the architecture of a space to guide the work,” says Ogle discussing his exhibition at The Pyramid, adding: “but obviously [I] also consider practical elements like where the power sockets are”. Although sculptural in form, Ogle says that his process feels “very much like drawing." The winner of Sculpture Shock 2013, Ogle’s work is professional and precise in its presentation.

The Warrington Museum and Art Gallery host artist Polly Morgan. Using taxidermy to create her work, Morgan has had an ongoing relationship with the museum for some time. “It was a cheeky ask on my part, but one that Polly responded to with great enthusiasm,” says gallery curator Derek Dick. “She’s interested to see what the reaction to her work will be as this is her first exhibition in the Northwest.” The museum is the perfect setting for Morgan’s work, given that its rooms are crammed with jars of specimens preserved in formaldehyde, cases of fossils, and the odd piece of taxidermy. The temporary exhibition space where Morgan’s work is on show is small, even a little cramped, but the selected work provides a faultless snapshot of the capabilities of this very talented artist.

The festival has several public realm commissions and interventions built into its programme. “The intention behind the Contemporary Art Festival is to take arts out in to the public realm, to break down barriers and enable more people to access high quality arts – both inside and outside of cultural venues,” explains Janey Moran, Culture Warrington Senior Arts Development Officer.

One of this year‘s public realm commissions is by artist Emily Speed, who will host The Brick Parade on Saturday 16 November in the town centre. The parade will celebrate Warrington’s architecture and encourage those familiar with it to look again. Speed’s work explores the relationship between the body and architecture: her cardboard costumes are intended to provide their wearers with a safe haven and call to mind that comforting feeling people often experience on returning to their hometown after time away and seeing the familiar architecture again.

The launch concluded with an afterparty hosted by newly formed Liverpool group The Wild Writers. A unique literary performance collective, the group reject traditional poetry readings in favour of more immersive and interactive ways of displaying their writing. Although there is music, this is continuously interrupted and the crowd are silenced for a number of performances. Audience participation is not just encouraged, it’s a must. There are diaries for participants to pen their latest triumphs and a number of mad-professor-type inventions scrawled on to luggage tags by the mysterious Brock James for guests to decipher and take home.

“We are chuffed to be asked to be involved,” says the group’s founder, Michael Fowler. “It’s a slightly overwhelming experience. I keep thinking that everything could just crumble around us under the pressure.” This seems highly unlikely given the group's innovative, DIY attitude. On Saturday 9 November the group will host a new Imaginarium in Hilden Place and have invited special guests to join the madness. It’s an event that promises to be worth a trek to Warrington.

A lively festival, it’s an impressive display of how much Warrington has grown culturally since its days of industry, and a non-elitist festival that shows the work of local talent alongside that of internationally renowned artists. Acting Cultural Director of Culture Warrington, Tina Redford, summed it all up perfectly in her opening speech: “We are looking to form a creative class and not a cultural elite here in Warrington.” This sounds like an apt definition of this festival’s philosophy and the experimental, open culture that it has created.