World Cup meets culture in The Art of Football
Football fans are being treated to a month-long cultural festival to coincide with the World Cup this summer.
The Art of Football, which runs over June and July, is part of Liverpool 2018 – celebrating 10 years since the city’s Capital of Culture title.
It includes three major exhibitions, a symposium, pop-up cinema and a music festival as well as a call out for community groups to take part in a football parade with a difference, with everything in celebration of the creative culture and social fabric which underpins football.
The Art of the Football Shirt, at Camp & Furnace from June 14-28, is a free exhibition curated by fashion historian Neal Heard which will explore the relationship between football and popular culture.
One hundred shirts – including vintage and obscure examples – will be on show, telling a story of how team kits from over the years have gained iconic status and have influenced, and been influenced by, the worlds of fashion, music and politics.
The show will be open one hour before kick off on all World Cup match days.
Meanwhile Common Ground, curated by Foto Octo and at the Albert Dock from June 14-July 15 (open every day apart from Mondays), looks to explore the ritualistic behaviour of football fan culture and its development from the game of the working classes to the riches of today’s Premier League.
Photographs by Tom Wood will be on show in Common Ground at the Albert Dock
It features photographs from Tom Wood, Ken Grant and Tabitha Jussa.
Terrace Tapestries is a large-scale project working with residents, community organisations and schools across the city to design and produce a series of new banner artworks.
Each of the 32 participating World Cup nations drawn will be represented, and a series of workshops will take place to produce the banner artworks.
The Art of Football also includes a ticketed Soccerama Symposium at Liverpool Central Library, Disco Socrates at Constellations (£10), Green Screen Community Cinema pop up screenings at Prenton Park and the Isla Gladstone in Stanley Park, and a second exhibition at Camp & Furnace titled I Don’t Love Soccer Because Soccer Has Never Loved Me and featuring the work of international graphic artists.
Bido Lito! founder and Art of Football lead curator Craig G Pennington, said: “During the World Cup, when football takes an international centre stage, we have an opportunity to examine the way football is a prism through which we can explore, dissect and understand the great debates of our often confusing and contradictory times.
“A city such as ours, where football is absolutely at the core of our being and central to the way we see ourselves and the way the world sees us, is the perfect host for this project.”
The Art of Football runs from June 15 to July 15 at various venues. For more details visit the website HERE