Liverpool's Bluecoat hosts immersive touring exhibition this autumn

The Bluecoat hosts a touring exhibition of work by award-winning visual artist Becky Beasley this autumn.

A Gentle Man (Part II) (1975-2029) opens on September 26 and runs at the School Lane arts centre until January 3, 2027.

It joins a special archive display which celebrates the late Liverpool ceramicist Julia Carter Preston and her connection with the Bluecoat to mark the centenary of her birth.

East Sussex-based Beasley is a visual artist, mentor, educator and autism advocate and works across sculpture, photography and writing. She is Professor of Fine Art at Goldsmiths College in London.

Her practice broadly explores objects and spaces of the everyday and how we might inhabit them. It is concerned with spatial experience, and particularly the interior.

The free touring exhibition will transform the Bluecoat gallery into a contemplative and immersive landscape, with a large green linoleum artwork covering the gallery floor and featuring hand-cut lake silhouettes, with adjustable ‘conversation’ or ‘kissing’ benches providing a place to sit and rest.

Pastel pink curtain sculptures will hang in the shape of the letters H, S and P – an acronym for Highly Sensitive Person.

The exhibition – co-commissioned by QUAD, the Bluecoat and John Hansard Gallery with funding from the Freelands Foundation and Arts Council England - will also include a four-part video portrait of an imaginary figure; a merging of American novelist and short story writer, Bernard Malamud, and the artist’s father.

The work explores milestones in life through its four discreet chapters: work, family, chosen family and dying, and the film is narrated by British actor Russell Tovey.

Becky Beasley: A Gentle Man (Part II) (1975-2029) is at The Bluecoat from September 26 to January 3, 2027.

Becky Beasley, A Gentle Man (Part II) (1975-2029). Image credit: Nigel Green. Courtesy of the artist.