Tate Liverpool celebrates the built environment in summer show

Bricks are the building blocks of a new Tate Liverpool exhibition going on show on the city’s waterfront.

Brickworks, at RIBA North on Mann Island from today, features sculptures, works on paper and photography from the Tate Collection to explore how the humble brick has been used to make art.

It aims to highlight how everyday materials can be transformed by artists and used to convey meaning and messages, and to speak about issues from land rights and the built environment to poetry and protest.

There are 21 works on display in the gallery at RIBA North which include Algerian-French artist Kadar Attia’s sculpture Untitled (Concrete Blocks) - inspired by the huge obstacles installed on Algerian beaches; Tamas St Auby’s symbol of political resistance, Czechoslovak Radio 1968; Saloua Raouda Choucair’s intricate, Jenga-like Poem Wall; Philip Guston’s work on paper The Street; Isa Genzken's Two Loudspeakers (made from concrete and steel) and sketch books from 1982-98 belonging to Donald Rodney.

Meanwhile a dry stone wall specialist was brought in to recreate the late Greek artist Jannis Kounellis's Untitled, made using locally-sourced stone and shaped and built on site.

The exhibition evokes Liverpool’s heritage as a city of bricks, from its Old Dock and warehouses - including Tate Liverpool’s permanent home in the Royal Albert Dock - to the country’s first red brick university.

Above: a slideshow of images from the exhibition.

And the gallery is also showing In Comparison, a film by the influential German filmmaker Harun Farocki, whose work often explores themes of capitalism and technology.

Farocki’s film considers different sites and methods of brick production across the world, in comparison, not in competition, investigating the colours and sounds of different cultures through their literal building blocks.

Curator Tamar Hemmes says: “We’re pleased to bring art from the Tate collection to our new gallery space at RIBA North for the first time.

"While we are in the process of transforming our home on Albert Dock, now felt like an appropriate time to reflect on works inspired by the humble brick. It's a building material but also has an aesthetic value that we don't normally appreciate.

"The display highlights how this simple, everyday material can be used by artists as inspiration for difference, unity, strength and the underappreciated.”

Tate Liverpool has partnered with RIBA North while the Tate’s Royal Albert Dock galleries undergo a massive £29.7m redevelopment programme.

Brickworks is at RIBA North on Mann Island from July 31 to January 12, 2025.

Top: Kadar Attia’s sculpture Untitled (Concrete Blocks).