A night on the tiles.

Museum curator Poppy Learman, wearing green velvet and an excited grin, led me to see how she and her co curator Liz Stewart, also in a fabulous green ensemble, had displayed my drawings at the new exhibition they’ve conceived and now realised, which has recently opened at The Museum of Liverpool.

Galkoff’s and the Secrets of Pembroke Place

Such a thrill to see the forty one drawings they chose, from over a hundred I listened to and drew, made into a massive wall of Liverpool voices and stories.

They’re pasted up on the reverse of the beautiful frontage of Galkoff’s kosher butcher which has been carefully reconstructed, tile by shiny green tile, inside the museum, as the centrepiece for a show that uncovers all kinds of history of its particular part of the city, once lively home and shopping area to many, including a busy and established Jewish community.

The sixty stories not pasted up, are also available to look at in a flip book which is part of the extensive display.

Every single person I met on my story collecting odyssey in Liverpool had something interesting and surprising to say!

I’m looking forward to contributing to a symposium on the work around this show. It’s going to be on December 9th and I’ll talk about the story collecting process and read some poems.

Galkoff’s Symposium

If you’re in Liverpool, do visit the museum. It’s the perfect spot to take your imagination and do some time travelling, and once you’ve heard Galkoff’s Sausage Song for yourself, maybe also find some lunch.

Wearing shiny green clothes is optional. Or maybe just give yourself a polish and wear a glazed expression?

Tate Modern

Today is the final day of a surreal and wonderful week in my life as an artist.

100 of my ink drawings are up at Tate Modern.

They are part of a residency/take over at Tate Exchange , a public engagement area set aside on level 5 of the Blavatnik building.

A selection of my project ‘Stories collected live in ink’ is there thanks to Wasafiri Magazine in which I’m featured artist this issue.

Wasafiri is a journal of international contemporary writing and is based at Queen Mary University London.

Queen Mary was offered the weeks residency to showcase some of the many cultural programmes that are based there.

This current issue of Wasafiri explores the theme of refuge, with essays, fiction and poetry from global voices on the subject. It’s been guest edited by Bidisha, and I was honoured to read at the launch at Tate on Friday, and participate in a panel with Bidisha and fellow poets Olumide Popoola and Lisa Luxx.

Part of the remit for artists taking part in activities at Tate is that we should do a 10 minute talk in front of a work we choose in the collection.

This really exercised me, so many incredible paintings that I love and grew up on. But for the sheer bravado of it I chose Interior Scroll by Carolee Schneemann

I also did a two hour story collecting session – which was a blast: intense yet joyful as ever.

One of the great thrills of this opportunity has been to put the voices of all kinds of people into a space where they might not normally be heard, and to create a new set of ‘neighbours’ in displaying the drawings made with people from Southall, Liverpool, Northamptonshire, Devon, Brixton, and many other places next to each other.

I chose these 100 stories from my big archive boxes in the studio in which I have about 1200 drawings collected over the last decade. I decided on home as my theme, so that I could include very ‘settled’ narrations as well as the sometimes difficult stories of people more recently arrived. I wanted to reflect the cosy ways in which we create home for ourselves even perhaps fleetingly, on the road, or the impossibility of that comfort sometimes in long term situations!

Above all I love the collective of recognition such an exhibition creates, I’ve been touched to see people look at the drawings and cry. And amazing feedback such as this!

These pictures are records of real subjective feeling, often described as metaphor or fact to me, who subjectively aims to honour and depict them. It’s all true! Subjectively true.

And of all the extraordinary twists: I find myself (like Marcia the security guard below, I never thought I would) ‘at home’ in Tate Modern!

Liverpool with ink in spring

this was sung to me by Ivor Galkoff, grandson of Percy Galkoff, Pembroke Places kosher butcher

A couple of weeks ago I was in Liverpool to collect some stories live in ink. I was invited by curators Poppy Learman and Liz Stewart, who are creating an exhibition on one of the city’s much changed streets, Pembroke Place in Liverpool 3.

Galkoff’s and the Secret Life of Pembroke Place

The centrepiece of the Museum of Liverpool display will be the beautiful frontage of Galkoff’s Kosher Butchers, currently being restored, tile by sap green tile, ready to be installed in the museum for the opening in autumn.

I was there last year too, the hoarding on the site features some stories I drew in 2017 alongside archive photos and documents.

Pembroke Place is home to Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, so as well as hearing about chandleries, sausages and tap dancing, I also heard about snake venom and mosquitoes.

I collected and drew 60 new stories, here’s a small selection.

There wasn’t much time between stories to explore Liverpool, though what I saw I loved, and the light was amazing, knocking its glitter over the Mersey, and Albert Dock where I was staying.

This last photo shows the gallery in Museum of Liverpool where Galkoff’s and the Secret Life of Pembroke Place will be on show.

Thanks to Poppy and Liz and so many Liverpudlians for sharing their brilliant city and stories with me.

This is me spookily matching my meal at the Jewish Elders Luncheon Club!