Visual Arts & Exhibitions

An exciting collaboration will take place in the ever experimental Abingdon Studio Project Space, which over the last 12 months has hosted residencies, held screenings, exhibitions and talks by contemporary arts practitioners. It Shouldn’t Really Work is an investigation of space, by Tina Dempsey and Tom Harforth will launch on Thursday 6 October from 6-8pm. Light refreshments will be provided and all are welcome to enjoy the evening and meet other artists and creatives. The artists met whilst studying BA Fine Art at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, opposites in most aspects both personally and creatively; loud versus quite, older versus younger, rural versus…

With his sharp suits and seeming lack of fear when it comes to taking photos, aquatic dangerman Joseph Pegler is back in town. Joseph's art showcase The Lucky Jotter is back in Blackpool for its 8th show. Since forming four years ago The Lucky Jotter has been curating work of the highest calibre around the country. What makes this show nicer is that this year's show is at Pegler's alma mater Blackpool and Fylde college. What can we expect from the show? Well I'll leave it to Mr Pegler to tell us... "This exhibition will showcase the very best work from…

It was a while ago when I graduated from my Fine Art Degree, 2001 to be exact. Times were different then. The millennium had been and gone and we all survived, although there had been talk of Armageddon and people were definitely storing tins of food and thinking about digging panic rooms. This was a time before social media, to be fair the best thing about the internet then was the search engine, Ask Jeeves. We had no idea about digital magazine, AltBlackpool was just a glint in our editors eye. Fast forward to 2016, every year the online arts magazine The…

You can't accuse the Grundy of skimping on the sheer number of artists in this years Lightpool tie in show Neon. Over twenty of the biggest, brightest (one would of course expect that with a neon show) and up and coming artists are included in Neon: The Charged Line. As well as art mega stars like the ever ponderous and brilliant Martin Creed, the light the touch paper and stand back Tracy Emin there are artists from across the world and last six decades, there is even one from Blackpool itself, Noel Clueit. The artists included in this eye crashing…

I met Jenny on an atypically warm Blackpool day to discuss her interest in some of Blackpool's modernist interiors and architecture and how it informs her creative process. Scottish-born, Manchester-based artist Jenny Steele develops work that references 20th century architecture and interiors, whilst also exploring post-colonial, post-industrial and modernist sites. Since early 2015, she has been working on Looking Back | Moving Forward; a research and development project exploring 1930s modernist seafront architecture in the North West of England and Scotland. The resulting body of work, for which she received an Arts Council England Grant for the Arts, is currently being exhibited in her solo show An…

I don’t know if it was deliberate planning or not, but I like it. Blott Studios latest exhibition celebrating 40 years of punk music and culture runs from 4 to 7 August. There is an open invite to the preview party on 5 August at their King Street studio.  Have you ever seen anything more punk than that? If you are none the wiser you may want to read that again… Chiming in with the dates of the ever popular Rebellion music festival in the town the ‘Sugar and Spite’ exhibition features three artists. Dale Grimshaw is a leading artist…

This weekend saw the return of Sand, Sea & Spray for 2016 with over 30 artists taking over the town. altBlackpool's Jill Reidy was on hand with her camera to catch all of the action...

Preparations are well underway for the return of Blackpool's annual urban art festival Sand, Sea & Spray. Running from Friday to Saturday this weekend with live painting taking place throughout the town, it promises to be a stunning celebration of colour and design. Having secured £15,000 funding from Arts Council England for the second year running organisers have invited over 30 artists, some from as far afield as Cuba and Portugal as well as those from the UK. Organisers and volunteers have been hard at work preparing walls for the artists last week and were joined by Cllr Mark Smith…