About Alex in the Daily Post, Liverpool

New Garston art gallery offering art and performance space in Liverpool’s far south

Apr 22 2010 by William Leece, Liverpool Daily Post

SOUTH Liverpool’s newest arts venue has launched a programme of performances and exhibitions stretching right through the summer.

The Garston Art Works, in Duke Street, Garston, is the project of Alex Corina, a Yorkshire-born artist who has lived in south Liverpool for 20 years and ran the Slaughterhouse Gallery, in St Mary’s Road, during Capital of Culture year.

But funding for the Slaughterhouse ended with Capital of Culture. Now the Art Works has been set up in the former Conservative Club in Duke Street, providing both a studio and living space for Alex, and an exhibition and performance area on the ground floor.

The first exhibition of Alex’s own work, including a well-know series of paintings merging John Lennon’s face into the Mona Lisa, has already opened, with the first performance evening pencilled in for Thursday, April 29, when local schools are being invited to a day of African drum workshops, followed by a performance from Global Pulse and Kevin Paton, a musician, writer and performer who makes instruments from recycled materials in a workshop located next to the Art Works.

An exhibition entitled Creative Cargo 2010 is pencilled in for the end of June, but before then there will be an exhibition and performance from pupils of St Benedict’s School, in Garston, marking the achievements of pupils and also the end of the school before it merges with New Heys to create a new academy from September.

“There is a huge pool of creative talent in south Liverpool, and we are aiming to give it a space in which everyone can come and see what is going on here,” said Alex.