“OUTPUT gallery works exclusively with creatives from or based in Merseyside. Through free exhibitions and events, we hope to encourage the development, mobility and strength of our local art scene.

We have a high turnover of exhibitions because there are so many artists to work with here in the Liverpool City Region, and we want to work with as many as possible.”

The Output institution is made of three elements- the vintage shop, where one can go back in time, collecting pieces from the last decades, the cafe, where you can enjoy high quality organic beverages, which in majority are suitable for vegans and the heart of the building complex, output art gallery containing frequently changing exhibitions, revealing artistic talents of Merseyside.

Having a tour with the ½ of the White Pube [https://www.thewhitepube.co.uk/], Gabrielle de la Puente, who is playing a major role within the art institution, made me realize the importance of supporting local art and the artists making it. Crossing trough, the shop space, I found myself spending a lot of time with some of the artworks of the Output Open 4 exhibition, Feb 6- 23. The fourth edition gathered works based around illustration, painting, sculpture, poetry and video with music, presenting an overall sense of positivity, mystery of human body and mind with a pinch of world exploration by urbanity and nature, additionally enriched by vibrant colour palette. Dialogue between past and the present is not only to be seen in the clothes and accessories to buy in the designated area, but also in the artworks, although from different perspective. The poem Wearing Memories, made of two stanzas, deals with the topic of acceptance of the past of a sensitive individual, who is reliving memories, concretising a different subject, who used be a part of the reality but it’s still vivid in the persona’s awareness (the work is available to be read within the thirteenth photo at: http://outputgallery.com/EXHIBITIONS/OUTPUT%20OPEN%204/).

The poem, even though melancholic, depicts a journey one has to embark on to make peace with oneself and choses the most suitable, comfortable reality there is to exist in. It is not the only element linking the spaces together. The jewellery, often made of healing crystals, ready to buy and hand made by other artists gives an impression of closeness to earth, nature and the elements. A similar measure was used in the composition of curating artworks, achieving a form of a story that can be read piece by piece. Products of nature such as fruits, flowers, plants and humans interfere with the abstract, spiritual elements, the first and the third illustration (see the photo below), reminding us that something doesn’t have to have a physical form to be real, it can’t be seen, but can be experienced.

 A person understands the influence it has on him or her and expresses the mystical through art or literature (such as the aforementioned poetry). Despite if it’s a God-like being or more likely a reflection of  pantheism, what is suggested by the repetitive symbols of nature, “the story”, the exhibition presents, makes the viewer a narrator, who has the ability to read it in circles from the walls, in an order that is random, but still makes sense. My thoughts are directed to Buddha’s wheel of life, representing Samsara, a cyclic existence, and in the context of the display, birth and rebirth through memories and nature, exploring yourself and the world you co-exist with, Talk to me, I am the sun poems.

 That is why, contrary to Immanuel Kant’s transcendental idealism, I argue that one can experience those “supersensible” objects through nature and express it by art or literature, what makes him or her already familiarized with the concept of abstract.

The urban perspective remains in a very realistic manner. Except for the painting, where two of them depict industrialized vision of a city, suggesting a Merseyside landscape, one of them is rather romantic, inhabited by humans (the houses instead of factors) flora and a water reservoir. It reveals many faces of the area, proving it is not only made of different structures of the landscape, but also the people who change mutually with the landscape. 

The DIY video with the already made artworks show the joy of making, creation of the object, by which one is able to diversify the inhabited space. It proves that the theme of the exhibition is mutual, the artworks share a level of similarity, even though they were made by multiple autonomous artists. As we read on the website: “This year’s edition includes work by Hannah Arhinful, Mia Cathcart, Ollie C, Natalie Denny, Catherine and Sarah Garvey, Ann Gilchrist, Fauziya Johnson, Faisal Koukash, Gabriel Starkey and Linny Venables. We hope you enjoy the show.”

K.W.