ARRIVALS/DEPARTURES - 30 JULY - 23 DECEMBER 2022

Open to: Any UOL students / Any UOL staff / Students from other HEIs / Staff from other HEIs/research institutions / Any potential undergraduate students / Any potential postgraduate students / Any potential international students / University of Liverpool Alumni / General Public

Type: Exhibition

Contact: For more information contact Viola Segeroth at irish@liverpool.ac.uk

Website: https://www.fiongunn.org/arrivalsdepartures-2022.html

About the event

Please note that this exhibition will open to the public on 30 July and runs until 23 December, please see https://vgm.liverpool.ac.uk/ for opening times of the gallery.

This Summer, Victoria Gallery & Museum at the University of Liverpool will host a new solo show of the works of Fion Gunn, with a curatorial essay by Beijing-based curator and art critic Chang Feng.

Gunn, an Irish diaspora artist, has focused on travel and belonging her whole career. Regularly travelling to and working in China, Gunn has been a witness to (and an example of) the developing global trade of arts, culture, and societies.

A key theme in the artist’s work is displacement, whether it be temporary and enriching or chronic and distressing. Perhaps more than ever, the reality of living on a knife-edge of political and environmental catastrophe is being realised around the globe. Gunn incorporates the visual language of migration, conflict, and generational trauma into her work, begging us to ask “what does the experience of living mean for us both as individuals and as a global society?

Harry Liu, Editor in Chief of ArtZip Magazine wrote of her work that “even when the images are sorrowful or difficult, they still give a vision of hope to the viewer”.

Arrivals / Departures is taking place during Gunn’s year-long residency (which launched on the 31st of March 2022) at Liverpool’s Institute of Irish Studies.

As a port city steeped in industrial history and by-water migration, Liverpool is the ideal home for this body of work, and has been written into the core of the exhibition’s goals and outreach. Ports acting as literal and metaphorical entrances and exits make appearances throughout Gunn’s portfolio.

From Cork to Shanghai, Dubai to Alexandria, Gunn explores what it means to travel, its impact on memory, its historical weight, and its power to heal or corrupt us. Globalism in terms of commercial trade but also human experiential exchange, is at the core of these works.

With a portfolio spanning painting, collage, sculpture, installation, performance and VR, Gunn’s practice is constantly evolving to match the ebbs and flows of her subject matter.

Encompassing panel discussions, public workshops, an immersive digital installation, an AR pop-up trail, and guided tours, Gunn’s vision is to bring her art and its satellite discussions to as many people - and in as meaningful a way - as possible.

Fion Gunn was born and raised in the city centre of Cork, graduated from Crawford College of Art & Design, and spent a post-graduate year at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts Supérieure de Nancy. She has exhibited across Europe and China, and has won multiple awards for her work from Arts Council England, Arts Council Ireland, and Culture Ireland. Gunn lives and works in London.

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