The Bold Street Project Blog; The Street, The Art, The Research, The exhibition, The Community.
Last Wednesday at FACT tenantspin staged the first of the Bold Street live webcasts, chaired by Jayne Casey with guests John McGuirk, Matthew from Liverpool Vision, Kate from Utility and Mandy from News From Nowhere. The show will be archived on tenantspin soon and the discussion covered the reality of running a business on a changing Bold Street and its relation to other retail and cultural parts of Liverpool city centre.
A total of 419 people passed through the Bold Street Project exhibition on Friday evening alone with another 500 over the weekend, breaking all recent attendance records. Laura and Ciara took these shots of Dolly, Vera, Steve, John, Emily, Paul and company.
CCTV, Thursday 17.15pm and install in progress
This morning our art handler Ben brought the eagle to its new position in The Bold Street Project. The eagle itself is thought to be over 150 years old and has been out of public sight for over 20 years. It formerly rested above a magnificent onyx fireplace in he Reception Lounge in Radiant House on Bold Street and now takes pride of place in the Media Lounge at FACT. Big thank you to the North West Historical Gas Society who recovered the eagle and later the National Gas Archives in Warrington who have cared for the sculpture in recent years.
An interview with Katie Lips about The Bold Street Project, Metro, Wednesday 27 June 2007.
Here is a CCTV shot of FACT’s Media Lounge with The Bold Street Project exhibition build in progress. Michelle Wren’s Bold Street collage model will fit in and around this carousel/bench construction with all the digital content in the windows and doorways of the model and an AppleTV video jukebox at the side (Tuesday 1.47pm).
The unveiling of a new piece if public art by local artist Robin Riley for Bold Street is reported in The Daily Post on 19 September 1960: “The draperies fell and there was the sort of silence in which everyone was wondering what to say … a child let out a howl … and a man with a beard said ‘Dreary old Liverpool strikes again’.
There is an emergency meeting of the Bold Street Association and “the statue itself is given police protection” before being removed after only three days. Interestingly, at the time Councillor Maguire of Crosby comments that he “would have liked it put on the Blundellsands sea front” … currently home of course to Anthony Gormley’s 100 iron figures.
Reproduced from John Willet’s “Art in a city” with thanks to Bryan Biggs at Bluecoat who is currently writing a foreword to a reprint of this seminal early 60’s book to be published by Liverpool University Press.
I was given this photograph by my colleague Tony Dash. It is un-dated and credited to Dave Fobister. This fantastic study in handbags and furs shows the proper zebra crossing at the bottom end of Bold Street, the long gone shrubbery at The Lyceum and is also noteable for the fact that they are all crossing unperturbed by both signals declaring WAIT.
This is “Man ascending Bold Street” by Liverpool photographer Sean Halligan, taken in 1990 and we have just purchased the rights to use this fantastic image in the Bold Street Project Gallery Guide. The flyposters provide a cross-section of the Liverpool scene at the time - Spontaneous Cattle Combustion, Pele, St Helens prog-punk band Poisoned Electrick Head and Scorpio Rising - some of which will be included in the exclusive Bold Street iTunes playlist. More info on many of these bands here: http://www.link2wales.co.uk/lpool/
The sleeve of this Jonas Thomassen & JT Scam CD - on which they cover NiN’s hurt - appears to show Bold Street Bill. Title of the CD is “Bold Street” …. anyone know anything else?
Looking through some old CDs of images today and came across this image taken on 26th January 2001. It shows Christians next to what is now Ropewalks Square, linking Bold Street to FACT.
Received from Paul Simpson a set of images made by Bob Colwell in 1985 of 77 Bold Street during a Channel 4 special on Cafe Berlin. If anyone knows how to contact Bob, please get in touch. Currently seeking footage of any Cafe Berlin gigs by Smiths, New Order, Bunnymen etc.
