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Nina's Blog - Sunday 27th July 2025

Sunday 27th July 2025, 13:15

I visited Warrington Museum and Art Gallery this morning and then wandered about looking for a café or teashop. Plenty of places to get coffee in the centre of Warrington but most are intent on serving all day breakfasts and similar heavy fare.

At last I stumbled across Rhode Island Coffee in the corner of Old Fish Market.

Having a pleasant but undistinguished St Clement's sponge and a similarly undistinguished large mocha.
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ninalanyon · 61-69, T
Sunday 27th July 2025, 13:24

Warrington Museum and Art Gallery is well worth a visit and like most municipal museums in the UK is free. If you visit on Sunday you can park less than 400 m in the Time Square multistorey car park all day for nothing and donate what you save to the museum.

The museum is quite compact but is well laid out and doesn't feel small. It is on three floors above the library with permanent exhibitions on the two lower floors and space on the top floor that currently houses Skye Baker's Foreign Bodies.

I'm glad her work was on the top floor and that I started on the lowest floor. Had I started with Skye's work I probably wouldn't have felt inclined to view the the rest.

Here's what you see before entering the museum proper



ninalanyon · 61-69, T
Monday 28th July 2025, 07:23

The final gallery holds Skye Baker's installation, mixed media, or whatever it's called. The photographs will not do it justice, it is art that has to be experienced. It's rare for me to take performance art seriously, it rarely seems other than pompous, self absorbed, and made for those in the know.

But this made me breathless, by the time I returned to the entrance to ask how I could donate something I was almost in tears. I don't really know why.

The first item on display was a video of Skye under water repeatedly coming to the surface for air and allowing bubbles out of her mouth, at one point she lets out a cloud of black food dye. Described flatly like this it sounds silly. But it comes with a sound track that you listen to on headphones, just the bubbling noises. I don't know how they were captured or how the sounds were post processed but they had a very curious quality. I'm pretty sure that if I tried to replicate the video in my own bathroom that the sounds would end up much more ordinary somehow.

There are several such videos, each on its own screen with headphones and concealed behind a black roller blind that you have to roll up to see the video.

It was a slightly disturbing beginning. I have no pictures, without copying the video and soundtrack somehow I don't think there would be much point.

I didn't watch all the videos, I felt sufficiently off-balance after the first to skip most of them.

The lighting in the gallery is not very bright, part of the design I am sure, so what photographs I do have are not all very good.

Next is a calendar, a sort of diary, it's not entirely clear to me whether this is entirely imagined or autobiographical, or a mixture



This might have been where on is 'supposed' to start:


Then a series of four photographs entitled Vocal Weight



Then another screen at the opposite end of the gallery from the one with the explanatory placard



And here is some of how it was planned


And the last thing I see before leaving the gallery, but not the last I see of the gallery, really hit home

I left the gallery and went down the stairs to the art gallery below where I realized that the Skye Baker installation is in a literal gallery above the older and more conventional artworks


I have a brief conversation with the member of staff sitting at the entrance in which I say how impressive the whole museum is and especially Skye Baker's work. He points out that Skye is only eighteen and says that he is glad I enjoyed it, to which I replied that I'm not sure enjoyed is exactly the right word.

And then I leave, feeling rather disoriented and almost tearful but very glad I decided to visit Warrington Museum and Art Gallery
ninalanyon · 61-69, T
Sunday 27th July 2025, 19:08

Then there is a galley that holds a collection called, I think, Women's Work. And it is here that I was reminded for the first time in this museum that not all art is meant to give the viewer warm fuzzy feelings. With some art you have to know the background before the work has much impact; for instance Wood's sculpture of Beatrice Cenci is just a well executed piece of craftsmanship until you know that Beatrice was executed for murdering her rapist father and that her life story became a symbol of the conflict between the ordinary people of Rome and autocratic aristocracy.

But some of the image here need less context to have an effect. Not these jumpers though


But these:




And there is another by Flo Perry

And Let Them Feast, 2024 by Katie Tomlinson
skimpyboy · 56-60, M
Pleased you have found somewhere, surprising how many places do breakfast till closing time ,
Busy today with the girls car cleaning
ninalanyon · 61-69, T
Sunday 27th July 2025, 19:32

After the somewhat unsettling Women's Work there are some miscellaneous pieces.

A Warrington Fire Brigade engine

A 1950s kitchen, probably more ergonomic than most modern kitchens

Various fossils in cases. One of the reasons I like a lot of the smaller, old museums is that often the museum itself is interesting. In this one the older galleries make good use of the space above the display cases

And here we have an open case full of dinosaurs!
ninalanyon · 61-69, T
Sunday 27th July 2025, 13:55

The galleries are arranged around the stairs and an atrium with no particular logic so you can equally well go around clockwise or widdershins, I chose clockwise and entered the gallery which contains ancient Egyptian relics including a sarcophagus and a mummified child.



ninalanyon · 61-69, T
Sunday 27th July 2025, 19:39

On the next floor we have some more traditional museum galleries with botanical specimens, etc. But before those we have a more cabinet of curiosities style gallery which starts with a botanical item, a two metre high glass flower press



Then Old Billy, the worlds longest lived horse





A couple of Ossie Clark dresses

A spectacularly ugly vase

A rather unusual statuette of Queen Guinevere


And here is A long hard look in the mirror. At least there will be when SW lets me upload more pictures; I've hit some kind of limit.
ninalanyon · 61-69, T
Sunday 27th July 2025, 18:38

There were two marble sculptures but I only photographed one, Beatrice Cenci by John Warrington Wood, the other is in the background. I probably should have used a flash.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrice_Cenci
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Warrington_Wood
ninalanyon · 61-69, T
Sunday 27th July 2025, 14:07

In the second gallery there are exhibits related to wartime and local history. Some of the exhibits are interactive. Here's yours truly wearing a tin hat



skimpyboy · 56-60, M
@ninalanyon looking good and showing those legs off again
ninalanyon · 61-69, T
Sunday 27th July 2025, 18:20

After the tin hat I went into the first art gallery. I'll divide this into sections, first the older paintings

I rather like the Melomanes, such lively expressions





ninalanyon · 61-69, T
Sunday 27th July 2025, 19:03

Miscellaneous items seen as I moved through the galleries on the first floor


Unlabelled, reminds me of Frida Kahlo.



turbineman40 · 80-89, M
It’s interesting to taste different food items and is how different they are
ninalanyon · 61-69, T
@turbineman40 The name of the sponge cake refers to the old nursery rhyme about the Bells of St Clement's and means that it should be flavoured with orange and lemon. This was but only just enough to notice, not enough to really enjoy.
Oranges and lemons,
Say the bells of St. Clement's.

You owe me five farthings,
Say the bells of St. Martin's.

When will you pay me?
Say the bells at Old Bailey.

When I grow rich,
Say the bells at Shoreditch.

When will that be?
Say the bells of Stepney.

I do not know,
Says the great bell at Bow.

Here comes a candle to light you to bed,
And here comes a chopper to chop off your head!
Chip chop chip chop the last man is dead[1]
ninalanyon · 61-69, T
Sunday 27th July 2025, 18:51

Lastly, though I took these pictures first, here is my favourite piece of this gallery: Self Portrait With Bathroom Clutter by Flo Perry.


And a related work by Flo, Bathroom Debris
ninalanyon · 61-69, T
Monday 28th July 2025, 07:14

On my way up to the top floor I took this selfie, I'm quite pleased with the composition even though it's just pure luck
ninalanyon · 61-69, T
Monday 28th July 2025, 07:22

Almost at the last gallery now. The penultimate one is about local things and I confess I didn't pay much attention


ninalanyon · 61-69, T
Monday 28th July 2025, 07:16

After the selfie I came to a proper botanical gallery.


ninalanyon · 61-69, T
Monday 28th July 2025, 07:19

Next a gallery full of stuffed and jarred creatures



 
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