The Story So Far

Date:  Saturday 27 May 2023  –  Saturday 2 March 2024

Free Entry

Monday – Saturday. 10am – 4pm.
Closed Sundays & Bank Holidays.
Plan your visit here.

Looking at the theme of storytelling, this exhibition includes highlights from The Atkinson’s collection and the Harris Art Gallery in Preston.

The Harris’s collection is built upon the wealth and personal collections of the textile manufacturers of the town. Richard Newsham, whose father made a fortune from cotton and from banking, left a sizeable bequest of paintings featuring work by the leading British artists of the day, several of which are included in the exhibition. The Atkinson’s founding collections were acquired from the wealthy middle-class families that retired to the seaside resort of Southport or bought holiday homes in the town. Both collections received important founding bequests of narrative paintings and continued to develop this strand of collecting well into the twentieth century.

The exhibition looks at differing kinds of story-telling, from the illustration of literary and historical texts to coastal and rural genre as well as classical and domestic scenes. The exhibition also includes post-war and contemporary works of art, illustrating the galleries’ strategies for developing the narrative theme.

Key works exploring social and political themes will include Lubaina Himid’s imagined portrait of ‘Hannibal’s Sister’ and Alberta Whittle’s ‘Business As Usual’.

Inspirations: Poetry & Creative Writing Competition

The Atkinson, in partnership with The Arts Society Southport, invited anyone over 18 with links to the Sefton Borough to take part in our second Poetry and Creative Writing Competition responding to artworks featured in The Story So Far exhibition at The Atkinson.

The exhibition looks at differing kinds of story-telling, from the illustration of literary and historical texts to coastal and rural genre as well as classical and domestic scenes. The exhibition also includes post-war and contemporary works of art, illustrating the galleries’ strategies for developing the narrative theme. Other themes represented in the exhibition are Faith and Doubt, and myths, dreams and memory. 

Winners

1^st Place Prose – Carol Whitehead
2^nd Place Prose – Sue Belcher
3^rd Place Prose – Emily Parr

1^st Place Poetry – Pamela Armstrong
2^nd Place Poetry – Phil McNulty
3^rd Place Poetry – Bob Eccleston

Read the winning submissions here. 

Exhibition Partners

This exhibition has been made possible as a result of the Government Indemnity Scheme. The Harris would like to thank HM Government for providing Government Indemnity and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and Arts Council England for arranging the indemnity.

theharris.org.uk