Liz West - H.A.P.P.Y exhibition
Dates: 13 April until 5 October 2025
Price: free
Acclaimed British artist Liz West brings a mesmerizing exhibition to the Mercer, inviting audiences to experience a dazzling interplay of light, space and reflection.
Through her art, Liz West creates playful experiences and environments that heighten our senses and positively affect how we feel. She is interested in our deep human connection to colour and light, and how they can evoke physical, psychological and emotional responses in us.
The title of this exhibition reflects Liz’s experience of Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D.), a condition linked to the shorter and darker days of autumn and winter. She experiments with colour and light to create environments that inspire joy and curiosity.
At the heart of this exhibition is Our Colour Reflection, an immersive installation made of hundreds of vibrantly coloured reflective discs arranged across the floor of our 1806 Promenade Room, transforming this important space from Harrogate’s spa history into a dazzling interplay of light, space, and reflection.
For the first time in many years, the windows in this space are revealed to allow natural light to flood in, creating an ever-changing kaleidoscope of reflections. Every experience of the installation is different depending on light levels, weather, clouds and the path of the sun. As we move through the space, our perspectives shift, revealing new combinations of colour and light in an absorbing sensory experience.
In a unique collaboration, West’s work has inspired the Leeds-based electronic producer, musician and artist Cherry Seraph (the alias of Sophie Russell) to create a new sound piece which will play continuously in the gallery. Both artists explore how frequencies of sound and light can impact our emotional well-being.
In addition, the exhibition brings together for the first time West’s works on paper to showcase a collection of three-dimensional ‘concertina’ pieces and experimental drawings that reveal her instinctive and intellectual engagement with the emotive qualities of colour. The artist has also selected artworks and artefacts from Harrogate’ museum collections to reflect upon our responses to colour and light.
Adrift on a Painted Sea exhibition
This exhibition is temporarily closed due to building works in the gallery.
Location: Mercer Gallery Studio
Dates: 16 November 2024 until 8 June 2025
Price: free
Adrift on a Painted Sea by Tim Bird is a beautiful and profound graphic novel that explores family, loss, and art through the author's relationship with his mother, Sue Bird, who painted as a hobby throughout her life. The exhibition displays a range of paintings by Sue Bird, alongside some artwork from the graphic novel, written by her son Tim after her death to celebrate her art and life. As well as paintings by Sue Bird and artwork from the novel, there will also be a display of sketches and sketchbooks.
Sue Bird was always painting: botanical art, landscapes, still lifes, and especially the sea. She took classes, kept countless sketchbooks, and filled the house with art. From their neighbourhood to their family trips to the North Yorkshire coast, all the moments of her life were memorialized in her artwork. Throughout her life, she never sold a piece - she gave art to family and friends and shared her work online, but never received wider recognition for her work. The new novel, Adrift on a Painted Sea, explores their family life and her creative explorations through a mix of her paintings and Tim's comics, depicting their relationship and her life from a teenager to her struggle with cancer at the height of the Covid pandemic.
