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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 09/07/2026

Today's @artukdotorg.bsky.social #OnlineArtExchange theme is 'sacred symbols'. Our choice is Louise Giovanelli's Mise en scène (2025), an ambiguous painting suggesting one particular reading when, in fact, it is from a found image (a 1970s film) depicting a woman taking communion.

Louise Giovanelli's Mise en scène (2025) sees a woman caught in ecstasy - not of sexual pleasure, but in taking communion.

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 24/06/2026

NEW//Questing, Colour, and Form ZAUM! – Reviewed Reckoning with uncertain times, a group exhibition taking its name from a century old movement is a tonic, says @doublenegativem.bsky.social www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2026/06/ques...

Exhibition leaflet for ZAUM! Pink text diagonally (l-r) spelling Z A U M ! on a blue ground

List of exhibiting artists in pink text on white ground

Seven abstract works on white gallery wall in the exhibition ZAUM!

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 13/06/2026

The great American road trip – the frontier and its trappings – serve as departure point for artist Ed Ruscha, and a tightly focused Tate Liverpool exhibition, finds @doublenegativem.bsky.social www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2026/06/arti... 📷 © Ed Ruscha

A pleasingly grainy, black and white photograph of Greenblatt’s Deli, part of Ed Ruscha's Sunset Strip Portfolio. To the right, you can see palm trees and, in the background, maybe the Hollywood hills?

An onamatapeic work, this print has HONK in yellow block capitals against a blue ground.

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 11/06/2026

From the Archive: World Cup Clichés: Graphic Design’s Approach To Football ⚽ 🏆 www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2014/07/worl...

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 11/06/2026

Today's @artukdotorg.bsky.social #OnlineArtExchange is football for the World Cup ⚽ 📷 Cevdet Erek, Away Terrace (Us and Them), 2025. Liverpool Biennial 2025 at 20 Jordan Street. Photography by Mark McNulty.

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 03/06/2026

Reading Ruscha: "The letters OK (1990) perhaps reference Oklahoma, the state’s abbreviated form. It is worth noting that Ed Ruscha is an ‘Okie’ – a migrant to Los Angeles who has had to learn how to read this city." www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2026/06/read... 📷 © Ed Ruscha

The letters OK in salmon caps on a black ground. This is Ed Ruscha's OK (State I) 1990. ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. © Ed Ruscha

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 01/06/2026

For the first time in a very long time, here's to starting the week off right, with our pick of the listings. Featuring talks, exhibitions, screenings, live film music and more, it's Culture Diary w/c 01-06-2026 www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2026/06/cult...

Director Celine Sciamma on set with the stars of her film, Portrait of a Lady on Fire

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 01/06/2026

In The Mediated City: The Imaging of Liverpool in Film, Anthony Ellis looks at how film can fix in our minds and memory a sense of place: www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2024/04/the-...

Still showing a cityscape - imagining a Liverpool in transition - from The Reckoning (1969. Director: Jack Gold. Production Company: Columbia Pictures).

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 01/06/2026

Reporting from last year's design biennale, Laura Robertson investigates Stone Circles, Wailing Women and Respecting The Dead, with a proposal that provokes us to ask questions about death, grief and architecture... www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2025/05/ston...

A large-scale, pale sphere takes up much of the space in a room: URNA is a long-lasting vessel for the dead

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 01/06/2026

In the meantime, we'll be posting a little taster of what we do, and the kinds of things we tend to cover, beginning with a relatively recent piece on 2025 TLS Ackerley Prize-winning author Jeff Young Sacred & Profane: Haunted Paper www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2025/08/sacr...

A portrait photograph of author and artist Jeff Young, who is sat cross legged with his book Wild Twin on his knee.

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 01/06/2026

Based in Liverpool and with particular attention to the north west of England (but with as broad a scope as we fancy), The Double Negative was founded by us, Laura and Mike. We felt we had things to say about art and culture in our part of the world that were going unsaid.

Photograph of Ugo Rondinone's 10-metre high multicoloured rock sculpture, Liverpool Mountain, situated within Mermaid Courtyard, adjacent to Tate Liverpool.

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 19/05/2026

Steve McQueen's Grenfell, showing @thebluecoat.bsky.social Tuesday–Sunday, 11.00–17.00, is essential viewing. The film reminds us we mustn't look away, mustn't forget.

Aerial view of London from the opening moments of Steve McQueen's Grenfell film

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 18/05/2026

Screening tonight @ picturehouse @factliverpool.bsky.social, Soviet era folk horror, Viy, based on the Nikolai Gogol novella of the same name. A tale of the grotesque, it weaves together witchcraft, fear and forbidden desire to great effect.

A film still from Soviet era folk horror, Viy. Here, we find a young man in fear of his mortal soul, stalked by a doomed revenant woman.

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 07/05/2026

Today's @artukdotorg.bsky.social #OnlineArtExchange theme is ‘Urban landscapes’. We've long been fans of Mandy Payne: "I wanted to work with materials that were integral to sites I was depicting." 📷 Urban Geometry I; Remnants Of A Welfare State; For The Many Not The Few. Images by Mandy Payne

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 21/03/2026

Two Barns-Graham Grindelwald paintings featured in recent Walker Art Gallery exhibition Turner: Always Contemporary 🏔️🖼️

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham paintings (of 1949 and 1994) of the Grindelwald glacier

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 21/03/2026

In 1949, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham climbed the Grindelwald glacier. The experience inspired her to create an extraordinary cycle of paintings. Back in 2022, we spoke to filmmaker Mark Cousins who, more than 70 years later, climbed the glacier himself 🏔️🎥🖼️ www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2022/10/the-...

Filmmaker Mark Cousins gazing up at a stunning mountain range

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 21/03/2026

It's the UN World Day for Glaciers. Laura Robertson spoke with photographer Kristján Maack, who has been documenting Iceland’s epic glaciers for over 40 years 🏔️📷 www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2026/03/the-...

An awe inspiring image of a glacier, taken by Icelandic photographer Kristján Maack

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 20/03/2026

NEW // The Big Interview: ahead of UN World Day for Glaciers, we speak to photographer Kristján Maack’s about his glacier portraits and a disappearing world www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2026/03/the-...

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 19/03/2026

Back in 2019, we spoke to Legg 12 months into her time at Tate Liverpool www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2019/09/weve... 📷 portrait of Helen Legg, Director, Tate Liverpool, photo © Tate (Roger Sinek)

Portrait of Helen Legg (2019), Director, Tate Liverpool, photo © Tate (Roger Sinek)

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 19/03/2026

One of our books, On Being Curious, published 10 years ago, focused on New Critical Writing on Contemporary Art From the North-West of England. It was our first in-house book of Contemporary Arts Criticism share.google/y5EkJb8n8OhQ...

Cover of On Being Curious: New Critical Writing on Contemporary Art From the North-West of England - The Double Negative's first book of Contemporary Arts Criticism

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 19/03/2026

For today's 'cartoons and comics' @artukdotorg.bsky.social #OnlineArtExchange, we've gone for Paolozzi and his Bunk! series. British pop - often overshadowed by US counterparts - predates the likes of Warhol and Lichtenstein💥 📷 I was a Rich Man’s Plaything, 1972

I was a Rich Man’s Plaything, 1972, Eduardo Paolozzi is a collage made of comic book and advertisement imagery - including a pin-up, coca cola bottle and WWII bomber.

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 08/03/2026

We were over the moon when Nnena Kalu deservedly won the most recent Turner Prize. Mike loved her 'busy but never chaotic pen and graphite drawings'.

Nnena Kalu's pen and graphite Drawing 72, 2023

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 08/03/2026

A comment on the roles women get to play on screen - and elsewhere - Sherman's film stills (and wider oeuvre) chimes with our next pick: Anni Albers. Albers famously studied at the Bauhaus; progressive, the school nevertheless encouraged female students into textile design pathways.

Installation photo of Anni Albers' 2018/19 Tate Modern exhibition

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 08/03/2026

And here's CJF once again, on Cindy Sherman and her film stills: “The first time you encounter this image, it might seem uncannily familiar. Such familiarity makes this picture at once haunting, disturbing and comforting.”

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #48 1979, reprinted 1998

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 08/03/2026

Barbara Kruger and Cindy Sherman were her peers, but Gretchen Bender's brilliant multimedia work remains somewhat underexplored.

Gretchen Bender, 1951-2004, Total Recall 1987

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 08/03/2026

Nasreen Mohamedi's “[was] an alternate way of viewing the world,” says Suman Gopinath, on the mysterious Indian abstract artist.

Nasreen at her studio in Bombay at the Bhulabhai Desai Institute, dated 2 Nov 1960

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 08/03/2026

“She was a woman of extremes” wrote curator Tamar Hemmes of Louise Bourgeois, an artist whose regularly biographical approach was the making of her.

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 08/03/2026

“She was never an artist out of time… her painting never stagnated.” So said our @doublenegativem.bsky.social of Finnish painter, perhaps best known for her self-portraiture, Helene Schjerfbeck 🎨

Helene Schjerfbeck, Self-Portrait (1912)

Helene Schjerfbeck, Self-Portrait, Black Background (1915)

Helene Schjerfbeck, Last Self-Portrait (c. 1945)

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 05/03/2026

We're preparing to return from hiatus (teaching and education commitments made it sensible/necessary). #worldbookday seems as good a time as any to make a little post. So, here's some recent additions to the TDN bookshelves. More from us soon ▶️

A Dictionary of Color Combinations, Sanzo Wada

Ghost of an Idea: Hauntology, Folk Horror and the Spectre of Nostalgia, William Burns

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 05/03/2026

Another slice of the unhomely weird for you, this time, Vilhelm Hammershoi's Interior, Sunlight on the Floor, 1906. This practically vibrates with strangeness.

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 05/03/2026

Today's @artukdotorg.bsky.social #OnlineArtExchange theme is 'Art that explores home'. Here's Dorothea Tanning's brilliantly creepy, and decidedly uncanny (unheimlich), Hôtel du Pavot, Chambre 202 1970–3 (© DACS, London).

Dorothea Tanning's uncanny soft sculptures climb the walls and inhabit the floor in her work, Hôtel du Pavot, Chambre 202, 1970–3

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 04/03/2026

What you *can* expect: independent, unbiased arts criticism & cultural commentary for and from Liverpool & beyond.

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 04/03/2026

Owing to other commitments (largely work, but also re-entering education), we haven't published anything since August last year. But the bug for cultural criticism has never left. I think this means we'll be returning. Soon. www.thedoublenegative.co.uk Image © Ben Johnson, 2008

Liverpool city Scape, image © Ben Johnson 2008

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 02/10/2025

Context here, from the painting's caption, in the Walker

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 02/10/2025

Today's #OnlineArtExchange theme is celebrations and unveilings for the recent reopening of The Harris, Preston👏 In keeping, here's John Fulleylove's 1877 painting, Opening of the Walker Art Gallery (the same year) 🏛️

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 01/10/2025

"I’m an emptied-out thing, scrambling forward without any sense of reason... I’m trapped in this nightmare, this flesh palace." From the archive, read short body horror story, The Window, by @doublenegativel.bsky.social www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2021/06/john... 📷 Li Qing, The Window, 2018

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 13/09/2025

Mike found that one of the clear wins of BEDROCK was its situating of specific artists at multiple sites. Among them, ChihChung Chang, exploring the slippage between stories we think we know and those as experienced by living, breathing places: www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2025/08/sett...

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 13/09/2025

Back in June, @doublenegativem.bsky.social traced a philosophical line across the city as he reviewed the 13th edition of Liverpool Biennial: www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2025/06/live...

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 13/09/2025

Hi! We've been on a much needed break, but thought we'd pop in to exclaim that it's the final weekend for Liverpool Biennial 2025! We've written a few words around this edition. A good place to start is with CJ Fagan's My Life in the Biennial with Ghosts: www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2025/06/my-l...

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 28/08/2025

Features a contribution by Geoff Dyer, author of Zona

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 24/08/2025

We were @victoriagallery.bsky.social yday for an irl opening of online exhibition Brian Aldiss and the Natural World. Grt to hear readings from and to speak to Aldiss' daughter, Wendy. Brian Aldiss and the Natural World - University of Liverpool Digital Heritage Lab share.google/dnKgL5HjwD6H...

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 15/08/2025

There's one month left of Liverpool Biennial 2025. Read our review: www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2025/06/live...

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 15/08/2025

NEW//Setting Forth on a Voyage of Discovery with ChihChung Chang 張致中, @doublenegativem.bsky.social digs into the artist and cultural researcher’s multi-site contribution to Liverpool Biennial 2025 www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2025/08/sett...

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 14/08/2025

The exhibition continues until 27 September. More here from @doublenegativel.bsky.social www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2025/07/carr...

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 14/08/2025

Today's @artukdotorg.bsky.social #OnlineArtExchange theme is Welsh art. Our choice is the amazing performance elements of Carreg Ateb: Vision or Dream?, an exhibition @ Llandudno's Mostyn Gallery, which was a celebratory fusion of Welsh mythology and contemporary culture 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 13/08/2025

And Annie Frost Nicholson, who showed last year at Dorothy. We interviewed the artist about her work and influences: www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2024/04/the-...

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 13/08/2025

Good to see Caroline Gorick is included in this year's John Moores Painting Prize for Evening Light (2024). Here's our review of After Hours, a recent exhibition of the artist's which included that painting: www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2025/06/caro...

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 12/08/2025

“I began to dream of places I had been to and could no longer go,” says @wildtwin.bsky.social in his prize-winning memoir, Wild Twin. Here, @doublenegativem.bsky.social considers memory, nostalgia, and the writer’s creative process: www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2025/08/sacr...

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thedoublenegative.co.uk @thedoublenegative.co.uk · 11/08/2025

Culture Diary w/c 11-08-2025 Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from across Liverpool and beyond… www.thedoublenegative.co.uk/2025/08/cult...

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