UNLIKE some more illustrious publicly or trust funded galleries, plus the odd snooty private off-shoot, the Liverpool Academy can be relied upon for a great sense of spontaneity.

Curator June Lornie has previously staged themed exhibitions around such everyday objects as spectacles, boots, teapots, hats, and even bras. Now it’s the turn of bags – not only because she herself has amassed no fewer than 146 handbags, but also as if to prove that not every item of luggage on an airport carousel need look the same.

In this latest show, 18 artists have contributed more than 80 items. They include a battered case left by George Harrison at a prototype Beatles gig in Irby village hall. Most expensive is an Ozakii London maroon designer bag, priced at £500. The creative contributions try their luck a lot higher, culminating with Wendy Williams’s collages created by attaching cut-up bags on a mesh frame, priced at £800.

But this is as much about seeing the conveyances of commercialism as buying the spoils. There are some lovely ceramics by Carl Hodgson, whose local commitment also includes an oil of a bag lady outside TJ Hughes. Plus a dab of humour from Rosemary Cassidy Buswell, who affixes a bag to the ubiquitous image of Mona Lisa. The mood lurches from the trite, via the nostalgic (bags from Blacklers) to the more subliminal message that bags can all too readily become part of an overall obsession with packaging which is turning the world into an in-fill site.

Joe Riley