THE exhibition – Mike McCartney’s Liverpool – will open the temporary display space in the museum’s Skylight Gallery.
Images range from a composition shot of a pair of boots in his childhood bedroom at 20 Forthlin Road, which he included in his application to art school, to a picture of his brother, Sir Paul McCartney, performing his Capital of Culture homecoming concert at Anfield stadium in 2008.
The photographs are symbolic of the fun-loving personality of the Liverpool people, he said on a visit to the museum yesterday.
“I hope they represent the irrepressible humour Liverpudlians have,” said McCartney, indicating a picture of a purple wheelie bin, on which is written in marker pen: “Don’t nick or we will be overtaken by maggots.”
Many of the city’s well-known figures feature in the pictures, including Liverpool FC manager Kenny Dalglish shown cooking in the kitchen of Heathcotes restaurant during a fundraising dinner and Ken Dodd, captured in the wings of New Brighton’s Floral Pavilion on the day the theatre closed its doors for redevelopment. Other celebrity pictures include rock star Alice Cooper on stage at the 2003 Summer Pops and Harry Hill visiting Tate Liverpool ahead of performing his comedy show in the city.
“I like it because it’s so serious,” said McCartney.
“It’s not the daft Harry Hill.”
Views of the city also feature, although they might not be the ones visitors are expecting – a Liver Bird apparently flying out of the Red House, which played continuous Abba music at the Pier Head as part of the 2002 Liverpool Biennial, and the Chinese arch topped with the Metropolitan Cathedral’s crown of thorns.
Despite his later success, including an exhibition at the Smithsonian, Washington DC, in 2004, McCartney’s boots composition did not win him a place at art college.
“I asked if they wanted to see my portfolio but they said, ‘have you got five GCEs?’,” he recalled.
“They’d changed the rules that year and I hadn’t, but I had a GCE in art.
“I said, ‘John (Lennon) is already here and he hasn’t got any at all!’.”
