Artist returns to Warrington to display new exhibition in museum

Ian Irvine started his creative journey in Warrington 50 year ago, when he fell in love with art.

When he was 16, Ian started a two-year course at the former Warrington College of Art and Design.

Ian found himself pulled in another direction though, and pursued a career in music in Liverpool before moving to London.

When he returned to the north west in the 90s, Ian completed a fine art degree in Manchester and began teaching art history.

But recently, the 66-year-old has been drawn back to his hometown, and will bring his new exhibition to the museum, five decades after he attended the former college just across the road.

Ian Irvine outside the former Warrington College of Art and Design, where he was a student (Image: Supplied)

“When I applied to do a show here, I had no idea it had been that long, because in your head you feel much younger,” he said.

“So that was a bit of a shock to think it had been about 50 years since I walked through the doors at the art school across the way.

“It was really sad to see it closed as it is a nice old building.

“But I have always liked Warrington Museum. We came here quite a lot when I was a student, and often that would be to draw as part of our classes.”

Ian’s exhibition, Visual Cocktails, will open on October 19, and will feature two different mediums – screenprint and collage.

The collages are influences by the surrealist movement in the 1920s and 1930s, with added figures, objects or backgrounds to present something weird, amusing or mysterious to onlookers.

“I called the exhibition Visual Cocktails because that is what they seem like to me,” he said.

“Putting bits of unlikely ingredients together and somehow making them work through colours, shapes, images and marks.”

Ian’s art is inspired by the Surrealist movement (Image: Supplied)

Visual Cocktails is dedicated to Ian’s brother David, who lived in Great Sankey for much of his life and sadly died last year.

“We were very close,” he said.

“David’s family will be coming to the show. So that is another thing that gave me a connection to Warrington.

“David never came across as particularly arty, but he was always so encouraging of what I was doing.

“He came to a preview evening for my previous exhibition at The Williamson, and he was really impressed and said some lovely things about it to me then.

“I think he would have loved to have come to this one in Warrington. It felt like Warrington was calling me back, and finally I am here.”

The exhibit will be at Warrington Museum and Art Gallery between October 19 and January 19 and is free to view.