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THEN & NOW

Gallery 1 from 26th March 2022

Heritage collection and contemporary collide in St Helens.

We’ve taken the most captivating and beautiful images from the St Helens heritage collection and displayed them along with work from some of the town’s most exciting creatives practicing now. There is work available to buy and take straight away.

Through The Looking Glass

In Gallery 3 (Godfrey Pilkington) from 26th March 2022.

Temporary Closure on Wednesday 11th and Thursday 12th May.

BOLDER Art Group

Once through the looking glass, familiar reality recedes. In the very depths of our imagination we step through a portal into what may be a dream, or maybe the underworld, or the heavens. In a world of universal myths, of fairy tales, nothing is quite what it seems: logic, inverted, fails. Perceptions are distorted, blurring object and image, substance and illusion, sleep and wakefulness, in this strange and multiple world: a nonsensical drama peopled by unlikely characters. In this reflection of taken-for-granted reality we become aware of the days slipping through our fingers like sand. The very relationship between past, present and future comes into question: time and mirrors fragment. Our hearts are frozen, we are running out of time, can we, should we, will we, awake?

Sarah Gilman

In Gallery 2 from 26th March 2022

Solo Show

Sarah Gilman is a painter currently based in the Merseyside area.
Gilman studied Fine Art Painting (BA Hons) at University Centre St
Helens and graduated in 2018 with First Class Honours. She has
exhibited both locally and nationally since 2017 and was awarded First
Prize at St Helens Open Arts Prize 2019.
Gilman’s painting practice explores the relation of trompe l’oeil to the
genre of still-life painting. The French term meaning ‘to deceive the eye’
is used to describe paintings that are intended to fool the viewer into
believing, if only for a moment, that what they see is the projection of a
three dimensional object into real space, rather than an illusion held on
the surface of a flat plane. Directly influenced by the paintings of 17th
century still-life painters, such as Cornelius Gijsbrechts and Samuel van
Hoogstraten, Gilman, however, situates her painting within
contemporary discourses surrounding the still-life genre.
Recent exhibitions include: Slap-Bang: Warrington; New Light Art Prize
2020-21, Scarborough, Newcastle, Carlisle, and London; Somewhere
Between Reality and Obscurity: The Viewing Room, Digital Gallery;
Independents Biennial 2021, online and newspaper publication;
Regarding the Object (solo show), Liverpool; Enough is Definitely
Enough, Salford and Middlesbrough; More T’North, Preston; A Little
Painting Show, Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds; Made It, Salford;
PAINT, Manchester; Greater Manchester Arts Prize, Bolton; New Light
Art Prize 2017-19, County Durham, West Yorkshire, London and Cumbria.
Gilman’s work is held in a number of private collections and has
recently been included in the publication and exhibition entitled
“Enough is Definitely Enough” by Andrew Bracey

Visitor Experience

Museum, Hot glass studio, Film Show, Jubilee no9

Paid Attractions

Pilkington Glass Collection & Earth into Light

Museum permanent collection

One of the most important glass collections in the UK. Ancient Glass (Roman and Egyption), Medieval, Asian, right the way through to European and Contemporary. 

Earth into Light tells the story of St Helens and its place at the heart of the Industrial Revolution. 

Glass Blowing Demonstrations

Hot Glass studio (timed displays)

Marvel at our Glass Blower Marcin, as he blows hot glass and makes something special.  

Jubilee No 9

Over the Canal to the tank house

The Number nine Tank House is the best surviving example of a late 19th century glassmaking tank furnace building in England, comprising the building, its cone and furnace. You can explore the tunnels beneath. Make sure you put on a hard hat!