‘Paris Toxteth Presents’ by Lawrie Vause
5th May till 16th June 2025
The Egg Cafe, top floor, 16-18 Newington, L1 4ED
Reviewed by Tom Calderbank
A new and unique exhibition by the creator of Paris Toxteth lands at The Egg Cafe this week (with a special showing of the films with live musical accompaniment on Thursday 8th May, 7pm and 8pm), artist and film-maker Lawrie Vause brings his singular artistic vision to the Newington venue. The place is important. Remember The Egg? It’s been a Liverpool institution for over 30 years. If you haven’t been for a while, this is the perfect opportunity to reacquaint yourself with that windey staircase, the purple walls and painted green leaves decor that hasn’t changed in years (thankfully! No gentrification here), and the warm, bohemian welcome awaiting the weary at the top. It’s a perfect setting for this exhibition of Lawrie’s handmade wonders.
In the digital age of AI we’re now too deep into to get out of, with endless slick, shiny computer-generated imagery and video assaulting us daily, the handmade object becomes much more uncommon and desirable. It’s refreshing and altogether human, like stop-motion animation itself, that most gruelling of the arts in which Lawrie excels. This exhibition offers a rare insight behind the curtain of Lorrywood, that fabled flat in Paris, Toxteth, where the magic is made.
It’s a multi-media collection of the props, artwork, sets, films and other projects he’s made over the last 8 years. It comprises objects, sets, artwork and characters from these films. Each evokes the childlike charm that only miniaturisation brings. Walking around the exhibition, you feel like Gulliver in Lilliput. Looking high on the walls, you notice rows of tiny houses. There’s a hardware store and a newsagents. You notice little bins and tiny cigarette ends. Most things look as they look in real life (refracted through a Lawrie lens), only they’re SMALLER! (Or are you bigger?) Something about it all makes you feel like a kid again…the wonder at the techniques of the artist, the ability of these things to spark that feeling of what’s possible and making real the impossible. This is an artist who puts his all into his productions. Think about it for a second: at the end of any film you’ve ever seen, all those people in the end credits…? That’s all Lawrie. He’s the Producer, Director, Camera Operator (One. Picture. At. A.Time….), Lighting Designer, Set Builder, Prop Maker, Best Boy AND Key Grip! Makes a mean cuppa, too. A genuine auteur, if you will. This exhibition shows real insights into his working practise and should interest anyone who appreciates animation, model making, storytelling and great art done without permission. QR codes on each piece takes the viewer to the film in question. It contains work from his projects both solo and with other artists, especially musicians. He’s made superb videos for Dan Wilson and The Counterfactuals, The DSM, and Wendy James, and high up on the walls here are stills from the video to Dan’s song ‘Layers of Blue’, as well as Lawrie’s painting for the cover.
The models of two men sit on a train seat, one drinking a bottle of beer, the other reading the Echo, both looking like Action Man gone to seed. These are characters from his current production, ‘Bottles and Bin Lids’, which is now in its 2nd year. The interpretation panel explains that the film will be completed once he finds a building to finish it in. In a comment that many frustrated artists in the city will appreciate, he notes: “Seemingly, there are no empty buildings in Liverpool and under no circumstances mention doing something creative and beneficial for the community. You might get shot by the Council if you do.” (Incidentally, if anyone reading this has such a space, please get in touch). Lawrie’s highlight on the project so far was organising two workshops with children from Manchester, in collaboration with the Singh Twins. He also did workshops with children from LIPA to produce another piece represented here, a simple video for his musical collaborator Rachel Diop’s song ‘Sky Shanty’, which he produced ‘with all tomorrow’s artists’.
There’s his promo for my own (full disclosure) ongoing audio series The Lost Doctor, including an 18 inch high phonebox and a TARDIS (which, incidentally, he ingeniously manages to make bigger on the inside….). Whovians of all ages will love this.
His piece ‘Once upon a time in Toxteth’ is a slice of the life he sees from his living room window, and shows his concern with the minutiae of everyday life, which runs right through all his work. ‘On The Avenue’ was his first experiment in animation, although there’s no animation in it. It’s just a series of paintings cross-faded with an atmosphere soundtrack added, “a fun little exercise that pointed the direction I was to follow.”
’Static’ was a performance piece with Elaine Collins, for which Lawrie was asked by fellow collaborator Paula Simms to provide a short piece of animation. Written by Esther Wilson with music by Andy Frizell, the piece explores one woman’s experience of acceptance around disability.
A giant folded out box of matches reverses the manipulation of scale in the other direction, making a small thing big. At first glance, it LOOKS like an oversized box of England’s Glory, until you take a closer look. The Tea Clipper on the original matchbox has been replaced with a homeless person, with a sign saying ‘’HOMELESS AND HUNGRY PLEASE HELP’. ‘Playing With Fire’ was his first serious piece, tackling real social issues. His idea was to get rid of the British Empire myth. England is homeless, now, and its glory is stained with a massive human cost. The match quiz on the back highlights the difficulty of getting out of that situation once in it. The burnt and broken matches represent the lives wasted and thrown away needlessly and cruelly by consecutive governments. He took the exhibition around England – 8 cities in 8 days -sleeping in his van each night, side of the road.
‘Amy’, his statue on the mezzanine, explores the same theme and is similarly affecting. Cast in resin, this life-size statue depicts a young girl kneeling down over her toy bear and blanket. The legend on the front of the plinth explains: “AMY was given her name shortly after birth. At the moment of birth she was a statistic. Amy is one of hundreds of children in inappropriate and unacceptable accommodation in the UK today. WHY” These piece is reminiscent of the work of legendary Liverpool sculptor Arthur Dooley, using the similarly haunting technique of dripping resin and a figure with a blank face. Its a piece that should make you uncomfortable to look at and think about. ‘Life House’ is the third piece of his homeless trilogy, and all three pieces boil with empathy and righteous rage.
Overall, this exhibition is a MUST SEE. I was blown away by the imagination of the artist, as well as the range of his techniques and his awesome patience and dedication to his art and craft. Entrance is free, so the price is right. Please try and get along to the launch this Thursday 8th May, 7pm and 8pm for the showing of the films with live musical scores. The films are: ‘Once Upon A Time in Toxteth’; The Lost Doctor’ promo; ‘What are you going to do with 390 photographs of Christmas trees’, based on the work of Richard Brautigan; and the first screening of his new film ‘Six Paintings’, based on six paintings by Edward Hopper.
For more information, drop in at The Egg Cafe, top floor, 16-18 Newington, Liverpool L1 4ED, or visit: www.lawrievause.com.
Running from the 5th May till 16th June.
P.S.: Q & A – The creator of the new exhibition at The Egg Cafe, Newington, Liverpool, tells all…
TELL US A FUN FACT ABOUT YOURSELF
I realised you could build any set you wanted to when I was building EuroDisney. My boss on that job was Laurie Warburton, who was the designer of Time Bandits. That was my first indication that if you want to build a scale model of the Eiffel Tower on New Brighton beach, then just go and do it. Anything’s possible.
WHAT IS ‘LORRYWOOD’?
Lorrywood’s the front and back room in my flat, and it just becomes a studio. It’s Elstree in miniature. It’s Shepperton. It’s anything you want it to be, like Paris Toxteth. It’s a place of safety, its a noun, it doesn’t belong to anyone. It’s that place you go to when you can’t get to sleep and you’re imagining somewhere. Those echoes from childhood. It’s a place of safety, that’s all.
CAN ANYONE DO WHAT YOU DO?
I always think so but other people tell me not. Anyone can do anything if they put their mind to it. The hardest part is putting your mind to it. Nothing’s hard about anything I do except starting.
HOW LONG DID IT TAKE YOU TO MAKE THE LOST DOCTOR FILM?
Including the build, two and a half weeks. It took me a week to build the TARDIS and I had it on a pottery spinner. When I was playing with that, I thought it’d be really easy to do as a Dr Who thing. From then it was a week and half and you had it.
YOU’VE GIVEN US A DESIGN FOR READERS TO CUT OUT AND BUILD THEIR OWN TARDIS. IS IT EASY TO MAKE?
Course it is, yeah. It’s not rocket science. Try it and see.
WHAT’S THE GREATEST BOOK IN HISTORY?
The Beano Annual. That’s where all roads lead back to. The Bash Street Kids especially. I can’t remember any of their stories, but they introduced me to the fact that what’s going on in the background is somehow more important to me. With the Lost Doctor film, everyone knows the telephone box and TARDIS – that’s really uninteresting to me. I prefer the tin cans and the newspaper on the floor, the shoes on the lamppost, the graffiti on electricity box, the 1970’s white dog turd and all that. I enjoy the incidentals. That’s what the Bash Street Kids taught me. The detail is in the detail, and worth doing.
WHAT’S YOUR NEXT PROJECT?
I’m working on a film called Bottles and Binlids, set at the crossroads of Hope Street and Hardman Street. Can’t tell you much about the story, as it’s writing itself.
MR LAWRIE VAUSE, aka PARIS TOXTETH, THANKS FOR YOUR ART AND YOUR HEART.
Pleasure. Stay creative, kids!