Art in the Ev Continues with Julie Lawrence’s Walking Through Seasons
Where shadow and light fold together, and return reshapes what is seen.
At Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre, visual art has become part of the building’s everyday rhythm rather than a separate event—and that’s largely down to its ongoing partnership with dot-art. Their collaboration continues to open up the theatre’s spaces to a rolling programme of contemporary artists, inviting audiences to encounter new work in passing as much as by intention.
It’s within this quietly evolving setting that Julie Lawrence’s latest exhibition, Walking through Seasons, finds its place—an introspective body of work that mirrors the pace and attentiveness of the environment it inhabits.
Liverpool’s dot-art, now over two decades into championing its “art for everyone” ethos, has built a reputation for creating meaningful platforms for regional artists— whether through its city centre gallery, education programmes or a growing network of partnerships across the city. What makes its collaboration with the Everyman particularly compelling is the way it blurs the boundaries between disciplines, embedding visual art into one of the city’s most active cultural spaces.
This isn’t a bolt-on exhibition model, however. Through initiatives like Art in the Ev, dot-art curates a rolling programme of shows within the theatre itself, an accessible, first floor gallery space where audiences encounter work as part of their wider visit, rather than as a separate destination. Alongside this, artist residencies have brought practitioners directly into the building, giving them time, access and behind-the-scenes insight to develop work in dialogue with the theatre’s rhythms and communities.
The result is something more fluid and responsive: exhibitions that feel lived-in rather than staged, and artists who are given the space to evolve their practice in real time.
It’s within this context that Lawrence’s Walking through Seasons finds its footing. Her work, rooted in the sensory and emotional experience of walking, aligns naturally with a programme that values process as much as outcome. “This exhibition merges sensory and transient recollections of local walking experiences with felt emotions,” she explains. “The fleeting dialogue between memory and feeling is the heart of what I strive to communicate through my art.”
And there’s a strong sense of Merseyside’s natural edges running through the work, particularly in locations like Stapledon Wood and Caldy Hill. But rather than fixed landscapes, these appear as shifting impressions, of light, shadow and atmosphere held in flux.
Her pastel drawings trace what she describes as “my shadow weaving through the moving light between grasses and trees,” while acrylic works act as quiet counterpoints of moments of stillness at the end of a walk. “I reach the end point of my walk and in stillness look away from my walking shadow towards the distant horizon.”
That push and pull between movement and pause echoes the wider rhythm of the exhibition programme itself, that of artists arriving, responding, and leaving traces behind. Lawrence’s work also mirrors the unpredictability of the elements: “My work also reflects the local weather’s changeable temperament; some works are calm while some are in turmoil, and others exist in an undecided or anticipatory state between.”
Presented as a complete body of work for the first time since stepping back from her practice, this exhibition carries a sense of return. “The artwork in this exhibition unveils an inner journey towards healing and renewal,” she says. It’s also a reconnection with something deeper: “The interconnection between self, place and something unknown continues an intuitive thread born from loss many years ago. This exhibition has enabled me to pick up that thread again.”
Within the Everyman’s evolving gallery space, that thread feels right at home, in that it is part of a wider conversation between artist, environment and audience that continues to unfold quietly, one exhibition at a time. This exhibition is a marvelous opportunity to view the work of a remarkable intuitive artist.
Art in the EV – Julie Lawrence “Walking Through Seasons”
Commencing May 2026
Liverpool Everyman Theatre
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