On the last Thursday of every month Tate Liverpool opens late for special events, music, food, drink and of course the best modern and contemporary art. This month’s Late at Tate, Thursday 28 February (18.00 – 21.00), kick starts our Late at Tate nights for 2008 and invites visitors to reflect on the darker side of Niki de Saint Phalle’s work, currently the subject of a major Tate Liverpool exhibition. Visitors to Late at Tate can attend a talk by one of the artists in the current Tate Collection display, experience the Mercy organisation’s one-off live event responding to the theme of creative destruction in the work of Niki de Saint Phalle and watch Camelia e le Dragon (1975), a film by Niki de Saint Phalle.

To start the evening artist Dorothy Cross will give an illustrated talk about her work. Her iconic sculpture Virgin Shroud (1993) features in the current display of work from the Tate Collection, DLA Piper Series: The Twentieth Century - How it looked & how it felt. Cross works in a range of media from sculpture using found objects, to video, photography and large scale public art pieces. In this talk, the artist discusses her career to date including Ghost Ship, regarded as one of the most successful pieces of public art in recent years and shown at the first Liverpool Biennial in 1999. .

Over five years of producing innovative events and exhibitions alongside a quarterly independent press, Mercy have proven themselves to be one of the UK’s most reactive and compulsive arts organisations. For Late at Tate Mercy will be presenting an explosive mixture of music, spoken word and digital arts responding to the theme of Creative Destruction in the work of Niki de Saint Phalle. Events are based on their infamous 2007 Demolitionperformance series and include Carl Rohumaa’s Guitar and Pyroaudio visual performance, a live computer poetry performance on the limits of writing entitled It Looks Like You’re Writing A Letter by artist Ross Sutherland and Broke Your Baby Heart by Nathan Jones with Wave Machines.Binary Jam DJs, Kaya and Mercy Poets will also be displaying their destructive musical qualities throughout the evening.

Niki de Saint Phalle’s Camelia e le Dragon or Un rêve plus long que la nuit (1975, 90 mins) will also be screened on the evening. Written, directed and designed by de Saint Phalle with machines specially conceived by Jean Tinguely, the film features a host of actors including de Saint Phalle herself and partner Tinguely in dreamlike sequences dealing with some of the themes already present in the current exhibition at Tate Liverpool such as childhood and memory. 

This month’s Late at Tate also marks the announcement of the winner of the Alternative Turner Prize by Young Tate. The competition for 13-25 year olds saw young people from across the UK create their own artworks inspired by the Turner Prize 2007. There will be an opportunity to see the work of the four finalists displayed at Tate Liverpool and at 19.45 a panel of judges will announce the winner and present certificates to the short listed nominees.

18.00 – 19.30    Artist Talk: Dorothy Cross                               Auditorium

18.00 – 21.00    Mercy live events and screenings                      All spaces

18.30 – 21.00    Camelia e le Dragon film screening                 Auditorium

18.45 – 20.15    Announcement of Alternative Turner Prize      Foyer