Alistair Livingstone
Alistair has been a member of the Belfast Print Workshop since 2019.
I have worked internationally as an artist and as a designer and director for theatre and films and as an arts consultant on local and government projects. I have taught art in London secondary schools and have lectured in art and design at graduate and postgraduate level at the Slade, UCL London, The Centre for Performing Arts and WA Academy of Performing Arts, Australia.
My theatre career includes credits with the Royal Ballet, Scottish Ballet, South Australian Opera, Australian Ballet, The New National Theatre Tokyo, The Abbey Theatre Dublin, Channel Four Television and United Artists Films. Drawings, paintings and photographs are included in many public and private collections and he has exhibited mixed media works and black and white photographs in Germany, Australia and London. As well as designing for international Ballet and Opera Companies I have worked on small scale projects with Ken Campbell’s Science Fiction Theatre company and with exciting modern dance companies and choreographers: Mark Baldwin, CandoCo and Union Dance.
My approach and thinking about theatre was influenced early on and to a large extent by Stephen Joseph, the pioneer of Theatre in the Round and I am particularly interested in forms of staging where the audience and actor relationship is transformed in new and more dynamic ways. For many years I was Nicholas Georgiadis’ assistant, working with him on many of his ballet and opera designs. I have worked extensively as an art director for major British and Australian advertising campaigns and as the arts consultant in collaboration with architects, planners, city councils and state government agencies on a number of major projects and studies, particularly in Australia, where is was appointed as the first Administrative Director of the Perth Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA).
After a life threatening car accident in 1972 I became interested in alternative methods of recuperation including Yoga and Homœopathy and trained as a Yoga Therapist with a particular interest in working with people with disabilities and special needs at the same time as working on a range of film and video projects, mixed media works and black and white photographs shown in Germany and London and designing ballets in Japan and Argentina.
Most recent work includes a number of short ecologically based videos on Light 2000 Community group’s bid for Old Homer, the much loved Holm Oak in local Kilbroney Park as Northern Ireland’s 2016 Tree of the Year and designing a book based on the notable trees in the park which includes photographs and paintings by local and international artists. The book was accompanied by a touring exhibition. I was the Artist in Residence at Creative Spark in Dundalk until recently where I was working on a visual art series for an Exhibition in April and for which I received an Arts Council of Northern Ireland grant. A retrospective exhibition of my Stage Designs was in the main gallery at the Market Place Art Gallery in January and February 2019 and a condensed exhibition of this work moved to the Sean Hollywood Arts Newry. I recently directed an in-the-round production of Csilla Toldy’s play “Bananas” for the E. Belfast Arts Festival and her new play “The Bloom Mystery” based on an imagined dialogue between James Joyce and a Hungarian journalist, which was performed during a ‘Bloomsday Breakfast’ at the Rostrevor Inn on 16th June. I am collaborating with the V&A Theatre and Performance Department. The Association of British Theatre Technicians (ABTT) and others on a project to reappraise the legacy and work of Stephen Joseph, scheduled for 2021.
Image: ‘Flying High’ by Alistair Livingston
