Chasing the Rainbow

Nocturnal Rainbow: Maurice Cockrill RA open at Bridewell Studios and Gallery in Liverpool

Jun 08, 2026

Before we get stuck into the main piece for this week, I need to tell you about a small change. After speaking to readers about what they like and find useful about this newsletter, I’m restructuring the content a bit. From this weekend, the free weekly version of Stored Honey will be focused on helping you plan your upcoming spare time - and to ensure you don’t miss out on the good stuff that’s taking place in the region.

Every Friday, you’ll receive a list of five recommendations for things to do over the following seven days. It’ll be designed so you can read every word or skim down the screen to find something that particularly appeals to you.

I will continue to write and share interviews, but these will mostly be for paid subscribers who will start receiving an extra edition most weeks - either a longer read, an interview, a Meet the Creator feature or a Curator’s Picks. This is to ensure that everyone gets the useful bits - the recommendations - while paid subscribers are rewarded with more in-depth coverage. It’s just £6 per month or £60 annually for full access.

I would like Stored Honey to be fully available to anyone who wants it however, so if the subscription fee is out of your means, please drop me an email and I will arrange a six-month free subscription, no questions asked.

Maurice Cockrell’s forgotten Lime Street series returns to Liverpool

Maurice Cockrill, *Nocturne to the City* (Image courtesy of Victoria Gallery & Museum/ University of Liverpool)

The view from the roof of Bridewell Studios to the Royal Liverpool Hospital has drastically changed since artist Maurice Cockrill painted it back in 1979-80, but the former police station is still standing and supporting artists just as it was all those decades ago.

Cockrill took up residence in the Bridewell, on Prescot Street, a few years after it was rented by its founder members and turned into artist studios. He lived and worked in the same room the organisation now uses as an exhibition space - before moving to London and becoming a Royal Academician and keeper (head) of the Royal Academy schools - so a show of work from his Bridewell period seemed an appropriate way of marking the studios’ 50th anniversary.

The exhibition Nocturnal Rainbow is curated by painter and Bridewell member Brendan Lyons, who says it reveals a different side to Cockrill’s work: “What he was really best known for was abstract work, and he wasn’t doing that when he was at the Bridewell. The work we’re showing is very different, very figurative.”

The starting point for Lyons’ curation was Nocturne to the City, a 3m x 2m oil painting of the Royal Hospital at night, with the Liverpool skyline in miniature in the background. It’s very still, with restrained use of light - spilling out from the entrance way or glinting from a street lamp. It’s quite a soothing work considering its subject matter and the dicey atmosphere of those streets at the time. You get a sense of what it must have been like, high up above the road, perhaps the only person looking out in that moment.

Maurice Cockrill in Lime Street Station (Image courtesy of Bridewell Studios & Gallery)

Also on show is a series of seven 3m-high hangings created to be displayed in Lime Street Station. Each one depicts a different anonymous passenger that Cockrill photographed as they walked by - progressing through age from a baby and to the elderly.

Lyons says: “I’d seen one, a girl with a yellow background, which had been shown in different Maurice Cockrell exhibitions over the years. I didn’t realise it was part of a series until somebody told me, and I found out they still existed, but they were rolled up in a store in London and belonged to his partner, Helen Moslin.

“It’s been a long process because when they’re rolled up, you’ve got to re-stretch them and some of them were in better condition than others.”

Mosley, who lived in the Bridewell with Cockrill, has kept his archive of documents and objects. She has been very supportive of the exhibition, which features photos, sketchbooks and a Granada TV interview on alongside the artist’s works.

Maurice Cockrill, *Lime Street Station study* (Image courtesy of Victoria Gallery & Museum/ University of Liverpool

There are other former Bridewell artists who would have been prominent candidates for the an exhibition in its 50th years, but Lyons was particularly drawn to Cockrill’s story.

He says: “Adrian Henri was here, and Anish Kapoor and Ian McKeever were here on residencies. Cockrill is the one who had the story. He lived and worked here. He was in Liverpool from the 60s and he’d been teaching in Liverpool and in St Helens. And in 1978, he just made a commitment to be a full-time artist and he moved into the Bridewell, which was quite a rough place to move into. It was freezing cold.

“One of the things about the Bridewell is that when the council went defunct in the 80s some of the artists managed to get like a sort of mortgage together and bought the building. That period, when Maurice Cockrill was here, it was desolate right around the Bridewell. All the other buildings have gone. If the artists hadn’t bought it, it wouldn’t be here.“

Nocturnal Rainbow: Maurice Cockrill is at Bridewell Studios and Gallery until Sunday 26 July.

See your work featured in Stored Honey

If you’re an artist, actor, theatre maker, curator, director or producer, I’d love to hear more about your work. You can submit details of an exhibition, performance or cultural event by sending details and an image to laura@lauracdavis.com. If you would like to take part in Stored Honey’s regular Meet the Artist feature, please answer the questions in this Q&A or if you don’t like filling in forms I can send you the questions via email.

Last chance to see

Edward Ruscha, Pool #2 1968, printed 1997 ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland, c. Ed Ruscha

Tate Liverpool’s Artist Rooms: Ed Ruscha exhibition at RIBA North closes this weekend. Inspired by his travels by car, including the journey from his hometown of Oklahoma to Los Angeles, the free show includes books, photographs, paintings, drawings, and lithographs, capturing the architecture, geography and image of the USA. Ends Sunday 14 June.

One for all the family

La Voix as Miss Hannigan (Image: Matt Crockett)

La Voix stars as Miss Hannigan, alongside Alex Bourne as Oliver Warbucks in Annie touring to Manchester Palace Theatre from Tuesday 9 to Saturday 20 June. La Voix was most recently a participant in Series 23 of Strictly Come Dancing, and previously appeared on Season 6 of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK, reaching the grand finale and being awarded runner up,