LIVERPOOL.- The students and department of the BA Fine Art, Liverpool John Moores University announce The Degree Show on Mars, a multiverse exhibition responding to realities prior to, and during, lockdown.

Artists respond to the world as they find it, they reflect on it and help to build an understanding of what we are experiencing. The Degree Show on Mars directly addresses the current global situation, through the eyes of artists who are emerging into a world very different to that which they had anticipated.

The graduating artists’ response is a multiverse; a series of possible worlds where viewers can encounter the variety and complexity of the artists’ individual, collaborative and curatorial practices. Using NASA's detailed 3D scans of the Martian landscape, viewers are transported to the Gale crater on Mars. This virtual landscape is scattered with crash-landed objects that are alien to the planet's surface. Each object represents a graduating artist, and acts as a portal or wormhole, leading the viewer back in time and space to an exhibition in Liverpool staged by the students one week prior to lockdown. Documented using Matterport 3D software, visitors can wander around the entire exhibition of the 53 artists. Each artwork in the show then acts as a further portal to that student’s current work, allowing audiences to observe how the artists represent their practices during lockdown.

The Degree Show on Mars is not a pared back simulation of what might have been, rather a voyage that seeks to collectively establish new relevance and understanding for the artists’ individual endeavours, amid the stasis the world is currently experiencing.

On the evening of the 5th June there will be a live opening event. There will be curated walk-throughs, recommended artworks chosen by external selectors who are leaders in the artworld, prizes selected by the Directors of Tate Liverpool, FACT and the Liverpool Biennial, along with a series of residency prizes at the Royal Standard, CBS studios and Bidston Observatory.

External selectors include: Kate Cooper (artist), Ryan Gander (artist), Samuel Leuenberger (Founder & Director, SALTS, Basel & Art Parcours Curator, Art Basel), Miranda Sawyer (Writer and Broadcaster), Hans Ulrich Obrist (Artistic Director, Serpentine Galleries, London) with others to be announced.

Participating artists: Georgia Addy, Mitchell Armstrong, Sophie Bacon, Cheryl Blackburn, Parice Bowyer, Harriet Butler, Ian Colligan, Tom Condon, Joshua Cook, Ella Crabtree, Stephanie Da Maia, Emma Dolan, Chloe Eadie, Kyle Evans, Chelsie Feather, Rachel Geary, Joe Goff, Jake Gould, Hannah Graham, Ruta Griskeviciute, Kea Haughey, Kyle Hicks, Beth Hill, Mary Hill, Franky Hughes, Sheree John, Nadia Kawafi, Carys Kilduff, Beth King, Emma Magill, Shannon May, Erin McKerrow, Chelsey Morrison, Phoebe O'Connor, James Ockenden, James Pope, Bethany Prandle, Angelica Rossiter, Millicent Rotchford-Monks, Daniel Rymer, Ashleigh Sands, Jennifer Sharp, Nicole Stiff, Monika Sznajder, Ellie Towers, Morgan Tunnicliffe, Kirsty Jo Wallace, Bethany Wallis, Natalie Weston, Martine Williams, Rachael Williams, Meri Williamson, Johnmichael Woodruff.