Francis Bacon, Three Figures and Portrait 1975 © Estate of Francis Bacon, DACS 2011

LIVERPOOL.- Tate Liverpool has collaborated with world renowned hat designer Philip Treacy OBE for the latest instalment of the gallery’s popular run of Tate Collection displays, DLA Piper Series: This is Sculpture. Treacy worked with Tate Liverpool’s Head of Exhibitions and Displays, Gavin Delahunty, to select works from the Tate Collection for the new display entitled Conversation Pieces.

Conversation Pieces reflects the designer’s knowledge of the Tate Collection, from which he has chosen works in a range of media by prominent and lesser known artists. Treacy’s selection has a concern with human form and human relations, mirroring in some way his own design process. Works by Francis Bacon, Don Brown and Dorothy Cross representing the human figure will be shown alongside the emotive abstraction of Joan Mitchell, Hélio Oiticica and Jackson Pollock. The coloured translucent screens of Liam Gillick and Scott Myles will explore the active relationship between the viewer and the art work. Central to the display and exhibition design are two artist films by Simon Martin and Haluk Akakçe. Dramatic, playful and quirky, they demonstrate Treacy’s humour, avant-garde interests and Pop sensibilities. Additional highlights will include pieces by Lucian Freud, Ellsworth Kelly and William Tucker.

Aspects of Treacy's own practice are also included in the display. A series of hand-made studies and moulds for his hats reveal a fascination with form and a concern for beauty which Treacy shares with many of the artists gathered in the exhibition.

Born in 1967 in County Galway, Ireland and now London based, Treacy is a five times winner of the British Fashion Council’s Accessory Designer of the Year award, and has designed for many of the major international fashion houses including McQueen, Chanel and Givenchy. Recent high profile commissions include Grace Jones’s 2009 Hurricane tour, which he art directed, and the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, for which he created thirty-six bespoke hats. He was awarded an OBE for services to the British fashion industry in 2007.

Conversation Pieces follows Wayne Hemingway & Son’s display Sculpture Remixed, which closed on 26 June. Visitors can also experience The Sculpture of Language, co-curated by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and Michael Craig-Martin’s Sculpture: The Physical World.

Andy Warhol, Woman with Hat 1957. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc/ARS, NY and DACS, London 2011