A 100-year-old oil painting has been recreated outside a Barrow pub for an exhibition at the town’s Art Gene gallery.
Regulars looked on in amusement as three men in period dress sat down at a table outside The Furness Railway on Abbey Road and started mixing a drink.
The scene is an homage to a piece called Hot Punch, painted in 1924 by Liverpool artist Frank Moss Bennett.
Grab the red slider in the middle of the above image to see both artworks.
Now hanging in the Grundy Art Gallery in Blackpool, it depicts three aristocratic 19th century gentlemen making hot punch from lemons, sugar, hot water and the contents of a spirit decanter in a dark wood panelled room.
The recreation – which used Guinness instead of brandy or rum – was art directed and photographed in black and white by Alistair Debling, an artist-in-residence at Art Gene.
It was later hand-coloured, a technique that was popular into the first half of the 20th century before colour film became widely available.
Alistair chose the unusual location as he said the exterior of the pub, built in 1889 as Barrow’s Co-operative Society department store, reminded him of the grand room in the original oil painting.
The image is one of six modern stagings around Barrow of artworks created between the 15th and early 20th century. They will form part of a free exhibition at Art Gene called Remember Nature: Intra-action, which opens to the public on Wednesday November 5.
Other locations for recreations include bus stops on Abbey Road and at Coronation Gardens.
The three men featured in Alistair’s version of Hot Punch are Ahmed Elking, Saidi Khamis and Yohanis Haile.
Along with nine others, the trio took part in a series of creative workshops as part of Alistair’s nine-month project with Art Gene.
All group members, aged from 20s to 50s, are refugees or people seeking asylum from countries including Eritrea, Pakistan, Syria, DRC, Tanzania and Sudan.
They were originally introduced to Art Gene by Furness Refugee Support.
The sessions began with a visit to Abbot Hall art gallery in Kendal where local artist Lela Harris ran a self-portraiture workshop.
Other skills explored by the group included hand-colouring black and white photos and developing photographic film using a homemade solution that mixed weeds from Allotment Soup, Art Gene’s community allotment, with washing soda and vitamin C.
During pottery workshops, they made cabbage leaf plates and bowls inspired by Portuguese ceramicist Bordallo Pinheiro and also spent time hand-embroidering a tablecloth with motifs representing the themes of Barrow, travel and unity.
The ceramics and tablecloth will be used during a communal feast, which will make use of ingredients grown on Art Gene’s allotment by some of the participants in the art project.
It will take place on Tuesday November 4 as part of an annual nationwide day of artist-led environmental action called Remember Nature.
Alistair, who studied at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford, and is now based in Cumbria, said: “Portraiture, for many centuries, was a way for elite white men to convey a ‘natural order of things’ in which a wealthy minority had the right to profit from the land and its resources.
“Hot Punch is an important painting as it shows how privilege and status are artificially constructed through costume and gesture: it looks like a 19th century high society scene but was actually painted in 1924 using clothing, furniture and props from the previous century.
“100 years on, I thought it would be poignant to restage the scene, this time outside a Wetherspoon pub, with a group of creative and courageous people whose home countries have been destabilised as a legacy of the colonialism that enriched wealthy European elites.”
Alistair hopes the image, alongside the other photographs in the series, makes people think again about how deep inequalities in class and status aren’t “natural”.
“The scene is all very DIY,” he said. “The clothes are from my own wardrobe and Yohanis is pouring out drinks that had been left on the table by previous punters.
“But I hope the reconstruction makes people think about how all images are constructed and maintained, from portraiture to newspaper photography and TikTok.
“The series of pictures aims to present a more equitable vision of who is included in society and art history.”
The exhibition opens with a public event including a light buffet and refreshments on Tuesday 4 November, 6.30pm to 9pm.
Email [email protected] for an invitation. The exhibition then runs until Friday November 21, open Tuesday to Saturday noon to 4pm at Art Gene, Bath Street, Barrow.
