In 2008, traveling by container ship, train and bus, the artist Simon Faithfull made an epic journey from Liverpool (UK) to Liverpool (Nova Scotia). The purpose of this absurd endeavor was to create 181 digital drawings that record the daily details of a journey from the old world to the new. The drawings are etched into the glass facard of Liverpool Lime Street Station and sandblasted into the stone paving.
Liverpool to Liverpool tells the story of an epic journey by Simon Faithfull from Liverpool, UK, to Liverpool, Novia Scotia. Faithfull made about six drawings a day throughout his journey, documenting the minutiae of daily life on land and sea, from Liverpool to Liverpool, with his Palm Pilot. This book includes 181 digital drawings, and Faithfull’s often wry, imagist commentary on the landscapes he was passing through and the humans he encountered – from English Liverpudlians crouched under umbrellas to Canadian Liverpudlians with moustachioed lips and pick-up trucks – as he drew them. The book serves as a reminder of Liverpool’s maritime past, its historical dependence on the shipbuilding industry and transatlantic trade, and the survival of these global connections today. Both the words and images in this fascinating book attest to the survival of the texture and detail of individual everyday lives even in our restlessly mobile world.