Yoga enthusiasts given chance to exercise with Van Gogh in Liverpool
The exhibition brings Van Gogh's artworks to life through music and digital technology
Yoga enthusiasts are being invited to take part in special sessions at a new immersive Van Gogh exhibition.
Beyond Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience has opened at the Exhibition Centre Liverpool for its UK premiere.
The atmospheric multimedia experience brings the Dutch painter's works to life in spectacular and colourful style, using big screens, music, projectors and digital technology. Visitors can wander through iconic works which include The Starry Night, Sunflowers and Terrace of a Café at Night, and be enveloped by a selection of his self-portraits.
During its first weekend 9,000 visitors came through the doors, including hundreds who turned up for a Saturday morning yoga session, surrounded by Van Gogh's masterpieces.
Beyond Van Gogh has already been seen by more than five million people across the United States, Canada and South America, with 30,000 tickets already sold for the four-week run in Liverpool.
It opened its doors at Exhibition Centre on the waterfront on Thursday 27 June.
First through the doors for a private visit was a special party of visitors from the Liverpool charity KIND, which supports disadvantaged children and families across Merseyside.
Stehen Yip, who founded KIND, said: "We wanted to bring children who potentially wouldn't be able to come to this to come along and have a look and be inspired.
"That's the big thing, our children are the future and we want to inspire them by using the past."
The children were very impressed, one girl telling ITV News: "I've never seen anything like this and I never thought I would. I thought it would just be boring pictures, but it's so inspiring and I'm surprised at how good it is".
Granada Reports' Victoria Grimes was with children from Merseyside charity KIND at a special preview
Vincent van Gogh was born to a Protestant minister and his wife in Zundert, in the Netherlands, in 1853 and started his career as an art dealer, working in London and Paris
He also worked as a schoolteacher in Ramsgate and London, a bookseller, and a lay preacher in a Belgian mining community, before in 1880 his younger brother Theo suggested he concentrate on art.
Van Gogh quickly became prolific, creating more than 2,000 artworks over the course of a single decade including 860 paintings – among them landscapes, still lives, portraits and self-portraits.
Many of them were painted in the final two years of his life, when he lived in Provence, and include some of his most famous works, among them The Starry Night, Irises, Café Terrace at Night, Bedroom in Arles and Almond Blossoms.
But dogged by mental health problems, in 1889 he cut off his left ear, and the following year, aged 37, he took his own life.
Beyond Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience will be at the Exhibition Centre Liverpool until Wednesday 24 July.
Extra dates for the yoga sessions have now been added on Sunday 14 July and Sunday 21 July.
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