George Shaw, Scenes from the Passion: The Swing, 2002/3
On Friday night I breezed into the Whitworth, without invitation, my blaggers gait set to maximum. People diligently studied the pictures in the foyer, despite them being the same exhibition from the Putting on the Glitz opening.
People buzzed about happily - “Nicholas Serota is here!” There was a real fizzle and spark in the air about Subversive Spaces at the Whitworth Art Gallery. Fizzy wine was flowing, cup cakes with ‘EAT ME’ and ‘KILL ME’ were doing the rounds.
It took a few minutes, and a glass of fizz, before I realised I could enter the exhibition.
This might be ( to a certain extent) an art blog, but I’m personally I’m pretty discriminating about what I like. Some people might say punitively so. Surrealism is not one of the things I like. It’s too cerebral, and the product of it - dare I say it - are mostly rather ugly and exclusive. This blog is becoming a list of my preconceptions and prejudices.
Anyway, Subversive Spaces. If you like surrealism and being all Freudian you’ll bloody love this exhibition.
Anna Gaskell, Untitled ( Hide) 47, 1999
To be honest, I was never going to be the choir about this exhibition. However, I do think there is something wonderful about how jam packed Subversive Spaces is, and among the rather tired objects there are some really remarkable objects.
For every two things I thought were tired, trite and pretentious, there was something which I found moving. As much as I hate Dali, I am always stunned by the photography of Brassaï. The paintings of children’s play equipment by George Shaw are really evocative.
Anyway, as I wandered out of the exhibition I realised that the opening speeches had started. There was Nicholas Serota giving a speech. Nicholas Serota! He’s even cooler than Lawrence Llwelyn-Bowen or Mark Lawson!
How did such a boring man get so far? I could tell you some details of his speech, but his droning monologue was of such a cadence it drifted right through my mind with out a single phrase taking permanent hold.
So anyway, fizzy wine, cakes and minor art celebrities. What an evening!
I’ve yet to see Kinderzimmer, the toast of the exhibition. The “major” new commission by Gregor Schneider. Will let you know.
Manchester is an incredibly vibrant, exciting and eclectic city, and its art scene reflects that. However, in a city as large and diverse as this, with several distinct areas just within the city centre, it can get a little overwhelming.
To counteract this and to help you get the most out of this city has to offer, here's a brief guide to some of the major and not so major galleries around Manchester.
From the big internationally acclaimed civic institutions through to small artist led galleries and emerging artists cropping up in unlikely places, from the wilds of the Northern Quarter to the cosy enclaves of university campuses, artistically, Manchester has something for everyone.
Civic Galleries
In terms of big civic galleries, there is a plentiful supply. Manchester Art Gallery has a great collection of art, with over 25,000 objects. The gallery has a particularly fine and extensive collection of Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite painting and objects on permanent display, including the seminal painting by Ford Madox Brown, Work. But the gallery is not restricted to the nineteenth century, with a collection spanning six centuries, it also has a significant examples of eighteenth century and contemporary works. Whether you want to gaze upon William Blake or Lucian Freud, there is something for you.
Located on Moseley Street, just opposite the central library and St. Peters Square - as well as on the very edge of China Town - Manchester Art Gallery is housed in two fine Victorian buildings. These building are joined together with a stunning glass atrium and stair well area, designed by the award winning architect Sir Michael Hopkins, and opened in 2002 to critical acclaim.
The atrium itself has been used as a space to display art work, as demonstrated this summer by these amazing sculptures by Korean artist Choe U Ram.
Totally different but equally exalted is Urbis, which stands out in the middle of Manchester's shopping melee pit like neatly crash landed spaceship. Striking up into the ( often) gloomy Manchester sky it looks like a cousin of the Pompidou Centre with it's guts tucked in.
Incredibly trendy, Urbis styles itself as a " exhibition centre about city life." The current exhibition displays the political works Emory Douglas, the first and only Black Panther Minister for Culture.
Housing a popular cafe, a top floor restaurant which offers unequalled views of the city, as well the painfully cool, seasonal bar The North Pole located in an adjacent marquee, Urbis is a social, as well as cultural, hub.
The Cornerhouse, nestling next to the Oxford Road Station, has, along with its cinema, book shop and bar facilities, three floors of dedicated exhibition space.
Unfortunately the quality of the exhibits can be quite variable, positive reaction Masaki Fujihata exhibition was undermined by the current exhibition, The Interwining Line.
The downstairs cafe-bar area, which affords an unrivalled people-watching panorama across the hurly burly of Oxford Road, currently features stills from the Academy Award nominated animated film, Persepolis.
Not to be forgotten is the Chinese Arts Centre in the Northern Quarter. The Chinese Arts Centre is the international agency for the development and promotion of contemporary Chinese artists.
Commercial Galleries
Sometimes it's fun to see how the other half live, and even more fun to pretend to be them. Not everyone has the dosh to take a trip to a commercial art gallery as a customer, but that shouldn't stop you having a good nose around. The city centre has several interesting commercial art galleries, most notably the two Richard Goodall Galleries in the Northern Quarter and the Philips Art Gallery on Tib Street.
Richard Goodall Gallery's first location is on Thomas Street, which claims to be the UK's leading fine art photography, limited edition silk screen rock poster art and low brow art emporium. To you and me that's very expensive posters and toys. Still it's nice to see what the über trendy lot spend their money on.
The more recognisable arty face of RGG is the Contemporary Gallery, located in a specially built, state of the art building on High Street in the Northern Quarter. In real terms it's just by that weird set of flats with the old market facade and just opposite Sweet Mandarin.
Currently on show are the stunning photographs of Jamie Baldridge , recently reviewed for Citylife.co.uk, this exhibitions finishes on the 7th of December. This crowd pleasing show is to be followed by an exhibition which promises to be even more popular, in the wildly sought-after illustrator Nicoletta Ceccoli's largest exhibition to date. The galleries' flickr photostream gives a good sense of what the gallery space is like and what kind of exhibits they put on.
Although not nearly on the scale of the Richard Goodall Galleries, the Philips Art Gallery is worth a visit. Hidden away on Tib Street, this tiny, charming space is always full of a broad and interesting selection of art. The displayed work are refreshingly unfashionable, ranging from contemporary representative and impressionist works, through to fifties and vorticist paintings. Their Christmas Exhibition opens on the 27th of November and runs until the 20th of December.
Artist Run Galleries
There are two great artist run galleries, the Castlefield Gallery and International 3. Opening this week at the Castlefield Gallery is a solo sculpture exhibition by Laura White called If I had a Monkey I wouldn't need a TV.
University Run Galleries
Moving away from the city centre and up Oxford Road, the universities unsurprisingly provide a couple of great art venues. Manchester Metropolitan University has a sequence of gallery spaces on it's All Saints Campus, such as The Holden Gallery, which recently housed the Third Manchester Artists' Book Fair. Continuing the bookish theme, this gallery currently contains an exhibition called Reflective Stories, displaying examples of sketchbooks and journals from all levels of art practitioners. Reflective Stories continues to the 12th of December.
Just up the stairs and around the corner from the Holden Gallery is the criminally under used Link Gallery. The gallery currently contains works by current and former students of the Interactive Arts course, in a practically named, Interactive Arts Alumni Exhibition, recently preview on Citylife.co.uk.
Any discussion about the arts around Manchester with out mentioning the Whitworth Art Gallery would be deplorable. This stunning red brick Victorian building is located on Oxford Road by Whitworth Park and is part of the University of Manchester.
It is home to some of the UK's finest collections of art and design including modern and historic fine art, prints, textiles and a rare collection of wallpapers. It's current and eclectic season of temporary display includes the stunning Putting on the Glitz, a celebration of burnished wallcoverings - an exhibition opened by Laurence Llwelyn-Bown earlier this month - and cloth & culture NOW, an unrivalled textile art exhibition featuring works from artists hailing from through-out Europe and Asia. Cloth & culture NOW is closing December 12th.
Arty Pubs
These are just a few examples of the more traditional places you can find art around Manchester. If your looking for more edgy, atypical art there is a whole plethora of less typical places to try. For example the recent Illuminations exhibit which was held in a disused building on Whitworth Street West.
However, its the city's pubs, bars and assorted drinking holes which often turn up trumps. Common in the Northern Quarter has a frequently changing decor supplied by emerging artists and illustrators. Strange Manchester staples of Odd and Odder have always had arty feel, and now Odder holds monthly exhibitions, providing an opportunity for local artists and designers to exhibit their work for free.
The famous Matt & Phred's Jazz Club in the Northern Quarter currently has on display a selection of images entered in the Shot Up North photography awards.
If you like your art with a little more narrative, you should head over to The Lass O'Gowrie. This classic Victorian pub, just off Oxford Road by the BBC, has a changing display of comic book art in the snug, currently featuring Adrian Salmon's Cybermen comics for Doctor Who Magazine.
Art Resources
This is only representative of a tiny selection of venues to see art around Manchester and as the end of the year approaches, old exhibitions taken down and new put in their place, this information will date very quickly.
However, do not despair, since Manchester is served by some great arts resources.
The first is the Arts List, covering every genre of visual and performative art, this is the definitive listings for the Manchester area.
Another useful resource to keep an eye on is Citylife.co.uk. Though the arts section is still, somewhat, in development, it promises to improve quickly. The online version of the Manchester Evening News supplement, it provides previews, news and reviews about entertainment and arts around the city, as well as competitions.
The Art Guide is seemingly a resource with yet untapped potential. Formerly the Castlefield Gallerys e-flyer, it provides details of many grassroots arts activities, as well as links to various arts organisations and collectives in the North-West.
There are probably many other great venues that I've failed to include, and if you feel I have left something significant out, be reassured it was not out of spite and please let me know via comments.
Writing things for Citylife.co.uk really drives home to differences between writing for different audiences.
I'm really rather pleased with the write up I gave the opening of Putting on The Glitz at the Whitworth. It is certainly nice to have professionals to clean and buff my writing up into something rather smart and shiny.
The opening was the fanciest thing I've been to since the opening of a commercial print fair at the Royal Academy last year.
The exhibition itself? It is rather beautiful, but remarkably small as well. It is a bijou box of magpie delights.
This exhibitions ticks all the boxes it sets out to tick. It's beautiful, international and thought provoking. The selected works function well together, complimenting each other in the placement around the galleries. Altogether, this is probably one of the nicest ways to spend an afternoon in Manchester, set as it is within the comfortingly restored-Victorian setting of the Whitworth Art Gallery on Oxford Road.
However, I do take issue with two curatorial practises which are key to this exhibition. Firstly, I would like to question the emphasis it places on the artists nationality. Although textiles obviously has it's place within every nations identity, the promotion of this paradigm reinforces the folksy, craftsy status that textile art has. The works from northern European countries are graceful and simple, the types of thing to be seen in a high class version of Ikea ( though certainly not the unlamented Ilva), the Japanese works are either cutesy or oriental. The choice of works seems to beg the perennial question, rephrased as 'what came first, the cultural stereotypes or the textile objects?'
This kind of display of textile art has been a long time coming, but mostly in its choice of objects does not seem to question the long standing and contentious art vs. crafts paradigm. Some of the works, however, are wonderful, even a challenge to the doyen of crafty-fine-art Greyson Perry.
The other aspect I take issue with, which is nothing new and seems to have become a integral part of current curatorial practises, is the didactic manner of display. The visitor is closely directed and told what to think. Yes, it could have been a lot worse, more in the vein of the previous hang of the Tate Modern, but it is a bug bear of mine which I refuse to resign. I guess I want some terribly unfashionable mix of Victorian, post-modern and a curatorially naked display practises.
This being said, the exhibition is quite beautiful in an easy-on-the-eyes way, though unfortunately disjointedly strung out over different parts of the Whitworth. Although this should not be viewed as problematic, since the Whitworth is a singularly wonderful gallery to wander around, full of interesting and quite oddly placed thematic patches of art. The works in the upstairs room are much more interesting, perhaps because they are mostly sculptural. Perhaps, also, this is because they are less stereotypically craftsy or scandinavian-lite, and are displayed in a gallery with more space and light.
The exhibition is beautiful, and will certainly pleasantly fill an hour or so, but the choice of works, and the reliance on overly didactic and unoriginal ideas of cultural identity leave an ever so bitter taste in my mouth. I know that some people may look at me and say 'but that's the point', to which I would have to reply 'that's what I don't like about it...'
I'm trying to start a movement where the visitor tries to side step the instructive controls that are so prevalent in galleries today. When in a fine art gallery lets ignore the oh-so helpful and informative panels placed next to the objects. Will you join me?
cloth & culture NOW @ Whitworth Art Gallery until 14th December 2008
The Whitworth Art Gallery, on Oxford Road, is open Monday to Saturday 10am - 5pm and Sunday 12 - 4pm
Totally different but equally exalted is 
