Last Friday, after failing to find someone to accompany me through twitter, I went to see the Da Vincis in Manchester Art Gallery.
Some of my favourite art displays are within institutions which take their pattern from older institutions and collections. I don't look back on the time I lived in Oxford with much fondness, apart from a few glorious summer days spent in Headington Hill Park and some nice evenings in The Star. However, I do miss having the Ashmolean, the two ScienceMuseums, as well as naturally the Pitt Rivers, handy.
This is perhaps why I like Manchester Art Gallery, there is a certain quirky eclecticism which I find is often missing from more contemporary civic art institutions. ( *cough* Urbis * cough*)
The sequence of rooms in which the Da Vincis were placed reminded me of pleasantly lethargic afternoons spent in Ashmolean.
First, is the room with Paul Morrison's Parthenocarp installation. There is something wonderfully generous about the staging of this painting, the expanse of floor you drift around as the image looms above and to the left and right of you. You are engulfed. It is unsettling, not in an unpleasant sense, but because it levers you out of you comfort zone, tipping you slightly off kilter and into a new position that takes a moment to get used to. Space is always at such a premium, it's glorious to have a bit of room to have an intellectual stretch in.
Parthenocarp is like a theatre back drop, and despite being a beautiful amalgamation of images, is oddly lacking depth and reflects attention onto the the inhabitants of the gallery.
After a short queue, they let you into the Da Vinci room. I really don't have that much to say about these. They are beautiful drawings, and there is always something tremendous about being near something so old and of such repute. I like the skulls. I liked the darken, hushed room. A bit like being at the death bed of a Victorian matriarch.
I honestly have to say the second high light of my visit, after my dip into Parthencarp, was spilling out into a design gallery I have never seen before. Though there was far too much interpretative silliness, big shiny things stating the eye-bleedingly obvious, it was just the type of engrossing collection of objects which you found in the Ashmolean.
Apart from done better. Nice and shiny. The beautiful and the odd jostled together, and there were more than enough teapots to keep me happy.
All Manchester needs now is some really bizarre anthropological collections. But it is a happy realisation that for most things, for old art, for new art, for design and for tonnes of stuffed animals, Manchester easily kicks Oxfords arse.
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.
Wow, what a weekend! Spent today recovering, writing event reviews for the Manchester Literature Festival Blog. Friday's event, Destroy Powerpoint is online and my attempt to render the glourisously beery monstrosity that was Vvoorp Vvoorp! at the Lass O' Gowrie into comprehendible words should follow shortly. I have not even began trying to put into words how utterly divine it was to meet the lovely Hannah Berry and Paul Gravatt on Sunday.
I'm sure Hannah will forgive me, because the second Blacksad book came through my door today and demanded a few hours of my time. Unfortunately, as observed with the previous book by my multilingual goddess of a house mate, the translation is not that great, even clear to an uncultivated hack like me because the spelling of one of the characters name keeps shifting inexplicably.
This week is not quite as geeky, but still has a claim to nerdy fame. It starts a tomorrow with an event I am blogging for the Manchester Literature Festival. with the son of the author of Gormenghast, Sebastian Peake, reading his father's writings by Mervyn's painting of glassblowers in Manchester Art Gallery.
Wednesday is the Manchester Blog Awards, run in conjunction with the Literature Festival and City Life. I wasn't nominated of an award, but still want to attend out of Mancunian blogging solidarity. Prepare to nominate me next year, people, for I shall be queen!
Thursday is the preview of the Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair, which I am really looking forward to. Craft lies pretty close to my heart, as a daughter of a weaver and craft maker. Yes, that website is pretty ancient, but it's my mama's so be respectful! After the beautiful disappointment which was Cloth & Culture Now, and fully aware of the proverbial meat market which crafts fairs can be, I'm looking forward to see what my reaction will be. Like fine art, there are some rather strange, and to an outsider rather inexplicable, hierarchies within the craft field. The use of contemporary in the title flirts with me shameless, tempting and disconcerting, like a burlesque dancer with an adams apple.
On Friday night is the start of Illuminations, which I have previously blogged about.
If you need proof that the nation is ageing just go to a civic art gallery or museum at 11.20 on a weekday. Just three days in on Manchester Art Gallery's blockbuster-esque 'William Homan Hunt & the Pre-Raphaelite Vision' and the gallery is awash with grey heads and bent backs. They crawl around the edges of the exhibition, following the curatorially dictated path, devotedly reading the plaques and texts on the wall. They make me think of decrepit Theseus', who have been told they will escape the Minotaur's maze if they follow the edges and keep turning right.
There seems to be a trend in art viewing at the moment to stand as close as possible to the painting, after of course reading the plaque which tells you the meaning and import of every detail, and waver your head back and forth, as if trying to suck up every detail of the surface. Maybe it an unknowing attempt to bathe your brain in the health giving aura of the work of ART. Anyway, it's pretty annoying for everyone else who stands a respectful three foot back.
The exhibition is actually surprisingly small, but in a compact way, packing a lot of stuff in. Thankfully they have taken a few steps away from white cube-osity, painting the walls rich colours that complement the jewel like tones of which Holman Hunt was fond. Organised along chronological lines, favourite paintings are complemented by objects associated with them, books, engravings and photographs. It's a panoply of Holman Hunt merchandise. It really feels like a showroom, which is probably more appropriate than most would think. Holman Hunt's paintings sit within an unspoken, but undeniable, Victorian context of religious commodities, think Hardman & Co., stained glass windows, Pugin & The Great Exhibition of 1851.
The narrative qualities of all his paintings are alluded to by texts on the walls. However, although it's fun to play name the biblical/Shakespearian provenance, it's pretty clear we still don't really have appropriate tools to talk about these works.
Some old geezer confused matters further, gesticulating to the earliest version of 'The Light of the World' and declaring to his poor wife that this was the "original", a term I believe to be near useless when discussing Victorian art, and especially as an iconic and endlessly reproduced image as Light of the World. It was interesting to see some reproductions and appropriations of the The Light of the World, but I don't think they accurately communicated the sheer mass of reproductions which were made. I'm certain they could have papered half the walls with the knock off versions which have been made over the last 150 years.
Anyway, don't get me wrong, it is an unquestionably beautiful exhibition of works, but beautiful an illustrative and saccharine manner. The paintings are all amazing examples of painterly craftsmanship and iconographical narrative communication, but there has always been, to me at least, a lack of depth to these works. I have never liked the calculated geometry of the woman's faces, massive doe eyes, ruler straight brows and long, almost phallic, noses. A perfect example of why I just don't get the PRB is 'The Triumph of the Innocents'.
The cherubs frankly freak me out. They are not angelic, they are more like the goblin baby in Outside Over There ,they are bugged eyed changeling babies. There is something both magical and stingy about the atmosphere Holman Hunt's boggled eyed, sinewy creatures inhabit. I can fully understand how others might fall in love with these overly perfect renditions, but I find them both oppressive and depressing. The perfection makes them unreconcilable, they lack the forgiving softness of Raphael or Rubens.
Then again, if you like Holman Hunt, and believe that focusing on a painters biography is a good thing, this is just the exhibition for you.
William Holman Hunt & The Pre-Raphaelite Vision is at the Manchester Art Gallery until the 11th January 2009.
Firstly, I realised this morning that I had completely forgot that Manchester Art Gallery's Holman Hunt show started two whole days ago! The Guardian manages to sound both priggish and polite about it. I always felt that PRB ( Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, gah!) eclipse and confuse our understanding of the Victorians, as well as sound like a all round bunch of twats, naval gazing and shenaniganising each others little ladies. However, despite my, albeit, wavering contempt of the PRB, there sounds like there may be some interesting curatorial decisions made about displaying all three artists reproductions of the endlessly reproduced and disseminated Light of the World.
Next weekend is jam packed with events from Manchester Literature Festival, for who I am guest blogging. It started last week with Lucky Voice , and continue with Vvorp! Vvorp! on Saturday, which has an ever expanding guest list of fearful proportion and import. Science Fiction, combined with my foot/mouth habit, could quite possibly ruin my life. Wait and see. Guest include my favourites Ian Edginton and D'Isreali ( I have been re-reading Scarlet Traces, Stickleback and The Great Game in preparation ) , but supposedly I should be more excited about Gary Russell and Dez Skin.
Both these events involve more or less powerpoint, so in preparation I want to attend Destroy Powerpoint on Friday at Manchester Art Gallery, "Flash fiction author and novelist, David Gaffney subverts PowerPoint software to bring us witty and moving tales of corporate life, revealing how the human spirit manages to thrive between the templates."
Totally different but equally exalted is 
