- Venue
- Ny space, Manchester
- Location
- North West England
The NY space gallery area is a combination of unusually slick city building materials and standard ‘white space’ gallery partitions. Located near to the heart of Manchester’s ‘China Town’, I found walking there from the car-park quite a surreal experience. After moving through a plethora of oriental style buildings one turn and I was confronted by a large, open plan lobby with installation pieces clearly visible from the outside. Once inside I spoke to the staff and was presented with a gallery plan. There was not much information on the handout, this is personally, the way I like it.
The artwork in the main gallery was a mix of material installation and some wall mounted work. There were four wall mounted pencil drawings by Lothar Goetz. These were my favorite pieces in the main gallery in terms of composition, I felt the materials were used in a subtle and inventive way. The most unavoidable piece was a large sheet of crumpled plastic with a projector shining through it by Janine Goldsworthy. In the absence of an explanation, this appeared to be an installation based around material exploration perhaps examining the interaction of light and material. My only criticism would be the standard way in which the work was presented within the space. It felt, to me, similar to many academic shows I have attended.
Towards the rear of the gallery there was a dedicated projection space with seating. I watched a section of the show -reel which feature a pseudo business training course where actors were persuaded that they could learn the power of hypnosis…I found this extremely amusing. I was lucky enough to meet Mariana Serranová who also gave a talk on the artists she had selected for the film piece. A talk which I found most informative. It transpired that the recurring theme which linked the four Czech artist related to questioning social conditioning in various forms. Mariana shared my enthusiasm for asking unrestricted questions, on all topics. I found this to be particularly relevant.
To me the major irony of the show was the contradiction between the Czech film-reel exposing elements of social conditioning and challenging conformity; contrasting the uniform academic presentation in the front gallery.
