Over the course of this year’s Manchester International Festival, the top floor exhibition space of the Manchester Art Gallery will be occupied by Ed Atkins’ Performance Capture, a durational project revolving around the ongoing production of a single computer-animated video. Luke Healey takes a tour of the exhibition and speaks to the artist.
An ambitious new artist-led festival is taking place across Manchester and Salford this weekend, with studio spaces and major venues hosting a number of projects produced especially for the festival alongside, open studios across both cities. Bob Dickinson meets artists and festival directors Elisa Artesero, John Lynch and Roger Bygott to find out more.
Continuing its cross-artform commissioning process, the Manchester International Festival production Tree of Codes teams choreographer Wayne McGregor with visual artist Olafur Eliasson and musician Jamie XX. Bob Dickinson is mesmerised.
This year’s Art Fund Prize for Museum of the Year has been awarded to Manchester’s Whitworth Art Gallery, which reopened in February after a £15m extension.
Over 180,000 people have visited the newly expanded Manchester gallery since it reopened in February following the completion of £15m refurbishment, smashing its previous highest annual visitor figure in just three months.
As HOME, Manchester’s new space for art, theatre and cinema, fully opens to the public, Bob Dickinson looks at its place in the city’s arts ecology, the significance of its cross-disciplinary approach to commissioning, and where it sits in the city’s wider regeneration plans and the creation of a ‘northern powerhouse’.
Last Friday’s preview was a mix of great company alongside a compelling display of ‘New Generation Landscape Art’ allowing viewers to explore the complexities of interpreting landscape and the world we live in. My new solo show ‘A Question of […]
Oil Pastel, Pencil, Felt Tip, Emulsion, Oil and Watercolour on Canvas 59 x 90 x 4.5 March 2015 There is almost always a painting once considered finished underneath my works. They have been painted over. Sometimes completely, sometimes enough […]
My first solo show will take place at the cool Bankley Gallery in Levenshulme, Manchester (in-between the city centre & Didsbury). With its Preview on Fri 15th May & opening on Saturdays 11-5pm until 30th May.
I make paintings that reference pictorial qualities associated with landscapes and sometimes portraits, but with no conscious intension to do so. They all seem like simplified versions of something else, or partially covered versions. I’m interested in surface tension, build […]
I’m really interested in the idea of ‘found paintings’. Coming across painterly incidents within the non-art arena of functional painting. Within badly painted fences and botched half jobs I see shapes and compositions that are really interesting when viewed in […]
Painted over one of the wood stain paintings. Looking at it in context with the rest of my recent work, there seems to be a dialogue developing between them and a series starting to form. Part of what I’m enjoying […]
Underneath where that almost terracotta red square is lies a cartoon style picture of an ejaculating penis. I know this because I see it every day. There’s something really interesting about the reality of painting over, it’s about editing, erasing, […]
Wood stain battles with the canvas, I have to force it on. When I begin the process of removal I can see how vulnerable and fragile it is. It’s clear that it’s not designed for this surface. The paintings […]
Some reflections on my recent work and activity.
The visual arts programme for this year’s Manchester International Festival has been announced, with new works by Gerhard Richter, Ed Atkins, Olafur Eliasson and Douglas Gordon among the highlights.
While making my cine frame pieces, I have been thinking about an essay I wrote earlier in my degree about Cornelia Parker. I love her work, and my essay looked at several pieces, including one series that connects strongly with […]
After a £15m redevelopment, Manchester’s Whitworth Art Gallery reopens with a stunning redesign that has doubled its size and opened it up to the public park it backs on to. All the better for displaying new shows by artists including Cornelia Parker, Sarah Lucas and Thomas Schütte, reports Bob Dickinson.
The last week has been crazy! I haven’t even had a chance to blog! On Tuesday (27th Jan) I started installing my new site-specific chromatic light work Your Colour Perception at Castlefield Gallery’s New Art Spaces Federation House on it’s […]
Key thoughts and themes from the one-day discursive event as part of the AHRC funded research project ‘Co-producing legacy: What is the role of artists within Connected Communities projects?’.
