Art in Liverpool & Manchester: February-March 2016
Looking for some good exhibitions to go to in Manchester or Liverpool? You've come to the right place: here's our Art editor's guide to the best in Northwest art over the next few weeks, taking in everything from oysters to an art 'gym'...
It already feels like this year is moving too quickly. And there is just so much… stuff… happening.
Is it crazy to suggest every festival should go quadrennial and every gallery commit to just two (OK, max three) shows a year?
Might need some campaign funds and Trumpian crack-pot-o-quotes to swing that bit of legislation. PayPal me.
Anyway.
New exhibitions in Manchester
If you’re interested in art and food (who isn’t?), book now for FEAST’s upcoming event The Devil's Supper – Anthony Burgess, autobiography and food at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Manchester, on 11 March (6-9pm). Expect a curated meal (created in collaboration with chef Mary Ellen McTague) including – though subject to change – hotpot with oysters and fermented pickled cabbage, and a drink favoured by Burgess called ‘Hangman’s Blood’, the recipe for which reads something like a rugby initiation ceremony.
As well as the feed, there will be artistic interventions, readings and music exploring cooking and eating in the work of Burgess. Book early for this one as McTague’s recent event at Manchester International Festival 2015, a dining experience based on Alice in Wonderland, sold out very quickly. An exhibition on the same themes will run at the Burgess Foundation from 23 March.
Interested in black squares? Again, who isn’t? OBJECT / A gallery in the Friends' Meeting House, Manchester, opens a new solo show from Deb Covell on 20 February (running until 2 Apr). All about the relationship between painting and sculpture, the process is super important in Covell’s work so you will get a lot of theory along with your black square. But there will be a black square. In fact there may only be a black square. I feel like I might have seen this show without seeing it. Maybe that’s the point. Crikey.
[Image: Colin Thomas at PERICLO, Oriel Wrecsam]
From 26 February to 19 June at Oriel Wrecsam, catch the fourth and final show in their PERICLO programme. This group exhibition, titled Harness Your Hiraeth, features work from Graham Bowers, Sean Edwards, Przemek Pyszczek and Colin Thomas and explores ideas of the welsh word ‘hiraeth,’ which sort of loosely translates as ‘nostalgia’ but more directly translates as ‘longing for a home to which you cannot return.’ It will be interesting to see what happens at Oriel after this current programme; it feels very much more like a gallery to watch compared to this time 12 months ago.
New exhibitions in Liverpool
Tate Collective and recent Turner Prize winners Assemble present Art Gym at Tate Liverpool, 7-31 March. There will be three weeks of free drop-in activities, a kind of skills exchange, where you can design your own personal ‘workout’. I’m still hoping that there will be some kind of physical element, something like high-intensity circuit training around the Matisse show, but it seems to be based on creative skill-sharing. The full schedule will be up on the Tate website soon.
Any email that comes into my inbox with a picture of Cilla Black is going to get my attention. So in Liverpool, catch Blind Date (or rather BLY-UNDDD DAYYY-AT in proper pronunciation) at The Royal Standard, 20-28 February (private view: 19 Feb, 6pm, and then Friday-Sunday or by appointment). This is the culmination of a project from (it’s all) Tropical, an artist collective based in Leeds, Sheffield and London, who were inspired by lonely hearts columns and “the timeless charms of Cilla Black.” Three Tropical artists have worked with curator Rachel Cunningham Clark to find their perfect art match and create new work based on their blossoming relationship, apparently conducted through email, WhatsApp and “late night liaisons” (yikes). The art-match collabs will only see their finished work during the BIG REVEAL on 19 February.
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More from The Skinny:
AL and AL on the Multiverse, and their new show at HOME
At the end of March look out for a series of artworks/lightboxes around Liverpool, one part of a group show called Fruits of the Lûm including Mike Aitken and Holly Hendry and organised by new curatorial duo Tžužjj. I would like to say that this is some kind of protest about France recently getting rid of their diacritical marks but the name actually means ‘a small movement or change,’ apparently. The locations of the lightboxes will be announced at the exhibition preview night on 26 March at Crown Building Studios. The show then has funny opening times: 26 March, 2 April and 9 April, 12-4pm or by appointment.
Lastly, you might want to check out new film company Every Picture’s series of video profiles of artists working out of Rogue Studios in Manchester. They currently have profiles up online of Darren Nixon, Hilary Jack and Brian Mountford, with Chris Paul Daniels, Robin Megannity and Cherry Tenneson coming up sometime over the next month.