Manchester Contemporary 2014 @ Old Granada Studios, Manchester

Now in its fifth edition, Manchester Contemporary took up residence this last weekend in its new home at Old Granada Studios. An invitational fair, the Contemporary gears its platform to emerging galleries but there are always some familiar more established faces: Castlefield or Bureau, for example, alongside promising young 'uns like SYSON (Nottingham) or Caustic Coastal (Manchester).

Particularly pleasing to see is the inclusion of Cactus, as this is the first Liverpool gallery to exhibit since Ceri Hand in 2011. Run by Joe Fletcher Orr, a semi-recent Manchester School of Art graduate, Cactus launched last year with an exhibition of Sebastian Jefford and has continued with a strong programme since. Work on display includes some horrible turd/Twix objects from Cactus’ most recent Biennial show Katharina Fengler (her works on paper, however, are terrific) and some cute pastel blue and skull acrylics from Alex Rathbone.

Next to Cactus’ stand is another one-to-watch, Caustic Coastal, which launched this September as an 'Art Label working as a curatorial platform' based, currently, in Rogue Studios, Manchester. Among their offering is the incredibly delicate, blink-and-you-miss-them works by current Royal Academy-er Victoria Adam. Subtle drawings are picked out in white surfaces created with stationary items. Adam will be showing as part of Caustic Coastal’s new exhibition at Rogue PS on 10 October alongside Catherine Parsonage and Mark Riddington.

In what I initially thought were imaginative canapés, Russell Hill has a few small works on Caustic Coastal’s desk, Aquafresh (you know, “It’s not just a pretty paste”) toothpaste suspended in water-filled wine glasses. Hill seems to have a bit of a thing for the product; earlier this year as part of the BALTIC 39 project he covered an entire wall with the paste. The result: a fresh-smelling Monet wallpaper that the Baltic’s technicians tasked with removing the goop must have loved him for.

Further into the Contemporary, both Hot Bed Press and PAPER gallery are buzzy with a lot of sales seeming to happen on the opening night and a steady stream of interest for the variety of affordable work on display. There is a lot to like here: Bethan Hamilton’s octopus-eating pencil work, Jez Dolan’s naughty squared-paper sailors and an overlaid cut-out newspaper collage from Simon Leahy-Clark have a retro sci-fi mechanical feel to them.

The stand this year that unsurprisingly attracted the biggest and most consistent crowd was Eastside Projects, Birmingham, where Bill Drummond held court for the duration of the fair. Showing a variety of work and using the fair to repaint a portion of his 25 Paintings series, the main attraction was the invitation to be interviewed by Drummond himself. I didn’t stick around long enough to hear any revelations. Elsewhere more interesting offerings came from The International 3, Salford, with some very beautiful works-on-paper by Hondartza Fraga; tiny blank globes with their maps smudged or erasered off. IMT presented some brash pink and red wall-mounted shapes covered with crunchy glitter from David Burrows, which were in fact QR codes that could be scanned with your phone. Currently using a crappy non-photo-taking brick of a Samsung, I could not partake in this activity, but enjoyed them for their mucky-craftiness and aesthetic oddness.