Weekender Top 5 Art & Music Events.

Looking for things to do in Manchester? The best art exhibitions and Manchester music on during the Weekender is listed below

Weekender top 5: art

Our top five art events and exhibitions taking place during The Manchester Weekender (1-3 October)

1. The Land Between Us. A few years back, The Whitworth wasn’t really on anyone’s radar – a nice gallery, sure, but not a particularly exciting one. Fast-forward a few years, and, under the leadership of director Maria Balshaw, the Whitworth has become one of the UK’s most interesting art venues. Its recent shows have been lauded by critics and art aficionados alike (the Tate’s Sir Nicholas Serota is a particular fan) and its featured artists read like a who’s who of contemporary and experimental art practice: Marina Abramovic, Gregor Schneider, Abigail Lane, Thomas Demand, Robert Gober, Angus Fairhurst and many others. The Land Between Us is its latest offering (we hesitate to use the word ‘blockbuster’ but it’s not far off), an exhibition that opens with a forest created by Olafur Eliasson (best known for his enormous sun-like installation at Tate Modern) and goes on to explore themes of landscape and British identity. Typically, the show features both historic and contemporary artwork, mixing, for example, watercolours by JMW Turner (50 of them, all drawn from the Whitworth’s own collection) with pieces by the likes of Black Audio Film Collective and Rachel Whiteread. Until 23 Jan 2011, 10am-5pm (12pm-4pm on Sun). The Whitworth Art Gallery, Oxford Road M15 6ER. Free.

2. Shrink, by Lawrence Malstaf. Chosen by the producers of the AND Festival to act as its official launch event, Malstaff’s Shrink is part technological wonder, part claustrophobic nightmare and part performance art. In it, the artist hangs in mid-air, suspended between two plastic sheets. As the performance begins, air is gradually sucked out from between the sheets, leaving the artist vacuum packed and immobile, for all the world like an art world ready meal, prime for plucking off the shelf and boiling in the bag. Or maybe that’s just us. Whatever the artistic merit, Shrink is unmissable. Plus it takes place in the underused Freemason’s Hall, one of the city’s hidden architectural gems. Friday 1 Oct, 5pm-6.30pm (also on 4 & 5 Oct as part of the AND Festival). The Freemason’s Hall, 36 Bridge Street M3 3BT. Free but limited access and tickets required – email hello@andfestival.org.uk

3. Finding Manchester, Lost in Bolivia. A small but sweet exhibition that charts the journey of two intrepid photographers who managed to get further south than London in the pursuit of their artistic ideals. Anyone who knows the history of Manchester knows that our fair city has inspired knock-off versions of itself all over the world – not less than 50 Manchester’s dot the globe, from the US and Australia to Suriname and Bolivia. It is the Bolivian version of Manchester, a small town hidden deep in the Amazon, that photographers Liz Peel and Chris Smith went to find. They documented their journey by canoe along the Rio Manuripi (encountering tropical storms and piranha fish as they went), and the resulting images, maps and objects are on display now at The Manchester Museum. Until 30 Jan 2011, 10am-5pm Tues-Sat, 11am-4pm Sun & Mon. The Manchester Museum, Oxford Road M13 9PL. Free.

4. Recorders: Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. Like the Whitworth, Manchester Art Gallery is no stranger to blockbuster shows, and Recorders promises to be another. While Rafael Lozano-Hemmer may not be a household name, he is one of the world’s most respected electronic artists. His works combine custom-made technologies with audience interaction, meaning that his works literally see, hear and feel the actions of the people around them. His most recent large-scale work was in Canada, where Vectoral Elevation punctured the Vancouver night sky (an interactive artwork commissioned as part of the 2010 Winter Olympics, in which ordinary folk could control 20 robotic searchlights to create their own light sculptures). Back in Manchester, Recorders features the world premiere of People on People, (a co-commission with the AND Festival). Here, surveillance cameras, face recognition software and 3D tracking monitor you as you move through the exhibition space. As you walk, you’ll see you own shadow and, inside it, live and recorded images of the other visitors to the show. Your own image, meanwhile, is simultaneously captured and will later find itself trapped inside someone else’s shadow. Spooky. There are six other interactive artworks on display, too, all of which have never before been shown in England, including the seminal Pulse Room (as the name suggests, this is a room where hundreds of lights pulse in time to the heartbeat of visitors – you can add your own to the mix). Until 30 January 2011, 10am-5pm Tue-Sun (Closed Mon). Manchester Art Gallery, Mosley Street M2 3JL. Free. People on People is co-commissioned by Manchester Art Gallery and the AND Festival.

5. marxism today: Phil Collins. Just as it was once mandatory to undertake bible study in Britain, Marxism was once a part of the curriculum in Soviet Russia, Yugoslavia and East Germany. In a show that fuses past and present, artist Phil Collins finds out what happened to the Marxist teachers of the former Eastern Bloc – and links Manchester’s socialist past to its educational present. (History buffs will know that Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto here in Chetham’s Library, while the city was also the birthplace of Chartism, universal suffrage and the Trade Union movement.) Phil Collin’s marxism today, then, is nothing if not timely: as the UK still struggles with the redistribution of wealth, Collins sets out to see how far our political geography has shifted. Until 9 Jan 2011, 12pm-8pm (12pm-6pm on Sun). Cornerhouse, 70 Oxford Street M1 5NH. Free. www.cornerhouse.org. Part of the AND Festival.

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Below: Lawrence Malstaff performs Shrink at Ars Electronica 2009, courtesy Forisma.

Weekender top 5: music

Our top five music events taking place during The Manchester Weekender (1-3 October)

1. Krysko & Kashiwagi…In The Mix. Part performance art and part club night, this one-off gig takes place in the redbrick setting of the Whitworth Art Gallery. In it, DJ Matthew Krysko (The Warehouse Project/Tribal Gathering) and performance artist Naomi Kashiwagi use the gallery as the backdrop for a collaborative work that combines electronic music with wind-up gramophones, and 70 year-old shellac records with the latest in digital DJ technology. As part of the performance, Huw Bunford of Super Furry Animals will perform a specially-commissioned sound piece (based on unexpected, everyday sounds recorded during a visit to the Whitworth in August) – and if you can’t make Saturday night, Krysko & Kashiwagi… In The Mix is also part of Un-convention. Saturday 2 Oct, 7pm-10pm. The Whitworth Art Gallery, Oxford Road M15 6ER. Free.

2. Un-convention. One of the UK’s most eclectic independent music industry events, held in (where else) the People’s Republic of Salford. There’s much here for music punters as well as industry insiders, with events taking place in venues as disparate as a barge, Salford Lads’ Club and a church, and ‘interesting things in the most unexplored places in the city’ courtesy of Bill Drummond, Jarvis Cocker, Jon McClure, Brian Travers, Kevin Cummins, Jah Wobble, the BBC Phil and many more. And all from as little a £24. 1-3 Oct, venues across Salford. £14 for music and special event pass/£40 for full event pass.

3. Mixed Movement: The Digital Duets. Incredible performance that sees four dancers in Manchester jam in real time across digital space with four dancers in New York – celebrating the diversity of black dance from Afro-Caribbean, Jazz and House to Hip Hop. Part of The Black Sounds Series, a celebration of black music and culture and its influence within the UK that’s timed to mark Black History Month. Saturday 2 Oct, 8pm-9.45pm. Contact, Oxford Road M15 6JA. £5. Book via www.contact-theatre.org or 0161 274 0600.

4. FutureEverything presents Manchester Camerata. A live collaboration between Manchester Camerata’s principal cellist, Hannah Roberts, and a sound artist – drop in for the performance or stick around for the afternoon’s ArtCollider activities. Sunday 3 Oct, 12.30pm-1.30pm. Manchester Digital Laboratory (Madlab), Edge Street M4 1HN. Free, drop in. Presented by FutureEverything, Manchester Camerata and Madlab.

5. Neil Yates: Tarnished Silver – Sketches of a Northern Town. Jazz musician Neil Yates brings Tarnished Silver to Imperial War Museum North on 3 October. This seven-piece brass ensemble (trumpet, tenor horn, baritone horn, trombone, tuba and two flugelhorns) is a performance that owes much to the Gil Evans and Miles Davis collaborations of the 60s but that, according to Yates himself, is ‘more than a nod to the huge brass band traditions still so strong in the North of England’. Fusing jazz and brass, and with players scattered through the museum’s foyer, Tarnished Silver paints an evocative picture of life in the north – both old and new. Sunday 3 Oct, 4pm-4.30pm. Imperial War Museum North, The Quays, Trafford Wharf Road M17 1TZ. Free. A partnership between Imperial War Museum North and Manchester Jazz Festival.

Click here for full event listings and booking information, or return to the Weekender home page

Images (top to bottom): Odyssey, Sheena Macrae (part of UnspoolingArtists, courtesy Cornerhouse/AND Festival);

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