MAH17: First to see at Manchester Art Gallery
Polly Checkland Harding
Manchester Art Gallery stays open late for the launch night of two new exhibitions as part of Manchester After Hours 2017. Be among the first to see Shirley Baker: Women, Children and Loitering Men, a showcase of photographs by radical street photographer Shirley Baker, who focused her lens on the urban slum clearances in Manchester and Salford from the 1960s onwards. Set to a specially commissioned soundscore by arranged by Derek Nisbet, which combines noises from the streets with Baker’s voice from a 1922 interview, the images include a series of colour photographs that have never before been exhibited, depicting children playing on a rubble heap, an elderly couple picking their way across a post-clearance landscape, and more of the values and experiences of working class communities at the time.
Also open to the public for the first time is an exhibition that spans South Asian craft over the last three centuries – including ceramics, textiles and metalwork from Manchester City Galleries’ historic collections that have been specially conserved for display – alongside the contemporary art it has inspired.
