Glut: Images, Information and Excess at The Holden Gallery

Polly Checkland Harding

Visit now

Glut: Images, Information and Excess

The Holden Gallery, Manchester
16 January-3 March 2017

Always double check opening hours with the venue before making a special visit.

Esther Hovers
Book now

It’s a fairly self-explanatory title for an exhibition. Glut: Images, Information and Excess at The Holden Gallery is an artistic response to the proliferation of images in recent years; to statistics including that there are over 80m photographs uploaded to Instagram daily. The exhibition features six artists who are making creative use of this situation, with a particular focus on the cumulative effect of recorded images in the art works on show. Esther Hovers’ False Positives, for instance, uses a montage of photographs taken in Brussels to reflect on the increasing use of intelligent surveillance systems in public spaces, which are able to detect deviant behaviour; some natural, some staged, Hovers’ photographs are created by combining images from several minutes of video in which at least one example of deviant behaviour occurs.

Similarly, artist and writer James Bridle has focused on London’s CCTV – and particularly on the 20 square kilometres of the London congestion zone, in which he has attempted to photograph the nearly 700 cameras that monitor the area. Viktoria Binschtok’s Cluster Series, meanwhile, re-stages photographs that have come up in online searches related to her own work. Here again, the images are produced as a cluster, in a visual echo of the ‘glut’ that the exhibition’s title refers to.

 

Opening hours: 10am-4.30pm Mon-Fri; 10am-7pm Thur.

Where to go near Glut: Images, Information and Excess at The Holden Gallery

Manchester
Gallery
Manchester School of Art

The Manchester School of Art, of which the Holden Gallery is a part, is a beautiful neo-Gothic building that’s part of MMU’s All Saints campus.

Manchester Metropolitan University Brooks building, Birley Campus in Manchester
Manchester
Event venue
MMU Birley Campus

Birley is Manchester Met’s world-class centre for Education and Health Professionals and the university’s flagship community campus.

The Salutation pub in Manchester
Manchester
Bar or Pub
The Salutation

This traditional boozer, surrounded by imposing flats and university buildings, was taken over by Trof (of the Deaf Institute fame). The Sally, as the regulars call it, hosts an energetic, arty crowd – and its recently expanded outside area is another good reason to visit.

Manchester
University
MMU Student Union

Manchester Metropolitan University Students’ Union building houses a bar and various other facilities for students and staff.

Manchester
Catalog Bookshop

Find Peter and his Christiania cargo bike around All Saints Park, a hop, skip and a bunnyhop from Manchester Poetry Library.

What's on: Exhibitions

Until
ExhibitionsChorlton
All That Matters at The Edge

Alan Jones’s photography exhibition in Chorlton explores fragments of impossibly large systems through images of discarded objects with long afterlives.

Free entry
Brettel Blue
Until
ExhibitionsManchester
Black Country Type II at The Modernist

The Black Country. Not always the first place people associate with colour, design and typography – but Tom Hicks has spent years looking closely enough to challenge that.

Free entry
A poster by city of making showing images from the University of Salford Archive's
Until
ExhibitionsSalford
City Of Making at The New Adelphi

Creativity, making and innovation have long shaped Salford. City of Making traces that legacy from industrial roots to today’s artists, designers and creative technologists.

Free entry

Culture Guides

Theatre

Theatre’s getting political this spring, with a run of new plays tracing how conflict plays out in individual lives.

a beach. red bricks are laid out in a spiral shape on the sand.
Exhibitions

We’ve got five new Manchester exhibitions this month, from thought-provoking photography to environmental art and community-led projects.

SILVERWINGKILLER - Press Image
Music

Our latest music picks spotlight a new underground Manchester scene gaining national attention, alongside jazz, contemporary classical and more.

Food and Drink in the North

Spring is here, so sign yourself up for some much-missed al fresco dining at these highly recommended (and mostly new) Manchester restaurants.

Emily Lloyd-Saini as Grace in Space and Harrie Hayes as Lieutenant Strong in Horrible Science
Family things to do in the North

Whether you’re after storybook theatre, museum wanderings or illusion-bending play spaces, there’s plenty to keep curiosity ticking through winter and beyond.

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night
Cinema in the North

There's no shortage of great films out at the moment, whether you're looking for the latest blockbuster, that hot arthouse flick fresh from Cannes or a cosy classic.