Exhibitions in Manchester and the North
Katie Evans, Exhibitions EditorIt’s a month of witty and playful exhibitions, with September’s offerings throwing away the rule book by embracing larger-than-life installations or a rare thing in the art world – humour!
Moving from East to West, Mike Nelson’s Hybrid Scripts in Sunderland’s Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art invites viewers to enter profound and uncanny alternate realities in his signature immersive style. Meanwhile, Johnathan Baldock’s Touch Wood at Yorkshire Sculpture Park explores the relationship between nature and church, craftmanship and creativity, all with a playful wink and a nod.
In Stockport, Mura Ma’s experimental Live With It blurs the boundaries between domestic and creative space, and over in Liverpool, the iconic Sir Ken Dodd is celebrated in Happiness!, a showcase of his life and work as surreal and theatrical as his comedy. And mark your diaries for the return of the annual Lightpool Festival next month, as Blackpool promises to put on a kaleidoscopic show of world-class light artists, including the unmissable work of Chila Kumari Singh Burman, MBE.