Exhibitions
Creative TouristSummer isn’t usually a high point in the exhibitions calendar, but Greater Manchester’s small galleries seem to have made a pact to change that this year.
Across the city and out into Stockport and Sale, we’re eyeing up everything from the wonderfully niche (aquatic Welsh folklore, anyone?) to sweeping studies in memory.
Let’s start with those two. The macabre-sounding Bodies in Water at PINK takes the folklore surrounding Lake Bala (including a dragon, a cruel giant, and a sunken town) and pins it onto very-real human anxieties. Across three floors of saan1, meanwhile, (re)collection sees three independent curators pursue distinct interpretations of memory, showcasing the work of 13 local artists.
In texture’s Nothing Gold Can Stay, a Robert Frost poem about nature’s transience becomes the starting point for an artistic conversation about contemporary issues like the climate, post-colonialism, and post-humanism.
Hopping over to Sale’s Waterside’s Gallery ’74, ADORN features new work from 12 contemporary jewellers working across metal and glass, as part of Manchester’s very first Jewellery Week. And a bit of a wildcard entry in I Am The Fly, which sees Matthew Rich’s screen-printed, 80’s gig posters make it back to the road they were pasted on four decades ago.
We’re taking a tentative peek beyond summer, too, with Factory International’s newly announced Portrait of Black Britain, which returns to Manchester with a powerful and panoramic view of Black life in the UK.
And this is just the hot-off-the-press stuff; there’s plenty more to dig into below, including some great shows at Castlefield Gallery, Unitom Projects and esea contemporary, plus the long-awaited opening of Reflections: Sangat and the Self at The Whitworth.
