Smoke Signals, by Ed Carter and David Cranmer

Each signal and sound indicates flow of data leaving behind a translucent sculptural form.

See the artwork on display at The International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Manchester,  31 March –  2 April for Future Everything Festival.

Read more about the artwork here.

One of Manchester most well known and loved arts venues, Cornerhouse is set to go HOME this spring. Merging with the Library Theatre Company into one building, you’ll be able to see original new work in contemporary visual art, theatre and film under one roof.

HOME exterior © Mecanoo

HOME exterior, February 2015

Designed by Dutch architects Mecanoo, HOME houses five cinema spaces, two theatre spaces, 500m2 gallery space, three café spaces, a contemporary function room, a bookshop and an outdoor terrace.

Douglas Coupland, installation view of Slogans for the 21st Century 2011-14 in Douglas Coupland’s everywhere is anywhere is everything, Vancouver Art Gallery 2014. Photo by Rachel Topham

For the first in a year of visual art exhibitions, projects and publications exploring the theme of Transactions of Desire, HOME presents The heart is deceitful above all things which is a group exhibition on display from 22 May – 26 July. See new work from artists including Jeremy Bailey, Declan Clarke, Basim Magdy (commission produced by Art in General in collaboration with HOME) and Jessey Tsang alongside existing work from Douglas Coupland, Irina Gheorghe and Wu Tsang amongst others.

The Funfair, credit Graeme Cooper

If theatre’s more your thing, there are three HOME theatre productions to look forward to including the world première of The Funfair, a new adaptation by Simon Stephens which sets the break-up of a youthful romance against the dizzying backdrop of the funfair, The Oresteia, directed by Blanche McIntyre – a radically stripped back version of Aeschylus’ masterpiece, and HOME’s Christmas production Inkheart, the UK première of a new stage adaptation of the bestselling novel by Cornelia Funke, directed by Walter Meierjohann.

HOME interior cinema space, February 2015

The cinema space will play host to a Music and Film season to include archive and experimental footage accompanied by soundtracks from Manchester’s most innovative musical talent. The first of which will be Lonesome directed by Pál Fejös with a live score by neo-classical composer Robin Richards accompanied by musicians from the Royal Northern College of Music on 24 May.

Also in the cinema will be this year’s ¡Viva! Spanish and Latin American Film Festival fiesta. The annual festival presents new filmmaking from Spain and Latin America and includes New Mexican Cinema, a four-day celebration of the best in film from Mexico.

HOME is situated at the First Street Development, just off Whitworth Street West and very close to Oxford Road and Castlefield, Manchester. For a full programme of events and exhibitions at HOME, please visit here.

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Video Jam & AND present Experiment Perilous Liverpool Anglican Cathedral 05.10.13

Following a recent 3 part UK tour, Video Jam returns to Manchester for their first event of 2015. Amongst a weekend of celebrations, this will be a special hour-long programme of entirely new film and live sound works to mark the grand re-opening of The Whitworth gallery following its major extension.

Video Jam have commissioned 4 emerging film artists to each work with a distinct sound artist or group to produce a film with live accompaniment. Especially for this event, the collective have obtained the rights to a small range of footage chosen by the North West Film Archive which relate in varying ways to Manchester’s social history and cultural development. The commission is an opportunity for each pairing to produce an audio/visual piece using their personal choice of this footage combined however they choose with their own visual and aural material. All of the artists involved will have access to the same archive footage, making the commission an experiment in individual interpretation.

Video Jam at the Whitworth Weekending 30.08.13

All artists in the programme have been selected due to their affinity with the city as a place of influence in some way on their practice. The pairings are: Liam Healy & Negra Branca | Amy Lawrence with Ella Deacy (and guests) & David McLean (and guests) | Ralph Pritchard & 2 Koi Karp | Paul Daly & O>L>A.

Video Jam at The Whitworth is a free event which will take place this Saturday 14 February from 7.30-8.30pm in The Grand Hall at The Whitworth, Manchester. For more information about each artist and their websites please visit here.

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Derek Horton is an artist, writer and curator who recently worked with Mark Devereux Projects to select the artists in Looking at the Reflection of Reality, the second annual associates exhibition. He tells us more about the selection process.

Along with Kitty Anderson, Mark Devereux and Stuart Tulloch I was delighted to have the opportunity to select the artists in Looking at the Reflection of Reality. The things that interest me the most (in the world in general and art in particular) have always been things that evade categories, that resist easy classification, that undermine expectations. Really good artworks almost always do all of those things. The measure of quality, for me, is always to do with an artist’s capacity to work inventively across, through and beyond the conventions of a discipline or the limitations of a medium.

Good art also generates ideas, provokes reflection or speculation, and invites dialogue. It is no coincidence that the work we eventually selected for Looking at the Reflection of Reality, from a large number of submissions, is the work that prompted the most discussion amongst the panel of selectors. The outcome is a diverse exhibition of works united by their capacity for inventiveness and freedom from formal limitation.

Mary Wintour – The eagerness of objects

Mary Wintour fuses painting with collaged photographs in works that create ambiguous shifts within interior spaces that have an artifice reminiscent of a film or stage set. Using very different methods, Laura Napier also works with architectural spaces, using photography, installation and performance to create imagined realities and fictional histories.

Laura Napier – Heintzman Solicitors (Interior-Window)

Aylwin Greenwood-Lambert interrogates the relationship of material objects and graphic symbols, overlaying the randomness of internet searches with the specificity of language and testing the space between the printed image and the video screen. Evi Grigoropoulou’s exploration of the tradition of trompe-l’oeil also exploits the intersecting possibilities of replication and representation.

Rob Davies uses painting to subvert genre, mapping out a territory in which the Romantic landscape, Western movie clichés and gestural expressionism collide. Working with pop culture sources in a very different way, Marco Giordano collects amateur drawings, ‘fan art’, that, veiled, dissolved, obscured, are transformed into delicate and subtly (re)aestheticized surfaces.

Joe Hancock has worked with a scripted text to create an audio installation in the context of a sculptural intervention in the architectural space of the exhibition, emphasizing its physical location and dimensions but in so doing also potentially narrowing the gap between the viewer and the work, both his and that of the other six artists in the show.

Looking at the Reflection of Reality runs in Manchester’s Federation House until 13 December. Read more about it on Central Station in this featured event.

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Mark Devereux Projects supports visual artists through mentoring, critical dialogue and curatorial production.

The second annual Associate Members Exhibition will run until 13 December in Manchester. Featuring seven associate member artists, the exhibition will display work from multiple disciplines under the umbrella theme ‘Looking at the Reflection of Reality.’ The selected artists include Rob Davies, Marco Giordano, Aylwin Greenwood-Lambert, Evi Grigoropoulou, Joe Hancock, Laura Napier and Mary Wintour who were chosen by curators Kitty Anderson (Curator, The Common Guild, Glasgow), Stuart Tulloch (Curator, Ikon, Birmingham), Derek Horton (Director and curator, &Model, Leeds) and Mark Devereux (Director, Mark Devereux Projects).

Looking at the Reflection of Reality runs in Manchester’s Federation House until 13 December. Find more information about the show on the Mark Devereux Projects website here.

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MadLab offer the chance to learn everything from physical computing to conquering the world of blogging platforms. Hailing their courses as “learning for do-ers,” they offer the expertise of industry professionals in small groups with an all-hands-on-deck philosophy. Tucked away in a 3000 sq. ft. former shop in the Northern Quarter of Manchester, there are multiple courses, events and meet-ups every day of the week.

Here’s a brief selection of some of the courses on offer:

6-7 March
Intermediate WordPress (Beginning and Advanced also available)
Three two-day WordPress courses taught by co-founder Mike Little, for both the novice and the seasoned professional.

5 April
Introducing Arduino & Physical Computing
Learn all about Arduino and physical computing with MadLab co-founder Asa Calow.

3 & 4 May
Bird Taxidermy
For those who want to learn something completely different! Learn how to stuff a rabbit, bird or animate a mouse in one of three two-day taxidermy courses with Margot Magpie.

Various courses run from now until October. To see a complete list, please visit here.

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Launching this November, Projects: Manchester is a new pop-up space dedicated to nurturing and developing the work of early-career artists. Responding to the current ecology, and Mark Devereux Projects’ ongoing ambition to help nurture the best up and coming talent, the organisation is excited to offer creatives a new test space. Emphasising Manchester’s reputation for its support to early-career artists, the space will be available to trial new ideas.

Taking residence in one of the eight floors of a former office space at the Co-Operative’s major Federation House building in central Manchester and as part of Castlefield Gallery’s New Art Spaces initiative, the venue will offer artists the opportunity to showcase, develop and experiment.

Projects: Manchester will be an environment for artists to spend time testing, developing and experimenting in a vast, open space. Within a central location in Manchester, the space offers artists the opportunity to invite curators, producers and industry professionals to respond critically during the important developmental stages of making. Through giving practitioners the freedom and time to develop works and by trying to remove as many restrictions as we can, we are excited to see the ways in which artists may use the space.

On a day-to-day basis we are hearing of new ways in which artists are turning to the DIY approach in response to rising tuition fees, lack of opportunities and changes in the cultural ecology. Mark Devereux Projects has been established in response to this evolving climate and operates within an integral point between artist and institution.

Supporting three inaugural artists (Nicola Dale, David Ogle and Nicola Ellis), alongside an Associate Member programme open to any early-career artist, we provide a bespoke, critically engaged and nurturing support mechanism on a one-to-one basis in each of the artist’s studios or via Skype. Through this individual approach, we are able to find out more about each of the artist’s ambitions and requirements and provide directed knowledge and experience to enable the growth of their careers. Each practitioner requires something different, sometimes it may be a critically engaged dialogue with their practice, some may need advice on how to work self-employed or operate a business-like structure and some artists may just need a pat on the back and someone to listen.

Projects: Manchester will be available to artists within Mark Devereux Projects Associate Membership programme. Alongside the free use of the space, Associate artists will also benefit from bespoke one-to-one mentoring sessions, exhibition opportunities, group critiques & guidance sessions and online advisory materials. The Associate Membership programme is open to any artist based within the UK.

Projects: Manchester launches with ‘Beyond Merely Assembling’; Mark Devereux Projects’ first group exhibition of Associate Members works on 8 November. The exhibition continues until 20 November. A special free event to any early-career artist will take place on 17 November based around critical dialogue, discussion and advice.

Beyond Merely Assembling install. Image credit: Liz West

Beyond Merely Assembling install. Image credit: Liz West

Beyond Merely Assembling install. Image credit: Mark Devereux

Pavilion After Giotto install Phoebe Eustance. Image credit: Liz West

Pavilion After Giotto install Phoebe Eustance. Image credit: Liz West

Pavilion After Giotto install Phoebe Eustance. Image credit: Liz West

Divided We Stand install Mark Houghton. Image credit: Mark Devereux

Urban Bodger install Tom Beesley. Image credit: Mark Devereux

Urban Bodger, Tom Beesley. Image credit: Liz West

Waiting for the Gift Bettina Amtag. Image credit: Liz West

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From time to time we feature galleries and spaces that showcase & encourage grassroots artists. Browse through more of our Featured Venues. 
Contact us to talk about a feature on your venue.

There are substantial numbers of creatives with the talent, ambition and drive to succeed within the market but lack support and direction to get there. Mark Devereux Projects provides a generous and thoughtful approach to working with artists. This July, CUBE hosts the official launch and exhibition for new Manchester-based organisation, Mark Devereux Projects. Means of Feedback features new and recent works from the organisation’s three inaugural artists: Nicola Dale, David Ogle and Nicola Ellis.

Nicola Dale, Sequel, 2012

As part of Means of Feedback, Manchester-based Nicola Dale is creating The Weight Between Words – a new work consisting of thousands of paper rectangles, each hand-cut with a bookbinding awl to the same size, shape and accumulative weight of a printer’s lead type. In conversation with Yorkshire Sculpture Park’s Curator, Helen Pheby [to be included in the accompanying publication], Nicola Dale reflects on how this work first started: “The first piece I picked up wasn’t a letter, but a space – being made of lead, this small rectangle was heavy despite its size and it made me think how once upon a time even a gap, a pause, a breath had some actual weight in the production of knowledge… but now even words themselves are weightless when they pass into digital form.”

David Ogle, Pink, Orange, Yellow, Green, 4, 2013

After his recent solo exhibition for this year’s Sculpture Shock and Catlin Art Prize awards in London, David Ogle is developing a new site-specific work especially for Mark Devereux Projects exhibition, Means of Feedback. Exploring materials and notions of how objects are perceived in space, Ogle’s work uses light to create innately ephemeral experiences. Beginning as a strict mathematical procedure, the rules and formulas are then ‘played-out’ within an environment, allowing the physical space to shape and manipulate the work. Ogle states; “Through negating material properties my work seeks a kind of fragility; resting on the edge between a sculptural form and an environmental effect of light that manifests itself within a space, a context from which the work is inseparable.”

Nicola Ellis, Paregro, 2013

Nicola Ellis will be exhibiting new works responding to her recent piece, Paregro part of the FOUR exhibition at Cornerhouse, Manchester. Exploring her fascination with natural and synthetic materials, Ellis has collected thousands of pieces of reclaimed glass from building and demolition sites to create a new sculptural work. In a recent conversation about the process behind the making of her works, Ellis comments: “It’s about finding something out about the material and process, which then explodes into the final work. The origins of the piece are in that discovery process. The spectrum starts broad and is then narrowed down with specific focus on the creation of the work, but once the final piece has been made this process then opens up again.”

Coinciding with Means of Feedback and formed in collaboration with Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, Mark Devereux Projects will be working with Nicola Dale, David Ogle and Nicola Ellis to create new, site-specific and performative responses to the exhibitions in Whitworth Art Gallery for a special After Hours event on Saturday 13 July from 7:30-10:30pm. Further information about this event will be announced on the Mark Devereux Projects website shortly.

Accompanying the launch of Mark Devereux Projects and Means of Feedback, a new publication will be available showcasing the work of Nicola Dale, David Ogle and Nicola Ellis, along with texts from Project Space Leeds’ Director Kerry Harker, Yorkshire Sculpture Park’s Curator Helen Pheby, Whitworth Art Gallery’s Curator Mary Griffiths and Mark Devereux.

Initially trained as an artist, Mark Devereux founded and Directed Blank Media Collective in 2006 and was later pivotal in the launch of Manchester’s BLANKSPACE Gallery, before stepping-down from his role as Director & Head of Exhibitions last July. Now concentrating on a focused and dedicated support structure for early-career artists, Devereux comments: “I have spoken to hundreds of artists over the years and one of the key areas that continued to arise was the need for more one-to-one guidance and support. Already, since making my idea public in January, artists from not just the North-West but from around the UK have contacted me and we’ve met to talk about their work.”

Find out more about Mark Devereux Projects on Central Station here. Information about how any early-career artist can join Mark Devereux Projects Associate Membership can be found on the MDP website.

Means of Feedback is at CUBE, 113-115 Portland Street, Manchester, M1 6DW from 12 – 17 July 2013 (Preview: 11 July, 6-9pm).

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Read more about Mark Devereux on Central Station here.

The University of Salford gives us an insight into their upcoming festival featuring the talents of their graduating students…

Open to the public over the weekend of 15 – 16 June, the Create at Salford Festival will showcase the talents of 800 final year arts and media students. The event combines the best in student art and design, performing arts, music, computer gaming, animation, TV news broadcasting and much more in a free festival of creativity for MediaCityUK and Salford Quays.

At IWM North, part of Imperial War Museums, on Saturday 15 June, follow the stories of three real GI brides brought to life by performance students, enjoy a 1940s-style swing band and jive, or enter ‘The Bunker’, where visitors will be challenged to help save humanity from the end of the world. The following day the museum will host war-themed electro-acoustic concerts by music students.

Cara Peeney, Fashion Image Making

At the University’s MediaCityUK campus, on the Saturday 36 students will showcase their designs in a Fashion Show with cutting-edge collections. The public can also enjoy a tour of the building’s cutting-edge facilities through playful, unexpected ‘pop-up’ student performances, and a range of live music gigs from the Egg Foyer stage.

On Sunday 16 June the University’s state-of-the-art Digital Performance Lab will host a fairy tale play with a Salford spin. The Very, Very, Very Sleepy Princess is a modern retelling of Sleeping Beauty written, produced and performed by the Scallywags Children’s Theatre Company, a group of second year performance students.

Rachael Pegram

Throughout the weekend a range of demonstrations will be open, including the chance to play student-created computer games and try out stop motion animation, while visitors can experience a range of exhibitions showing some of the best work from art and design students, covering visual arts, photography, fashion, graphic and interior design among many other courses.

Professor Allan Walker, Head of the School of Arts & Media, said: “This event is the highlight of our academic calendar and its innovative format … at the Media City Campus means that we will be presenting an exciting range of specially commissioned pieces, live music and one-off performances alongside the static exhibition work.”

The Create at Salford Festival is open to the public on Saturday 15 and Sunday 16 June, and takes place at the University of Salford, MediaCityUK, Salford, M50 2HE; IWM North, Trafford Wharf Road, The Quays, Manchester, M17 1TZ; and the Open Centre, MediaCityUK, Salford.

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An interest in dialogue is the main drive behind everything that I do. The conversation itself is the integral part of my practice as an artist; I create the environment and context for discussion rather than the object that provokes it. Acting as context provider rather than content provider.

As a result the effects of the institution and location of such discussions are always considered. I began by organising a discussion group; an inclusive, informal and open group, NTCRIT (Not Too Critical), that met in distinctly non-art spaces to discuss matters relating to the arts. My organising of the groups, within an art context but not an art environment, allowed for diverse, theoretical discussions – all of which are recorded and documented, and made available on nottoocritical.wordpress.com.

With my studies at Manchester School of Art coming to an end my degree show arises as an opportunity to explore conversation on a much larger scale. The course I study, Interactive Arts, gains the Holden Gallery as its venue. I wish to facilitate a series of discussions, similar to those organised for NTCRIT, however, a degree show in an art gallery is clearly an art environment.

Considering all of this, it is necessary that NTCRIT remains a distinct project existing outwith an art establishment, venue or environment. Entering a period of hiatus for the time being NTCRIT gives rise to HOIC (Hours of Idle Conversation); a research project aiming to facilitate conversation as NTCRIT had done before it. But then doing something more than just documenting or recording it, going on to explore it as a material and evaluating it subjectively and objectively. The use of ‘idle’ in the title relates to an objective view of conversation whereby its contents are always insignificant.

With NTCRIT, recordings and documentation were produced to provoke further meditation on the dialogues that took place, allowing the transmission of these conversations to move beyond the bounds of their initial interlocutors.

HOIC shall also collect material, recording and transcribing discussions that are then to be made available via a more formal publication as well as on hoursofidleconversation.wordpress.com. I will then explore the conversation both subjectively, exploring ideas and theories within the texts, and objectively, considering the qualities and the form of the conversation.

On the opening night of the degree show (Friday 14 June 1700 – 2100) the First Publication shall be made available, both as a physical book and a downloadable pdf. This is an introduction to the project, summarising its origins and its intentions, but also includes the texts to be used as departure points for each discussion.

For the duration of the show (15 – 19 of June) two discussions a day shall take place. At 1100 the discussions shall be subject to experiment, exploring the effects rules altering its flow and its form have. Then at 1300 standard discussions shall take place.

All discussions will begin with a summary of the ideas, intentions and themes of the texts by myself so those participating do not feel the need to have understood or even have read the texts to take part.

They will all be recorded and transcribed, with the audio and text made available online. This stint of the project will culminate with the Second Publication, acting as a report with a summary and evaluation of the project, including new texts exploring HOIC’s results, again to exist as an online and offline publication.

~ a program of discussion to be held for the duration of Manchester School of Art’s 2013 degree show

14 June 2013
[1700 - 2100] Opening
15 June 2013
[1100] Conversation experiment
[1300] A Discussion: The Discursive, Liam Gillick
16 June 2013
[1100] Conversation experiment
[1300] A Discussion: The Experimental Factory, Liam Gillick
17 June 2013
[1100] Conversation experiment
[1300] A Discussion: Interruptions, Maurice Blanchot
18 June 2013
[1100] Conversation experiment
[1300] A Discussion: The Art of Conversation i, Monika Szewczyk
19 June 2013
[1100] Conversation experiment
[1300] A Discussion: The Art of Conversation ii, Monika Szewczyk

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