Part of the Future Fires scheme at Manchester’s Contact Theatre, which supports emerging young artists, the project is asking volunteers to take part in filmed interviews for a video exhibition held in the city next February. If participants are willing they can also have the chance to take part in filming workshops where a cross section of stories and their tellers will be explored in greater depth.

Project Organiser Tania Mahmoud, who herself was born in Manchester but spent twelve years of her life abroad in Pakistan and Malaysia, said she was inspired by her own feelings of being “all over the place” upon her return to the city, something she attributes to “culture shock”.

Born in Manchester, but having spent twelve years of her life abroad in Pakistan and Malaysia, she returned to Manchester six years ago but found that four of these went by before she fully acclimatized and felt comfortable again.

Culture shock

Mahmoud says she is now investigating this phenomenon that has shaped her own social identity in order create an artistic impression of its impact on “those struggling to reintegrate into the Manchester community by allowing them to explore the surrounding issues of cultural and social identity”.

She hopes to collect as wide a response as possible and gather stories spanning gender, generation and community. Mahmoud’s own family are originally Pakistani and she acknowledges the large Mancunian-Pakistani community as something that made her path to reintegration easier. As part of her project she wants to explore how people returning to other communities found the same process; in particular she is interested in people that may not fit any community at all, already having interviewed a number of asylum seekers.

Mahmoud also hopes that it will help “those struggling to reintegrate into the Manchester community by allowing them to explore the surrounding issues of cultural and social identity.” It will be up to those who view the final exhibition to decide the answer to her question of  whether “the subjects of the project still belong? Did they reintegrate?”

Edward Collins

If you want to contribute your experiences or if you wish to know more details contact Tania Mahmoud through t.mahmoud@hotmail.co.uk  prior to the end of December. The final exhibition will be displayed early next year.

Upper space as a whole consists of academics, activists and community organisers. Their projects and artistic interventions focus on “promoting alternative ideas about public space” and fighting for “social and environmental justice.”  As of 2011 they have turned this focus upon the governments’ “devastating public spending cuts”, working with young homeless people from the city of Manchester.  Upper Space feels that it is unacceptable for a government to bail out those responsible for the economic crisis whilst making life harder and harder for everyone else. The inspiration for their new project, ‘Home’, are the disturbing social housing and housing benefit fund cuts and their effects on Britain’s most vulnerable.

The scale of work for this project is impressive, from screen-prints for sale in support for Upper Spaces’ partner charity the Limes Hostel for the Homeless, to providing banners for people to display at anti-cuts marches. The main body and power of this project however comes in the form of street art and the exhibits the artists have placed on our streets.

Public spaces are often a battlefield for our attentions and as is the nature of this art, the galleries that host it are the streets themselves. When I first saw the bird homes attached to lampposts and road signs around the city I didn’t feel the immediate buzz I had come to expect from street art. It took me a little while to realize what I was looking at before the beauty of them struck me and it became apparent how they conveyed their message. The decorated birdhouses, of which the most powerful had one large eye painted on the front, had an eerie grip on the streets.

As I looked at them I became conscious of the eyes becoming more and more visible in their settings before they actually seemed to become the street’s own. It is then when I noticed the emotions buried within them: some of fear, some of anger and some of shock. The empathy the eye induced was felt for the street itself.  The bird homes beckon you to come and look inside them, where the artists have contained more explicit messages about these emotions and the problems of homelessness in Manchester.

This art is incredibly beautiful as well as clever, avoiding being obvious or clichéd. Most notably, however, it is powerfully emotive.  Having seen this art that can compete for our attentions on the street, it is difficult for me to disagree with the artists that the question is not “can we change things” but “how far can we go?”

Edward Collins

I meet Morag in the Cornerhouse cinema on Oxford Road, central Manchester but we don’t stay at this all-too-comfortable art-house venue for long. Morag has agreed to take me on an unofficial tour of the city. She is part of the Loiterers Resistance Movement (LRM), a Situationist-inspired ‘psychogeography’ group that roam the city sharing knowledge and emotional experiences of the ever-changing urban landscape.

We leave the Cornerhouse and head onto Oxford Road, one of the busiest and best-known streets in Manchester. But in true Loiterers style we quickly leave it and head down an old cobbled side street. Among the gaudy new façades of the bars that line the street sits an ornate door way dating from the 1920s and some superb graffiti. This is first example of what Morag describes as “resonances” – the blurring between the past and the present. History she says “is not linear… things seep out of the past into the present.” These resonances are what the LRM is all about. Their aim is to  connect people with them, to give individuals a better sense of their environment, themselves and others.

But what’s at the end of the road is what she really wants me to see. It’s a plaque commemorating Little Ireland, one of many slums that defined 19th century Manchester. “These places still exist” she says “we’ve just globalised them”. Despite her eagerness to point this out Morag is clear she doesn’t want to fetishise the bleak conditions that were prevalent here, but nor does she want to ignore stories that are often hidden from the official histories of Manchester and other industrial cities. “There was one toilet here for 400 hundred people,” she says grimacing.

19th Century Market Street

Unofficial histories

She rails against the official narratives often told on the heritage tours of Manchester, “I want to complicate the official narrative and deviate from the official tour. For me the city is about multiple narratives, diversity and personal history.

“The dominant narrative is one of triumph [of the industrial revolution], they never talk about the squalor… On one official walk they don’t even mention the Pankhursts,” (the famous suffragette sisters) she tells me, while “they never mention the Burns sisters.” I look at her blankly revealing my ignorance. “They were companions of Engels… and helped [him] gain access to the slums while he was writing about and living in Manchester. A dandy like him couldn’t just walk in there, he would get killed.”

She describes the official history of Manchester, the one the council and its PFI marketing companies and development agencies espouse, as “narrow”. She explains: “You get the industrial revolution and then the IRA bomb and the redevelopment that followed… it’s as if there’s nothing in between. But lots of things are happening all at the same time.”

The LRM try to piece these lost stories together by interacting with the city and other people. She continues, “They paint it as the original modern city but you don’t have to look far to find the abandoned regeneration projects or the homelessness… I’m for progress, the city has to change, but regeneration has to be for people not just for money.” She adds that “there are many different forces that make the city – it is about how we can interact with them.”

We continue our walk crossing Whitworth Street and then heading through an alley way and onto the path alongside the canal, another clear link to the past. We walk between new flats and converted mills along the cobbled tow path. This is one of Morag’s favorite places, one of the few areas in the city that’s free from the constant bombardment of advertising. However we are, it seems, constantly watched by CCTV. “We asked for the footage once after walking down here, but most of the cameras were turned off.”

Eyes down

Morag tells me how the LRM plays a game called CCTV bingo. They walk in the gaze of one camera until they find another. “It’s sooner than you think.” This game-playing is central to the LRM. “It’s silly and fun…but such games help to give you an emotional relationship with the city ”

In another exercise last year the LRM made an edible model of the city. “We took over 400 hundred photos of buildings around the city and then constructed them out of cake. It wasn’t topographically accurate,” she adds dryly. The cakes were then devoured in an afternoon. “The city is always changing,” she says with a smile.

We continue down the canal and walk by the old site of the famous Hacienda night club, “I’m glad it’s closed, it would be past its sell by date now.” This she says is another problem with Manchester. “It’s enthralled to a different era. The official narrative is that music stopped in year x.” Another reference to Tony Wilson’s defunct nightclub and the ‘Madchester’ subculture that it spawned, and that the city has traded off for twenty years.

We leave the canal path and head up to a modern musical landmark, the Bridgewater Hall. The site was previously home to Tommy Duck’s pub – famous, according to Morag, for having women’s knickers stuck to its ceiling. The redevelopment story of this site is typical of many in Manchester. A day before the notorious pub was due to receive its preservation order it was demolished in mysterious circumstances and against the wishes of locals. Working class pub makes way for classical concert venue: an allegory for much of Manchester’s redevelopment.

Private spaces

We carry on past Peter’s Field, site of the Peterloo massacre and past the Free Trade Hall, once a public building, now a posh hotel. “Whenever a council space becomes vacant they never think about using it for the people, it’s always about making money,” says Morag. It was sold off in 1997, much to the annoyance of locals. However, due to a quirk in its planning application it is forced to open its doors to the public in order to view a mural depicting the Peterloo Massacre situated in an upstairs corridor. The LRM often like to pay a visit.

We continue into Spinningfields, Manchester’s new financial district full of banks and high-end retailers (without any customers in them when we walked past). She tells me how rents are extremely low to get businesses to come here. It’s a space where people were asked by security not to take any photographs, not that there is much to photograph; it is all polished glass buildings and no character. But Morag remains optimistic. “Whatever the council do with places like this people will always adapt and appropriate them.”

We move through Spinningfields and head to our destination in redeveloped Castlefield. We pass a park, St Johns Gardens. “This was once a graveyard,” Morag tells me, “most of the green spaces in the city centre were. It’s a bit of a quirk. Angel Meadow [a park at the other end of town] is the site of a mass cholera grave.” Today’s overly-sanitised city is a far cry from its squalid past.

We end our walk at the OK Café. A temporary squatted social centre in a newish but disused council owned building, opposite the Science and Industry museum, in a heavily redeveloped area. The powers that be have long since abandoned Castlefield to invest in new parts of town. But as Morag said of the council’s latest plaything Spinningfields, “Whatever the council do with places like this people will always adapt and appropriate them.”

The LRM meet every first Sunday for some sort of wander around Manchester. It’s free and everybody is welcome. You can follow and contact Morag on twitter @lrm.

A version of this article was first published in the current (June / July 2011) issue of Red Pepper magazine

What is the grotesque and what, as this exhibition’s title suggests, propels the twin feelings of desire and repulsion it can evoke? As well as tackling this question, Desires and Repulsion: Grotesqueries, seeks to use the grotesque as a mechanism for social commentary. The exhibition brings together the work of twenty handpicked artists who explore these ideas using sculpture, screen printing, photography, and interesting approaches to traditional painted works. Many of the pieces provoke visceral responses; artwork bulges towards the audience and materials are attached to the canvas in order to disrupt the idea of traditional two-dimensional work.

The pieces on display explore several overarching themes. A common one is that of ‘nature’ and ‘natural’ objects. A good example of this is Peter McCarthy’s seemingly Brothers Grimm inspired The Stranger in the Wood, which features the titular masked stranger in an eerie woodland scene. Often seen in horror films, the transformational power of, and human unease with, nature is evoked here to good effect. Inspired by nature itself, these pieces demonstrate that as well as being unsettling, the grotesque can be as beautiful as that which is traditionally considered aesthetically pleasing.

'Peek' by Sue Shaw

Many of the pieces are successful feminist commentaries which highlight the grotesque in society’s gender relations. Grimes and Jones’s Man and Wife depicts a husband and wife as representations of their respective genitalia. The scrawled messages of “in sickness and in health” and “too much dinner” amplify the social meaning of the work. Sue Shaw’s Peek is a screen-printed meditation on the youth-orientated nature of commercialised feminine beauty; the repeated pattern of an ageing woman’s face is distorted to such a degree as to not look out of place on an Aphex Twin front cover. However, the most powerful of these pieces, and in my opinion the strongest piece in the whole exhibition, is Victoria Lewis’s Menonpause which explores the artist’s own anxieties surrounding the menopause. The piece, which features two female figures made of hessian emerging from a destroyed mattress, prompts questions about fertility, age and self-identity. The deliberately exaggerated nature of the two sculptures creates an unsettling feeling for the viewer. Thus the grotesque can be used as a mirror to reflect the inherent ugliness within society and, as such, it is a useful vehicle for discussing social and political issues.

This collection has found a suitable home in the shabby chic of The Art Corner. This space certainly doesn’t conform to the popular image of art spaces as sleek, crisp and minimal with holes in the ceiling and dodgy floor boards blending seamlessly with site-specific art made by Sue Patterson. Unfortunately, this will be the last exhibition at this current space; The Art Corner is soon to be converted into a live music venue. The team behind the gallery has also curated a collection by Ashes57, an influential artist within the dubstep world, and Cuts and Grazes, a collection focusing on the economic cuts. They will now be looking for a new space to continue their work.

Desires and Repulsion: Grotesqueries is running at The Art Corner until March 18 2011.

The People’s History Museum (PHM), which houses a vast collection of artifacts and exhibitions relating to the struggles, campaigns and lives of ordinary working people over 200 years, has been put on the long-list with nine other museums for the Art Fund Prize 2011 which rewards excellence and innovation. The nomination comes following a £12.5m redevelopment which saw the museum reopen its doors last year.

Director of the Museum Katy Archer said: “Being long listed for the 2011 Art Fund Prize is testimony to the success and achievements of the museum since reopening our new building in 2010. The transformation of the People’s History Museum is due to the team effort that went into the project from our staff, project team, contractors, funders, supporters and audiences. We are very pleased to be included on the long list and very proud of our museum. This announcement further inspires our ambition and plans for the museum’s future success and growth.”

Now the museum are asking members of the public to pledge their vote online. A shortlist of four museums is to be announced on May 19 and will be followed by prize-giving at the ‘Museum of the Year’ ceremony on June 15.

Offering the public a chance to “explore world changing events led by the working people of Britain”, the museum has won plaudits since its re-opening in 2010. Exhibitions cover popular movements throughout British history such as the trade union movement, the struggle for women’s rights and universal suffrage as well as charting the involvement of working people from across the United Kingdom who fought on the side of Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War.

The radical tradition of Manchester and the role the city played in the nascent suffrage movement – in particular the Peterloo massacre of 1814, when yeomanry fired upon crowds assembled at a rally – is given pride of place in the museum, which provides an alternative view of popular politics and how many changes were fought from the bottom up. It also houses the largest collection of trade union and political banners in the world which includes the oldest one still in existence, that of the Liverpool Tinplate Workers of 1821.

An election poster of the young Labour party from 1909

The prize money would provide PHM will a well-needed cash injection that could help the museum to continue running projects such as its educational programme at a time when public funding is scarce, Katy Archer told MULE. She expanded on what winning the prize would mean:

“While the money would be beneficial to the organisation the prize has a very broad reach in terms of publicity, which would help to boost visitor numbers and raise our profile with local partners and stakeholders.”

She went on to explain why she thinks people from the region should cast their vote for PHM:

“We are the only museum from Manchester and the North West which has been listed. The museum is a fantastic representation of working people’s history; in Manchester there is a real sense of this tradition so for people who want to champion an organisation which celebrates this we would ask them to vote for the People’s History Museum.”

Despite its popularity and critical success, the museum was targeted by the government for budget cuts last year. As part of the October Spending Review the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) imposed cuts of 15 per cent onto both PHM and the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI). This was compounded in November when both were completely cut out from DCMS funding – on the controversial ground that they are classified as ‘non-national’ museums. Critics of the decision pointed out that many of the museums in the government’s crosshair, such as the National Coal Mining Museum, were in traditional Labour strongholds and give platforms to working class history and the labour movement.

To see a full list of all of the museums which have been placed on the longlist for the Art Fund Prize, click here

To register your vote for the museum of your choice, click here

Michael Pooler

The Artists’ Bonfire, taking place this Friday 28 January at Islington Mill in Salford, is an event ‘for artists by artists’ and is open to anybody with a thirst for – or simple curiosity about – an evening of burning art.

Artists from the city have been invited to submit a piece of work along with a paragraph of writing describing their thoughts, feelings and ruminations over what the process of destruction means for them. But this will be more than a night of simply throwing paintings on a pyre; so far the pieces pledged include a red wax skull, clay butterflies, illustrations and a sound installation through which poems are ‘blown’.

Organisers say the act is an exploration of the personal relationship of an artist with their work which seeks to challenge our perceptions of the value of art – especially at a time when funding for the arts is under grave attack – as well question the role assigned to art from a radical perspective.

Co-organiser Rosanne Robertson spoke to MULE of where the inspiration came from: “I was with [co-organiser] Jennifer McDonald at a show which included a series of replicas of t-shirt worn during past protests such as the famous Calvin Klein logo incorporated into a slogan in support of the Liverpool Dockers’ Strike. The work was to be interacted with by swapping your shirt for one of the replicas.

“We both commented on the feeling of liberation, and Jennifer said that it felt fitting that the exchange coincided with something that she and fellow artists were doing that evening – burning art in the back yard.

“Something about that shared experience and the thought of gathering to burn art made me say “wouldn’t it be good if every artist in Manchester had the opportunity to do that together?”

You would be forgiven for feeling at least slightly bemused by the thought of somebody wantonly destroying the fruit of their labours – especially when it is the source of their livelihood. When asked whether on a practical level this could be self-defeating for a young artist struggling to make a living from their work, Rosanne disagrees:

“Not if it brings a different perspective to an artist’s practice. Artists usually have less sentimentality connected to their work than might be expect, which is one of the interesting things about the bonfire as it looks at the value of art through the eye of the artist.

“The bonfire will do its job in terms of destruction but it is up to the artist to decide whether it can lead to something new such as an idea, a work of art, connection or piece of information.

“The Manchester Artists’ Bonfire is not about practicality.”

Nevertheless the act of engaging in deliberate destruction of art may carry with it a whiff of irony – even hypocrisy – given that event’s primary target of criticism is the Coalition’s philistine approach to arts which has seen arts funding savagely slashed.

Yet for artist Louise Woodcock the burning of her work is a form of self-sacrifice which ultimately symbolises an act of defiance against such measures. This she expresses head-on in her provocative pledge accompanying Vanitas, a red skull fashioned from wax:

“I will destroy in order to create, to make art no matter how throttled we become through poverty: by any means necessary.”

While condemning the detrimental impact the cuts will have on aspiring artists, Louise believes that their effect could lead to a back-to-basics approach and be the source of inspiration.

“Cuts to public funds will make art and artists in this country suffer, but [this] … could reconnect us with our instinctive creative ‘will’. We may become more in touch with what really moves us irrelevant of monetary concerns. Poverty can inspire, but this is not to condone the impoverishing of artists and the lack of respect this culture has for us as the cuts demonstrate. I hope that we realise we can overcome these obstacles if we maintain our individual and collective passion to create and spur each other on, if we keep on keepin’ on.”

On the question of whether the bonfire could be interpreted as a bonfire of their own vanities, a narcissistic act of self-indulgence, Rosanne Robertson turns to the implicit political protest of the act; and the potential for resistance which could be ignited by the flames and acrid smoke of Friday’s conflagration.

“I think that artists should be more vain and self-indulgent if it means there are more who are willing to say “what I do is important, I will stand up for it”. I don’t think this is an indulgence of the self but that it is definitely an indulgence of our practice. The question is always what does this art mean to the viewer, the audience, the community, the public? But we have to know what it means to us before we can expect anyone else to appreciate it. And perhaps we also need to know what we are prepared to do to defend it.”

The 'bonfire' by students at Parliament Square back in December

Indeed, this political undertone of the event comes out on many levels and is referred to explicitly in the tracts of many of the artists involved. In this respect the function of the mass burning appears to be an oblique way of forcing artists and the public to reconsider their relationship with and the value we assign to art, at a moment in time when its importance in society is being degraded by the government.  Whether the immolation really is a ‘defiant symbol of dissatisfaction intended to act as a catalyst for change’ as the organisers hope is for the spectator to decide on the evening; as is the more fundamental question of whether such a spectacle can rise beyond the spectacular to stoke the flames of real resistance to the brutal cuts.

For those who remain unconvinced or perhaps confused by the ambiguous message beneath the incendiary intentions of the organisers, you may have just hit the hammer on the head – or, in the words of Rosanne Robertson:

“[With the bonfire] we aim to extend questions rather than give an answer.”

Michael Pooler

The Artsts’ Bonfire will take place between 8pm-10pm and will be followed by a party til late

For more info, go to: http://manchesterartistsbonfire.blogspot.com/

Marie Stopes, one of the ten heroines selected for the project

The project – which is being run by Manchester Modernist Society, urban explorers and psychogeographers the Loiterers’ Resistance Movement and the Shrieking Violet fanzine – will coincide with International Women’s Day on March 8.

The aim is to produce a publication and organise a range of activities in early March focused on or inspired by the lives and careers of ten local heroines strongly associated with the North West. The ten figures chosen span the fields of invention, aviation, media, science and design and architecture in the twentieth century and were selected due to their outstanding contributions in their respective disciplines.

The organisers are now calling on the creative responses of anybody who is interested. Contributions can take the form of an event, performance, piece of creative writing, interview or journalistic feature – the only rule being that the work be about one of the ten local heroines.

The deadline for expression of interest is this Friday 28 January, while the date for final submission of work is Friday 18 February in order to allow time for print and publicity before the week starting March 6. Please email info@manchestermodernistsociety.org in the first instance with your choice of Fabulous Female and a short summary of the idea you might wish to pursue.

A cover of an edition of The Shrieking Violet fanzine

Below is a full list of the ten local heroines chosen to be represented in the project:

1. Mitzi Solomon Cunliffe (January 1 1918 – December 30 2006) was an American sculptor who was a long resident in Didsbury. She was most famous for designing the golden trophy in the shape of a theatrical mask that would go on to represent the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and be presented as the BAFTA award. She also designed the mural on the Heaton Park Pumping Station.

2. Winifred Brown, Salfordian Flyer and, in her early 20s, winner of the Kings Cup (air race) in 1930.

3. Rachel Haugh co-established the architectural practice Ian Simpson Associates. She was born and brought up in Manchester and studied at Bath University School of Architecture. She is a founding partner and co-director of Ian Simpson Architects, a design-led architectural practice which was established in 1987 and employs around 50 people in offices in Manchester and London.

4. Susan Sutherland Isaacs (1885–1948) was a Bolton born educational psychologist and psychoanalyst. Educated at Manchester and Cambridge Universities, she published pioneer studies on the intellectual and social development of children and promoted the nursery school movement. For Isaacs developing a child’s independence, which is best achieved through play, was the best way for children to learn and the role of adults and early educators was to guide children’s play. She was awarded a CBE in 1948.

5. Marie Stopes (15 October 1880 – 2 October 1958) was a noted palaeobotanist, campaigner for women’s rights and pioneer in the field of family planning. She was the first woman member of faculty at Manchester University.

6. Professor Rosalie David is the world’s leading expert on Egyptian mummies. She is Director of the Centre for Biomedical and Forensic Egyptology at the University of Manchester and has directed the Manchester Egyptian Mummy Research Project since 1973. This project has pioneered the ‘Manchester Method’ — the use of medical and scientific techniques to investigate ancient Egyptian mummies to detect evidence of disease and information about everyday life in ancient Egypt. She was the first woman professor in Egyptology in Britain, and the first to receive an OBE in recognition of her services in Egyptology.

7. Olive Shapley, British radio producer and broadcaster (10 April 1910– 13 March 1999) was a British radio producer and broadcaster. In 1934 she began her career with the BBC as Children’s Hour organiser with the responsibility of producing five hour-long programmes every week. These included at least two full-length live plays a week. After the war she became the third presenter of ‘Woman’s Hour’, a programme with which she was associated for over twenty years, producing the programme between 1949 and 1953. Meanwhile, she began to develop a career as a presenter in the new television medium. In the mid-1960s her Manchester home became a refuge (as a charitable trust) for single mothers and later, in the late 1970s, for Vietnamese boat people.

8. Professor Doreen Massey is a Manchester born contemporary British social scientist and geographer. She has devoted her life to the subject, speaking passionately about the significance of geography and the ‘politics of place’ in a globalised world. Her work has had a profound influence on theorising around space and place and has taken the study of geography into new inter-disciplinary directions.

9. Mary Stott (18 July 1907 – 16 September 2002) was a British feminist and journalist, the first — and longest-serving — editor of the Guardian women’s page. One of the great campaigning journalists of the 20th century, in her 15-year tenure from 1957 to 1972 she invented a platform for women’s voices and concerns and used it to further such causes.

10. Linder Sterling studied Art at the Manchester School of Art from 1974-77 and played a vital part in the 1970s punk scene in Manchester, designing graphics for the Buzzcocks, Magazine and Factory Records. She remains a pivotal visual artist, performance artist and musician, whose work has been selected for the Tate Triennial.

Tucked away in the student hub of Fallowfield, a derelict old room has been transformed into a platform for artists to showcase their work.  Against the background of spending cuts some may think it unlikely a volunteer led, self-funded art space could sustain itself past the honeymoon period of hyperbolic openings.  The Art Corner however refute this, and will continue to display and host exhibitions into 2011 after a three month trial period last year resulted in a permanent residency.

January will see the collective bring together the work of artists from Manchester, Salford, London and Hove in an exhibition that is to address the spending review from a range of perspectives.  The collective make a bold joint declaration of intent: “It is important as artists and curators to document and comment on political and social changes and to make a creative record for the future, and this is what we hope to do.”

‘Cuts and Grazes’ features a range of work over two rooms.  This includes a poem from MMU student David Picken entitled ‘Polemic Lib Dem Polls’, which speaks of a dissatisfied nation and offers a possibly prophetic warning to Cameron and Clegg.  The result of a collaborative effort from Joshua Miller and Nicky Watson is a sculpture exploring the negative implications of the cuts for aspiring young artists looking forward towards university.

Meanwhile Jane Lawson, a student at the University of Salford, presents her endeavours through a 1980′s Revival Mind Map. Jane lived through the 1980′s and her art explores some recurring themes in society. In particular she looks at our current predicament, namely a right wing government projecting faux-caring Big Society rhetoric, brutal cuts to the public sector and another royal wedding – which leads the artist to experience a sense of déjà vu.

The exhibition presents pieces in a variety of styles and form.  Nevertheless all of the works on display lean heavily on the central theme of raising public awareness of the collective experience of the cuts, which reflects the ethos behind the collective’s selection process.

A spokesperson for the collective said: “Each artist was selected from a call for submissions, which asked potential exhibitors to provide their response to the spending review. The exhibition was conceived to highlight a public reaction to the recent spending cuts.”

Without compromising artistic vision the collective have had to become economically and environmentally aware. They explain the importance of using existing spaces: “You walk around Manchester or any city for that matter, and you see so many abandoned spaces. Recently people are thinking more creatively about how to use these empty spaces around them.”

Future plans are to carry on supporting the local and national community of emerging artists. More pop-up galleries will not be forthcoming. The collective affirm they are in a great space and they intend to keep using it.

Funding comes from the collective’s pockets, donations, and the 30 per cent commission they take from the sale of any work exhibited with any surplus money ploughed back into the project.  By renovating a disused building, the collective have created an art space in what was formerly abandoned.  Using a do-it-yourself philosophy to promote, support and showcase emerging artists in the North-West and beyond, the Art Corner is a welcome addition to South Manchester.

Luke Berte

Henry Cole's original work

‘Political’ is perhaps not the first word that comes to mind when one considers the Christmas card. A quick scan of the cards displayed in the local supermarket reveals the usual Christmas clichés: jolly red-nosed Santas (who have, perhaps, consumed a little too much brandy); and ever-smiling, all singing, all dancing Christmas elves (who never seem to complain about seasonal overtime).

The political character of Christmas cards has traditionally been overlooked, claims Andy Pearce, deputy director of the People’s History Museum. Politics, Protest, and the Christmas Card, the latest exhibition in the People’s History Museum ‘Community Gallery’, seeks to redress this balance. Curated by the former Labour MP Llew Smith and his late wife Pam, the exhibition traces the evolution of political Christmas cards from the 1840s to the present day. Collected by the couple over a thirty-five year period, the exhibited cards subvert traditional Christmas themes in order to highlight political and social injustice, both past and present.

Since their origins in the 1840s, Christmas cards have provided a valuable insight into social mores and political thought. The first mass-produced card, designed by Henry Cole in 1843, depicted a vast gulf between rich and poor, inadvertently highlighting the extreme social stratification of Victorian England. The artist portrays a wealthy family drinking wine in the card’s colourful centre, while he places the downtrodden poor around its cold, grey edges.

As the nineteenth century progressed, artists began to realise the political potential of Christmas cards. On ‘Bloody Sunday’ in the winter of 1887, protesters demonstrating against coercion in Ireland were brutally beaten by police – killing some and wounding others. A card commemorating this event features a drawing of a police truncheon. ‘To be used with great care’, reads the caption. This Christmas card imparts a lesson from history which, if we look closely enough, still resonates today.

Ode to the Specials

A slightly more recent card shows Nick Clegg dressed in a Santa suit while a young, discontented-looking child sits on his knee. ‘But Santa’, reads the caption, ‘this isn’t what I asked for. And it isn’t what you promised!’. In the background, a smiling Cameron gives the invisible audience a smug thumbs-up.

A series of cards relating to the Israel-Palestine conflict subvert traditional conceptions of the nativity to highlight the injustices faced by Palestinians. ‘Is that the star of Bethlehem’, demand the wise men in one card, ‘or another Israeli missile?’ Another portrays Joseph, and a heavily pregnant Mary, detained and searched by heavily armed soldiers at an Israeli roadblock. A sign points meaningfully towards Bethlehem, but it is clear that the young couple will be going nowhere in a hurry.

The exhibited cards provide us with a window into the social and political struggles of the past. ‘We forget our history at our peril,’ warned CND campaigner Bruce Kent as he opened the exhibition on Friday. Indeed, for Smith it is the very knowledge of these struggles which provides us with hope for the future. An understanding and appreciation of the successes and failures of the past, he argues, will prepare us for the future. ‘We will go forward’, he asserts, ‘and we will go forward with strength’.

Refreshing, engaging, and genuinely thought provoking, this exhibition is well worth a visit.

Robin Macdonald

Politics, Protest, and the Christmas card is running at the People’s History Museum until January 6 2011.

As the exhibition demonstrates, mapping the modern city is not simply a question of charting its geographical boundaries. Instead, the artists seek to capture the variety of emotions, identities, and cultures within the city; to breathe life into depictions of its physical and cultural spaces. This approach is clearly evident in the work of exhibiting artist Daksha Patel. Patel’s creation Route Map re-imagines Manchester’s roads and waterways as an X-ray of pulsating blood vessels. The city’s communication systems become part of a larger living and breathing organism, whose vital vessels connect its many diverse and creative communities.

No Boundaries, a mixed media exhibit by the artist Mark Lomax, seeks to redefine the traditional geographic and social barriers which divide communities and nations. The artist combines fragments of real printed maps with wax, paint and plaster to create a less static conception of geographic frontiers. This novel form of a map challenges the traditionally held conception of national borders and social barriers as fundamentally fixed and unchanging facets of human society.

Daskha Patel - 'Route Map'

Indeed one of the most striking features of the exhibition is the political engagement of the artists. Created by the Ultimate Holding Company, a radical design collective based in the centre of Manchester, Heathrow Map was devised as part of the Greenpeace No Third Runway campaign. The map tracks the progress of the thousand-or-so planes which took off from Heathrow airport during a twenty-four hour period in 2007. The grey trails etched on the plain white surface of the map represent the inerasable effect of aviation industry pollution on the earth’s natural environment. As such, the map itself becomes a political tool which encourages its viewers to actively engage in the politics of climate change.

Emotive, evocative, and engaging from start to finish, this exhibition provides a fascinating insight into map making and urban society.

Robin Macdonald

Latitude exhibition was running in November. Click here for more information on the Manchester Modernist Society.