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Tuesday 17 April 2012

DD2000(Design Practice) Contemporary Exhibition-Manchester gallery

On Mosley street in the centre of Manchester away from the throng of shoppers and harassed office workers,there is an oasis,a cultural oasis.Within lies the bequests of what used to be Manchester's great and the good,a repository of the tastes of the local movers and shakers from the 17th to the early 20th century,Pre-Raphealite's,landscapes and portraiture abound. But this not what I have come to see,one wing of the gallery is dedicated to Modern and contemporary Art and this is what I shall be reviewing.
Upon entering this wing one notices a figure of perforated steel suspended above the stairway,this is a piece by Anthony Gormley entitled "filter",as with a lot of Gormley's recent work it's a piece based on a cast of the artist's nude figure.Some of his work can be very effective,less so this piece possibly due to it's placement or possibly because Gormley's figures are basically the same,just with a variation in construction methods.

Anthony Gormley's Filter.

For reasons of brevity I shall pick on the pieces that caught my eye . Micheal Craig Martin is a contemporay artist who is also an advocate of conceptualism,in the 1970's he produced a piece called "Oak Tree" which was a glass of water on a shelf,but next to it was a text asserting that the artist's intention is superior to the art itself.This is a concept which dates back to Marcel Duchamps Dada-ist piece "Fountain"of 1917(which was actually a urinal)
The piece exhibited here is "Inhale (yellow)" A large canvas of everyday objects painted in vivid colours,the black lines in the piece have  the appearance of being mechanically drawn due to their regularity.
Martin's conceptual approach was a big influence on Damien Hirst,Tracey Emin and Julian Opie.

Inhale(yellow) by Micheal Craig Martin.
Release is piece by Mark Francis that catches the eye because you know instantly what is about even though it is an abstract piece,it is a large monochrome canvas which though it was painted with acrylics has the appearance of a photographic plate.The image itself is of a cluster of short black bent rods with nodules on each end,are they sperms? are they invading viruses? and though they are in monochrome one gets the feeling they are of a biological nature,this may be because such things are always presented in an abstract way in the media anyway.
Release by Mark Francis

Peter C by David Hockney,this is an example of early Pop Art which is hung directly opposite a piece called Zephyr by Bridgitte Riley an example of Op Art,so called because it causes ocular confusion when viewed. Neither of these pieces could be described as contemporary today but both artists still work with Hockney recently having a retrospective and current exhibition at the National gallery in London. Peter C is a portrait on 2 joined canvases of a friend of Hockney's whilst at art college,Peter Crutch. Hockney had a crush on Peter who was by all accounts "straight",Unrequited love has motivated people to do many creative and destructive things,here it helped produce a piece of work that put David on the "art-map" before he had even left Art-School. 




Left: Peter C by Hockney. Right: Zephyr by Riley
I personally believe Brigitte Riley is one of the UK's most over-looked artists,her work has influenced both the work of fine-artists(Damien Hirst's Dot Painting's anyone?) and graphic designers. This piece is starting look its age,with the linen discolouring at the edges,yet this seems to add another dimension to the piece,It's fading waves of colours still make one feel queezy if viewed too long,there are not many artworks which you remember for there physical,rather than aesthetic effects.

To conclude,though the are non of the "Greatest hits" of modern/contemporary art in the exhibition(there mostly in Mr Saatchi's Gallery) there are lots of interesting modern works by significant practitioners in the world of Fine Art,and in the main gallery works by local artist Liam Spencer who seems to catch the sodium lights and gloom of Manchester perfectly. 

Ed Allen

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