Posted by editor on July 7, 2010 under Art, sport and leisure, Community
Street signs, silhouettes of tower blocks, ornate church windows, paving stones, railings and even pub signs have all inspired a West Gorton art group to produce striking silk screen prints depicting their local area.
Field Worker Amanda Crummett, centre, with the Young at Heart Group and their art mentors
The Young at Heart Group – set up more than two years ago and ‘adopted’ by Keele University’s CALL-ME research programme – flung open the doors of their community rooms on Gortonvilla Walk this week to show off their creativity.
Matty Wade: "It's my design on the T-shirt!"
Each member displayed a finished print mounted and framed on the walls with other limited editions on sale to raise funds for future projects.
The silk screening techniques were taught by artist Ian McKay and his son Andrew as part of the M12-11 arts project, set up in 2005 of offer creative opportunities to east Manchester groups and residents.
“I’ve enjoyed every part of this project,” says Matty Wade, who accompanies his partially-sighted grandmother to the group and whose design features on the group’s T-shirts. “We all took a vote on which image should go on the shirts and the group chose mine. That made me very happy.”
Eighty-five year-old Maggie Wade was, at first, reluctant to join in the group’s activities: “When they came to ask me if I’d like to join I told them I could only see light and shape and I’d never to able to manage. We started with pottery and I thought I’d never to able to do it but, with the help of these people, I’ve managed. I felt as if I was past it at my age, so it just goes to show.
“They’re starting keep fit classes on Wednesday so I’ll come down to that too!”
“Some older people hardly go out at all,” says club secretary, Audrey Hurley. “So this group has given them a chance to have a cuppa and a chat as well as make some fantastic art. We all enjoy the laughs when we get together.”
“CALL-ME is part of a longer research project aimed at improving the quality of life for older people,” explains Keele University’s Professor Michael Murray. “With our partners, we’re providing opportunities for older people in disadvantaged areas of Manchester to socialise. Here the Young at Heart group have produced some amazing artwork but mainly it’s been about people coming together.
Our field worker, Amanda Crummett, has been able to support the group to apply for funding, recruit a community artist and develop this project. We’re really pleased with the results.”
Posted by editor on July 2, 2010 under Art, sport and leisure, Environment
On the same afternoon as England’s bid to reach the World Cup quarter finals, photographer Len Grant led a photography workshop at Clayton Vale hosted by Groundwork.
Photography workshop in the beautiful Clayton Vale. Photo: Len Grant
I was surprised anyone showed up at all. This was the big one: England versus Germany and it seemed every other house in east Manchester was sporting a massive St George’s flag or half a mile of bunting. Many had both.
But as our own kick-off arrived there were many eager snappers fingering their dials and knobs ready to capture the beauty of the Vale.
Billed as being totally non-technical, I firstly extolled the virtues of ‘looking at light’, imagining the sun as one massive photographic light that could be either on, off or many variations in between.
Getting a different viewpoint. Photo: Elliot Brown
The committed participants also heard my recommendation for ‘moving about’, looking for the best viewpoint and not being content with the view of a scene that first presents itself. It sounds incredibly basic but it is consistently overlooked and can make a good photograph even better.
I remember my photographic education – such as it was – took great leaps forward when my evening class teacher encouraged us to start taking pictures in a sequence rather than looking just for that killer shot. So my workshop participants were sent off to take a series of images, of any subject matter, that might be the beginning of ‘story-telling’, or at least thinking about they wanted to say with their photography before lifting the viewfinder to the eye.
Congratulation to all involved. It was a constructive afternoon for photography if not for English football. Here are some of the results.
Posted by editor on May 24, 2010 under Art, sport and leisure
An exhibition of wallpaper? It’s another project from the prolific Gorton Visual Arts group. Len Grant visits Hope Mill in Ancoats to take a look.
“Have you done all this Grandma?” Two year-old Sophie Ledward, admires the handiwork of GVA member, Rita Oakley.
Our ’Ouse is inspired by the exposed wallpaper revealed in the once private interiors of half-demolished houses scattered around east Manchester. “It was the condemned terraced houses of Beswick that first gave me the idea,” says the group’s lead artist, Ian McKay. “Those exposed living rooms and bedrooms signify the area’s transformation and I thought it would be good way to record people’s memories of the past.”
Each member of the group has chosen images, or drawn their own pictures of treasured childhood memories. Family pets, long-demolished cinemas, gas lamps, cups cakes, clogs and even the pit heads at Bradford Colliery have all been featured in this day-long exhibition.
The accompanying text by each of the artists, all Gorton residents, offers another strand of reminiscence. Noreen West recalls, “…clogs that mother had bought with the Divi she had saved from the Co-op. They were green, that’s my favourite colour, and they laced up at the front.”
Margaret Greenhalgh remembers her father, an engineer, taking the whole family to visit the pit in 1941. “He made sure his four girls were aware of Manchester’s vast, diverse industry: something to be proud of.”
Elsewhere Freda Wallwork writes about her inspiration for her ‘vanilla slice’ wallpaper: “I worked at Sharples Brothers as an apprentice confectioner in the 1950s… We had a small kitchen for our lunch breaks, very like the one in the underwear factory in Coronation Street. We were a very happy, but busy, group of friends.”
As part of this 13-week project the group were invited by the Whitworth Art Gallery to view their current wallpaper exhibition and were able to ask questions of the gallery curators. Back at their base at the Angels in Gorton the group set to work creating their individual designs using traditional woodcut printing processes.
Without pausing for breath Gorton Visual Arts is now working a mosaic about the Beyer Peacock railway engine works in Gorton. “The factory was at the bottom of our street,” recalls the group’s oldest member, “and every day I’d watch as thousands of men streamed into work. Until we started on this new project, I never had a clue what went on behind those high walls.”
Wallpaper exhibition at Whitworth Art Gallery
Posted by editor on May 17, 2010 under Art, sport and leisure, Business, training and employment
Len Grant re-visits The Sharp Project to record the finishing touches to a stunning artwork by an internationally-renowned group of ‘graffiti-artists’.
In a previous life this aircraft hanger of a building stored microwaves, TVs, copies and printers for Sharp, the multi-national electronics corporation and one-time sponsor of Newton Heath’s most famous sons, Manchester United. Now it’s The Sharp Project, where shipping containers provide accommodation for fledging media companies and cavernous spaces lots of scope for TV drama sets.
Last week The Sharp Project on Thorp Road was ‘invaded’ by a graffiti-art group who, for three days, painted and spayed an immense mural across a warehouse wall that may once have been stacked high with video cassette recorders.
Agents of Change, a collective of artists who, like a disparate rock band, come together to produce spectacular artworks before dispersing across the world to do their own projects. One member of the group, Remi, has sandwiched Newton Heath into a travel itinerary that includes San Francisco, New York and Madrid.
Their last project together, ‘The Ghostvillage Project’ involved changing an abandoned concrete village, built for but never lived in by oil workers and their families in Scotland, into an innovative art gallery.
This current project was part of last week’s FutureEverything Festival.
See the Agents of Change website.
See the Sharp Project website.
