Thank you to everyone who donated objects for the Richard Wentworth installation last night at the Manchester Museum and Manchester Art Gallery for Museums at Night.
You can see more images here.
http://pinterest.com/creativetourist/museums-at-night-lovecollecting/
http://pinterest.com/mcrartgallery/lovecollecting-manchester-art-gallery/
Richard is curating the objects for the Whitworth Art Hours tonight, 17 May, from 7.30pm. There will also be live music from Walk and Denis Jones
And there plenty of other Museum at Night events in Manchester on Friday 17 and Saturday 18 May
Friday 18 May
Fanatic Live: Football and Fashion, An Audience with Cass Pennant. Ever since the 1960s, fashion, youth culture and football have combined. Cass Pennant, a former member of West Ham’s notorious Inter-City Firm in the 1980s, was a significant figure in the Casuals movement that defined what became an internationally-recognised style. Pennant has since turned novelist and filmmaker and can claim to have a unique understanding of the relationship between football and fashion. Join us for an after-hours look at the exhibition Strike a Pose, followed by a screening of Pennant’s extraordinary feature documentary, Casuals – plus an exclusive Q&A with the man himself. This event is run by Ear to the Ground as part of its Fanatic Live series. 6pm-9.30pm, National Football Museum, free (but booking required).
Luke Fowler’s new film at The Working Class Movement Library. This gem of a library opens late on Friday and from 7pm you can browse its exhibition the marks the 50th anniversary of E.P. Thompson’s seminal text, The Making of the English Working Class. At 7.30pm, watch Luke Fowler’s new film (inspired by Thompson’s life), The Poor Stockinger: The Luddite Cropper and the Deluded Followers of Joanna Southcott. Fowler is a Turner Prize-shortlisted artist and this, an hour-long film, mixes archive footage with newly-shot material to create an evocative video essay about E.P. Thompson. It captures a moment of optimism, in which Thompson’s ideas for progressive education came together with political resistance and activism. The film was originally commissioned by The Hepworth Wakefield, Wolverhampton Art Gallery and Film and Video Umbrella. 7.30pm, Working Class Movement Library, free.
Saturday 18 May 2013
Protest Music Festival. Taking its inspiration from The Art of Protest exhibition, the People’s History Museum stages a protest music session. Kicking things off is singer-songwriter Quiet Loner, whose performance includes songs from his album, Greedy Magicians, along with performances from acclaimed poet Longfella. Later, NOISE introduces NOISEstock, an interactive “sit-in” within the exhibition itself, complete with many musical acts. 3pm-5pm (Quiet Loner/Longfella); 5pm-8pm (NOISE stock), People’s History Museum, free. Tweet your contributions using #ProtestFest
Anguish & Enthusiasm Film Forum at Cornerhouse. As usual, the Cornerhouse galleries are open until 8pm, giving you a chance to see its current exhibition – plus, on Saturday 18 May, it hosts an Artists’ Film Forum. Watch three films, including John Lalor’s Incident Urbain (2012). In it, two men stroll around the French National Library, engaged in an increasingly intense conversation about the environment around them – a conversation that builds to a dramatic end. The artist and filmmaker John Lalor takes part in a post-screening Q&A. 6pm (Artists’ Film Forum, plus galleries open until 8pm), Cornerhouse, £1.50/£3 for the forum, galleries free.
Museums at Night digital game
After Hours on Thursday 16 May – Stockport College
Over the past three years, the Arts, Design and Media department at Stockport College has forged a reciprocal relationship with Manchester Museum, taking creative inspiration from its rich resources and producing visual material for display in the museum and beyond. The work included in After Hours: Nature’s Library (part of Museums at Night: Lost & Found)on Thursday 16 May 5-9pm by students, an alumnus and a member of staff from the BA Honours Contemporary Photography course – was originally a response to the theme of biodiversity, but has since evolved along a variety of related themes.
Below is a brief account of each artist’s project.
Alex Keep
The mechanics of nature so often goes unnoticed. Photo Synthesis explores the secret life of a plant, its cyclical forms evoking the proliferation of life on many levels, as well as its inevitable decay. The work acts as a living image, a visual metaphor for the continual redistribution and degradation of bio-matter.
Breed is a different kind of living image, based on bacteria. Bacteria are truly omnipresent organisms, inhabiting every corner of human existence, thriving under all kinds of conditions. This piece is an active sampling exercise, exploring growth, change and metamorphosis.
Alex Lawler
In a city, nature is often forgotten and neglected, pushed into sanctioned spaces such as parks and gardens. We forget about the persistence of nature, overlooking or destroying the plants that encroach upon our urban environment. This project celebrates these plants, recording them temporarily using the pre-photographic process of anthotypes and using the conventions of the museum to catalogue and display them.
Eleanor Mulhearn
Eleanor Mulhearn has an ongoing interest in drawing and memory. For this piece she has collected people’s memories of plants, birds and insects, producing interpretative drawings of these life forms in a way that reflects their absence. The project forms part of a wider body of work called The Cabinet of Conversations.
Michele Selway
A bridge can be more than just a link between two physical points. Castlefield viaduct has a rich history, representing both Manchester’s industrial heritage and, in its state of dilapidation, the uncertainty about the city’s post-industrial future. The structure has many echoes, posing many questions and stimulating debate. It can be represented from numerous perspectives – artistic, botanical, architectural and historical amongst them. It leads to unknown places, occupying a liminal space between what it was and what it might become.
Jana Smoca
Jana Smoca’s project explores the biodiversity of one particular tree and the area around it. It reflects the artist’s connection with forest environments, based on her personal experiences and cultural heritage. Alternative photographic processes have been used to create a poetic record of her findings and observations.
Jen Dimelow
Jen’s project, entitled Hidden, explores the metaphoric properties of natural forms. Focusing on moth cocoons, she uses innovative photographic techniques to take the viewer inside these capsules, creating images that evoke the transformational processes that they conceal and protect. She also considers this in relation to human psychology – how facets of individual personality can develop over time.
Adam Swindells
Adam’s work draws on Zen Buddhist ideas of interdependency and equivalence. Through photographing cosmic scenes and microscopic natural forms, he encourages us to reflect on the relationship between the two, and on the common origins of all matter.
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- Stockport College After Hours flyer
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- alex lawler cabinet
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- alex lawler drawer interior
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- alex lawler rosa canina
Looping and Linking
Tomorrow (Saturday 11th May, 1:30pm) we have the final herbarium tour in the public programming for the 'Looping and Linking' exhibition (ending 26th May).
Inspired by the life and works of Scottish outsider artist Angus MacPhee this has been an exciting project in conjunction with the Whitworth Art Gallery and has featured the fantastic stage production of Angus' life by the Horse and Bamboo…
Housing – A Sustainable Future for Manchester
The Faculty of Life Sciences at The University of Manchester and Manchester Museum are hosting a series of discussion events exploring the development of a sustainable future for Manchester. These events will bring together experts from outside the University and academic researchers to present the pertinent issues, ideas and solutions surrounding transport, clothing, housing, biodiversity and food.
The next event in the series is on 14 May is on the theme of Housing.
Ric Frankland, Dwelle – Using cellulose fibre extracted from 100% recycled newspaper for insulation, Dwelle create sustainable eco-friendly micro-buildings that aim to be resourceful and efficient. Architect Richard Frankland will introduce the key issues surrounding housing and the environment, and discuss the implications of using renewable materials to create ecological structures.
Angela Connelly from the School of Environment and Development will discuss the issue of adapting to climate change and innovative solutions to flood risks; and Andrew Karvonen, Lecturer in Architecture and Urbanism will look at reducing the carbon footprint of houses in Manchester.
dwelle credit Daniel Hopkinson
Love Collecting Campaign
Share your collections as part of our #lovecollecting campaign
As part of our celebration of Museums at Night, we’d like you to share your pictures of the artefacts, objects or things that you collect. Here at Manchester Museum we’re very proud of our collections, which range from insects to shabtis. And we’re sure that our visitors not only love our collections as much as we do, but probably collect things themselves – whether books, tins and stamps or furniture, comics or stickers.
In May, Manchester’s museums and galleries celebrate Museums at Night with a series of events focused on collecting and collections. In the run-up, we’d like to uncover the things that you collect or are inspired by when you visit our venue. Every day from Tuesday 30 April until Friday 18 May we will Tweet and Instagram images of objects from our collection that staff here are particularly proud or fond of. We won’t be alone. Other museums and galleries will do the same – but what we’d really like is for you to join us.
How to share your object as part of #lovecollecting
It’s easy to take part. Just Tweet or Instagram an image of an object that you own, collect or that you’ve seen in a museum or gallery using the hashtag #lovecollecting and @MuseumsatNight.
Tell us what the object is, where it is and why you like it (we’ve put a couple of examples up – find them using the #lovecollecting hashtag).
The best will be collated onto a Pinterest board, and two of those will win tickets to take a mystery bus tour of Manchester on Thursday 16 May 2013, a tour created by the artist Richard Wentworth especially for Museums at Night. You can also come in and donate an object to either Manchester Art Gallery or Manchester Museum on 16 May – find out more here.
Please help us share a love of collecting, and uncover the unsung collections both inside our venues and across the city by taking part in #lovecollecting.
After Hours presents Lost & Found: Museums at Night. 16 May, 5-9pm. Free
After Hours presents Lost & Found: Museums at Night.
Thursday 16 May , 5-9pm.
Free.
Lost & Found: Museums at Night – Three days of after-hours events led by the artist Richard Wentworth celebrate the very best of our museums and galleries.
From the Mary Greg Collection of Handicrafts of Bygone Times, courtesy Manchester Art Gallery.
Photo by Ben Blackall.
A mystery tour, a people’s museum: an exhibition in a night.
This May, Manchester takes part in Museums at Night. With Richard Wentworth leading proceedings, the city’s museums and galleries stage a series of events over two evenings that celebrate the depth and diversity, the weirdness and the wonderfulness of the things that people are compelled to collect.
On Thursday 16 May, bring something curious to a collections booth at either Manchester Museum or Manchester Art Gallery, and in so doing create a people’s museum – your object will be “acquired” by the institution. On the same evening, take a mystery bus tour of Manchester. You won’t know where you’re going or why; all you need to know is that your bus follows a circuitous route devised by the artist Richard Wentworth.
On Friday 17 May, see the fruits of your collective labour. Richard Wentworth creates an exhibition in a night at Whitworth Art Gallery; the objects donated the previous night the raw materials for Wentworth’s show here. Watch one of Britain’s most successful artists at work; see how he uses the raw materials you supplied and take advantage of the other music and performance that brings the Whitworth to life late into the night.
We can’t tell you exactly what Museums at Night will entail, but we can tell you that you will be with like-minded souls. Like them, you might collect things in order to make sense of the world – or find your place within it. You might be cynical. You might be curious. You may end up finding without searching.
* Disclaimer: All objects donated to Manchester Art Gallery and Manchester Museum must be owned by the person donating them, and will not be returned. Photographs or representations of objects will also be accepted. All objects will be taken to the Whitworth Art Gallery on Friday 17 May to be used as part of Richard Wentworth’s exhibition, although not all may be used in the final exhibition. We regret that we cannot accept very large objects or objects made of organic/perishable material.
