II visited the newly re-opened Whitworth Art Gallery on Manchester's Oxford Road recently and was blown away by creative content they are housing up there.
The gallery itself is a spectacular building of red bricks and an impressive sight amongst the curry houses and student dwellings.
Exhibitions include a showcase of exhibits from the 1960's and interesting sculptures by Sarah Lucas, but the best bit by far is Turner prize nominee Cornelia Parker's thought provoking displays.
Before coming to the gallery, I knew nothing of Cornelia's work or Cornelia herself but through a careful selection of her pieces through the decades, I began to build a picture of the artist.
Her intriguing story leads you through an assortment of armoury based artefacts using gunpowder and bullets to depict contradictory narratives. As as well as fascinating prints using rattle snake venom and anti-venom combined together for striking effect.
One of my favourite parts was the flattened musical instruments and tea party silverware suspended from the ceiling. It was actually quite sad to see these inanimate objects hanging forlornly,devoid of their previous life, but strangely beautiful.
The poppy room was particularly powerful as it was a reflection of the lives lost in the war in the form of discarded poppy moulds for Remembrance Sunday. As you entered, a ghostly silence fell about the space which was wall to wall lined with poppy moulds, 320,000 in total. They draped from the ceiling to form a harrowing reminder of the hospital and first aid tents used on the front line, the poppies dripping down the sides of the room like blood. A chilling experience.
The final installation will stay with me for a long time. Just like the nature of the piece, the overall effect hits you in the face like an explosion. Broken wood, charred toys and disemboweled garden tools jut out angrily at you from their expertly hung positions. This is the tale of the exploded garden shed which Parker executed with the help of the army. It is captivating from all angles. The way the piece is hung allows you to walk around it in a full circle to decipher the objects encased in the shards.
Even the shadows that are cast from the distorted objects are ghastly as they stretch along the walls and ceiling accentuating the size of the spectacle. Her work is superb, profound and very well thought out. Each piece has a story to tell which adds to her appeal. I would fully recommend giving this a visit, purely to see the shed alone. It is an image that will be burned into my mind for years to come. visited the newly re-opened Whitworth Art Gallery on Manchester's Oxford Road recently and was blown away by creative content they are housing up there.
The gallery itself is a spectacular building of red bricks and an impressive sight amongst the curry houses and student dwellings.
Exhibitions include a showcase of exhibits from the 1960's and interesting sculptures by Sarah Lucas, but the best bit by far is Turner prize nominee Cornelia Parker's thought provoking displays.
Before coming to the gallery, I knew nothing of Cornelia's work or Cornelia herself but through a careful selection of her pieces through the decades, I began to build a picture of the artist.
Her intriguing story leads you through an assortment of armoury based artefacts using gunpowder and bullets to depict contradictory narratives. As as well as fascinating prints using rattle snake venom and anti-venom combined together for striking effect.
One of my favourite parts was the flattened musical instruments and tea party silverware suspended from the ceiling. It was actually quite sad to see these inanimate objects hanging forlornly,devoid of their previous life, but strangely beautiful.
The poppy room was particularly powerful as it was a reflection of the lives lost in the war in the form of discarded poppy moulds for Remembrance Sunday. As you entered, a ghostly silence fell about the space which was wall to wall lined with poppy moulds, 320,000 in total. They draped from the ceiling to form a harrowing reminder of the hospital and first aid tents used on the front line, the poppies dripping down the sides of the room like blood. A chilling experience.
The final installation will stay with me for a long time. Just like the nature of the piece, the overall effect hits you in the face like an explosion. Broken wood, charred toys and disemboweled garden tools jut out angrily at you from their expertly hung positions. This is the tale of the exploded garden shed which Parker executed with the help of the army. It is captivating from all angles. The way the piece is hung allows you to walk around it in a full circle to decipher the objects encased in the shards.
Even the shadows that are cast from the distorted objects are ghastly as they stretch along the walls and ceiling accentuating the size of the spectacle. Her work is superb, profound and very well thought out. Each piece has a story to tell which adds to her appeal. I would fully recommend giving this a visit, purely to see the shed alone. It is an image that will be burned into my mind for years to come.
