Your Days Are Numbered

To be reviewed by Emma Proctor

Cows kill 20 Americans every year. But you can halve your chance of dying of a heart attack by drinking 8 bottles of wine a week. You have a 0.000043% chance of dying during this show. You will at least die laughing.

Death's a funny thing, as stand-up mathematician Matt Parker (audience award, FameLab 2009) and Timandra Harkness ('a deadly wit' [Scotsman]) will prove - with the help of a mystery guest, a game show and the Grim Reaper. 

Do Stuff: Sustainability vs. Progress

North Tea Power Cafe - December 2010

Reviewed by Mark Iddon, panel member

Do Stuff is the initiative of Manchester architect, Ric Frankland, and aims to be a series of events on the subjects of design and sustainability with the intention to ‘listen - discuss - debate - Do!’ and will take place on a bi-monthly basis.

The first event took place in December 2010 at the North Tea Power café, Tib Street, in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, with a debate on the subject ‘Sustainability vs. Progress’.

Frankophilia!

An exhibition of artwork by Frank Sidebottom fans

Reviewed by Fat Roland November 2010

I've followed Frank Sidebottom from his surreal infancy on Granada TV and his cartoon adventures in print (Frank's Fantastic Oink! Page) to his recent revival on Channel M.

Following the passing of his creator Chris Sievey earlier this year, Timperley's silliest export is now the subject of a comprehensive exhibition at Salford University. I visited the show carrying the whole weight of my Frank fandom: this was either going to be, as Frank would have it, bobbins or fantastic.

Picasso: Peace and Freedom

Tate Liverpool: until 30 August 2010

A major exhibition bringing together over 150 works by Picasso from his "communist" period

Reviewed by Jane Turner August 2010

This exhibition reveals a fascinating new insight into the artist's life as a political activist and campaigner for peace, challenging the view of Picasso as creative genius, playboy and compulsive extrovert. 

Walls are Talking: Wallpaper, Art and Culture

Whitworth Art Gallery, until 30 Aug 2010

Reviewed by Dave Porter July 2010

This fascinating exhibition at the Whitworth Art Gallery is the first major UK Exhibition of artists' wallpaper with work by over 30 artists, including Damien Hirst, Andy Warhol and Sarah Lucas. It shows how artists have leapt on the possibilities that wallpaper offers to magnify and multiply their vision, so if you want art hanging on your walls, it now doubles up as wallpaper!

Repetition, of course, is the name of the game here and Warhol’s influence looms large, his Cows being a classic example of the power of one image repeated many times. But where Warhol leaves little to the imagination, some of the best pieces here are intricate and detailed montages of startling images and often highly-sexualised motifs.

Greenbuild Expo

Manchester Central 26 - 27 May 2010

Reviewed by Mark Iddon

The Greenbuild Expo took place in Manchester last week to showcase new innovative products for the construction industry to utilise for a green and sustainable future. There were many competing companies for solar water heating panels, rainwater harvesting systems (to recycle rainwater for use in the home) and taps with restrictors to avoid wastage.

There were also seminars, debates and discussions on how the industry is changing particularly in the housing and schools sectors. There is quite a lot of enthusiasm for these products, by companies looking at how they can re-market their company’s image with the prospect of a new green economy, and developers who are keen to see which products will fulfil the criteria both for government funding and to comply with new legislation. There is a lot of encouragement (coercion) from the government for new building to be more energy efficient and consume less energy over the building’s lifetime.

Shaped by War: Photographs by Don McCullin

Imperial War Museum North, Manchester

Reviewed by Jane Turner May 2010

I am immediately a little sceptical whenever I hear the words “internationally acclaimed architect” as I spent many years living opposite some of the ugliest concrete housing ever designed by one such award-winning architect - the housing only lasted around 15 years before becoming inhabitable and getting bulldozed in a momentous expression of tenant power. The Imperial War Museum however, designed by Daniel Libeskind, is though destined to last a little longer. Clad in a suitably war-like colour of grey aluminium, it is designed to represent a globe shattered by war, conflict, and man’s self-destruction with three shattered shards forming the building representing earth, air and water and has been described as a “visionary symbol of the effects of war”.

Housed in the museum are some powerful exhibitions that reveal how war has shaped and affected the lives of British and Commonwealth citizens since 1914. A perfect setting therefore, for the work of Don McCullin, considered to be one of Britain’s greatest war photographers and acclaimed worldwide for his grainy black and white images captured at the heart of many dangerous conflicts and perilous areas of wars.

Manchester Question Time organised by Total Politics, 11 February 2010

Event reviewed by Simon Belt

I've been to a wide variety of meetings about politics in my time, and this one at the City Inn Hotel in Manchester appealled because it was being organised by Total Politics as a Question Time event ahead of the forthcoming general election. This was my first Total Politics event, and first ever event at the City Inn - they asked for £400 for a room for 20-30 people for the Manchester Salon last year, and spending money on the room ahead of the travel costs of quality speakers isn't what I do. The format was a traditional three way head to head between Labour (Tony Lloyd MP, Manchester Central), Conservatives (Graham Brady MP, Altrincham & Sale West) and Liberal (Mark Hunter MP, Cheadle) with the fourth panel member being David Ottewell, chief reporter at Manchester Evening News. Shane Greer, executive editor of Total Politics chaired the event.

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Lifestyle Reviews

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