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Manchester reviewed
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Manchester lifestyle reviews

An installation by David Jacques

David Jacques: The Irlam House Bequest

Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Reviewed by Denis Joe February 2011

 

Another year, another Liverpool celebration!

 

If any city in the world thrives on it's past, it is Liverpool. Whether atoning for the slave trade ("Psst! Wanna buy a guilt trip?) or Ringo ("don't call me 'Ringo'") Starr making a prat of himself when "kick-starting" the year of Capital of Culture in 2008, nothing seems too tacky to present to the outside world.

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Manchester lifestyle reviews

Ilsa Parry

CING Lecture @ BoConcept

Ilsa Parry: Design trends in a tough climate

Reviewed by Simon Belt February 2011

In late 2009, Liverpool based designer Ilsa Parry made her mark on the nation by competing in BBC 2's Design for Life competition. When she won with her innovative Flo design, Ilsa spent six months at top French designer Philippe Starck’s design studio in Paris.

 

Ilsa has been lecturing as course leader for the BTEC national diploma for 3 dimensional design at Liverpool Community College since late 2007, so it seemed natural for her to be delivering the February Creative Industries Networking Group (CING) lecture.

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Manchester lifestyle reviews

Nam June Paik - Tate and FACT, Liverpool

Reviewed by Denis Joe February 2011

FACT (Foundation For Art & Creative Technology) is one of Liverpool’s success stories, having started out showing films at the Unity Theatre, and now has its own, impressive cinemas and galleries based in Wood Street. FACT is on Wood Street, and is situated amongst bars and nightclubs in some of the city’s side streets, parallel to the more famous Bold Street and just a five minute walk from Central Station.

 

Once it gets dark visitors to Liverpool will need only look up at sky and see the laser arc, commissioned especially for this event, by Peter Appleton, that joins FACT to Liverpool Tate gallery, both of whom are exhibiting works by Nam June Paik (July 20, 1932 – January 29, 2006) until 13th March.

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Manchester lifestyle reviews

Memento ParkCarey Young: Memento Park

Reviewed by Dave Porter February 2011

Cornerhouse presents a major touring solo show by artist Carey Young. Young, who grew up in Manchester and also studied here, is best known for her witty explorations of corporate and legal culture. Using a variety of media including video, photography, text and telephonic systems, Young examines these worlds, altering their language and tools to create fictional and absurd scenarios, which operate midway between performance and installation.

 

The main piece in this rich offering of Carey Young’s work at the Cornerhouse centres on an elephants’ graveyard of Soviet-era statues now huddled forlornly in a park in Budapest. The serenity of the setting and the suburban backdrop provide a jagged relief for Lenin and his comrades whose heroic poses and animated call to arms for the revolution go unnoticed by their verdant surroundings.  They look less like they’re directing a revolution than directing traffic and in one video clip a kitten resting on the giant foot of a Stakhanovite soldier silkily makes her way round to the back of the statue to seek shade, a poignant usage for a now redundant image.

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Manchester lifestyle reviews

Yesterday's Compositor

New media: the changing face of journalism

Article by Dave Porter January 2011

Journalism – and print media in particular – is in freefall. For most other people and most other professions the internet and the digital age has been a boon, for journalism it has presented its biggest challenge in nearly half a century.

 

Bigger certainly than the switch from hot metal to on-screen page design heralded by Eddie Shah and Murdoch’s Wapping fortress. The main casualties in that scuffle were the compositors – or comps – who had been used to enjoying bigger wages than many of the journalists whose papers they were in charge of printing.

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Manchester lifestyle reviews

Your Days Are Numbered

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. 

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Manchester lifestyle reviews

Adnan Sawar (host), Sara Darwin, Mark Iddon, Paul Iddon - photograph by Ric Frankland

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’.

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Manchester lifestyle reviews

Frank Sidebottom by Wayne Marsden of Design by Particular

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.

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Manchester lifestyle reviews

Picasso: Peace and Freedom

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. 

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Manchester lifestyle reviews

Zineb Sedira, Une Génération de Femmes, 1997

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.

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