Castlefield GalleryDavid Osbaldeston: Out of Time (The Light of Day / The Action of the Play)Preview: Thursday 15 April. 6-9pm – Everyone Welcome.Exhibition Continues: Friday 16 April – Sunday 6 June 2010David Osbaldeston: Out of Time (The Light of Day / The Action of the Play)Courtesy of the artists and Matts GalleryCastlefield Gallery is pleased to present a solo show of new work by David Osbaldeston, Out of Time (The Light of Day / The Action of the Play). Through manipulated images of news photography and a print series of interpretive book cover designs from Luigi Pirandello’s[1] celebrated play Six Characters in Search of an Author[2], the exhibition will explore relationships between the gallery and theatre staging, displacement, reality, illusion and social discord. The journalistic images are taken from photographic records made between the 1970’s and 1990’s of protests or accidents that report a breakdown of social and economic order such as the LA Riots[3], the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Waco Siege[4], the Piper Alpha disaster[5] and the Highway of Death[6]. Re-photographed, appropriated and re-presented by Osbaldeston with textual snippets, amplified in scale and printed on 1980s Ilford photographic paper; the works draw playful attention to the constructed nature of the photographic image. [1] Luigi Pirandello, (1867-1936). Italian dramatist and novelist.[2] Six Characters in Search of an Author, 1921, a play within a play in which 6 actors interrupt the rehearsal of another play and claim to be its true characters.[3] Los Angeles Riots, 1992. An uprising following the acquittal of four white police officers in the 1991 beating of Rodney King, a black man who had led Los Angeles police on a high-speed automobile chase. The beating was videotaped by a bystander and broadcast by news organizations.[4] Waco Siege, 1993. A fifty one day siege by federal agents of the Branch Davidian religious group’s commune headquarters outside Waco, Texas.[5] Piper Alpha disaster, 1988. An accident aboard the North Sea oil platform Piper Alpha in which 167 people died. The rig was devastated by a series of explosions, caused initially by a gas leakage. An official inquiry held into the disaster highlighted the vulnerability of offshore rigs.[6] The Highway of Death, 1991. An incident during the Gulf War in which Iraqi military personnel were attacked on Highway 80 by American aircraft and ground forces. The scenes of carnage became some of the most recognisable images of this war. See the gallery website for further information. http://www.castlefieldgallery.co.uk/Default.asp?eKey=333&eP=1Address: 2 Hewitt Street, Manchester, M15 4GB
CornerhouseContemporary Art Iraq Preview: Thursday 15 April. 6-9pm – Everyone Welcome.Exhibition continues: Fri 16 April to Sun 20 June The first comprehensive UK exhibition of new and recent contemporary art from Iraq since the first Gulf War, examining practices that are emerging with fresh perspectives from a culture marked by conflict and turmoil.See Cornerhouse gallery website for further information: http://www.cornerhouse.org/contemporaryartiraqAddress: 70 Oxford Street, Manchester M1 5NH, UK
Chinese Arts CentreLan Wei / Decaying Endanothermountainman (Stanley Wong)Preview Night: Thursday, 15th April. 5:30-7:30pm – Everyone Welcome.Exhibition continues: 16th April – 12th June 2010Lan Wei / Decaying End is anothermountainman’s first solo photography exhibition in the UK. It features a number of haunting large-scale photographic prints of abandoned, incomplete building projects from across Asia. Following the opening of its doors to foreign investment in China in the 1980s there was frenzied investment in real estate, which was exposed to corruption and contributed to the eventual collapse of the property market in the late 1990s. When the bubble burst huge numbers of building projects were abandoned and left unfinished. This wave of abortive building construction spread across other Asian cities that also experienced the same pattern of meteoric economic growth and collapse. The photographs in the exhibition were taken in China, Taiwan, Thailand, Cambodia, Turkey and Singapore.See Chinese Arts Centre website for further information: http://www.chinese-arts-centre.org/Address: Market Buildings, Thomas Street, Manchester, M4 1EU
Rogue Artists’ Studios & Project SpaceTom Hobson, In the blessed abyss of the eternal etherPreview: Thursday 15 April. 5-8pm – Everyone Welcome.Exhibition continues: 15th – 24th of April 2010 (By appointment only)Tom HobsonWith a monumental effort comparable to the great men of history and the inventiveness of a mad professor, Hobson has created a device for talking to the sky and turned mountains upside down for this (his first solo) exhibition. Much of his recent work responds to the realisation of his own physical limitations for understanding and addresses the edge of our conceptual powers. And despite the vacuous process involved in making One Million Decisions (in which he has placed a million dots in a meter square grid); or the mechanics of Purgatory (edited at speeds faster than the human eye functions thus rendering its sources invisible); Hobson’s work remains both a playful and engaging commentary on our shared visual experiences as he seeks to expose the magical in the commonplace and reveal the multiplicity and instability of the postmodern worldSee Rogue Artists’ Studios & Project Space website for further information: http://www.rogueartistsstudios.co.uk/Address: 66-72 Chapeltown Street, Piccadilly, Manchester, M1 2WH
[‘http://www.castlefieldgallery.co.uk/Default.asp?eKey=333&eP=1’, ‘http://www.cornerhouse.org/contemporaryartiraq’, ‘http://www.chinese-arts-centre.org/’, ‘http://www.rogueartistsstudios.co.uk/’]
