Dan Feeney

Whatever you like to call it, it is once again time for the touring and gigging silly season that is Autumn. And, following some gig and DJ hiccups in September, over at PYT we are ready to hit the ground running with October.

First and foremost, we are MEGA-excited about bringing those indie-pop scoundrels This Many Boyfriends down to Sheffield. They’ve been doing rather well of late, with their self-titled debut album picking up 6music radio play galore and rave reviews from the likes of the NME (who called them “the resurrection of timeless indie-pop”) and Q magazine no less! Along with the 90s slacker-rock of The Spills and some all-out noisyshambolopop (yes, we may have made that one up) from Sheffield’s C is for Calculus, this is going to be one hell of a lot of fun… and tickets will set you back a mere £5. So that’s:

This Many Boyfriends, with support from The Spills and C is for Calculus
Sunday 14th October, 7.30pm
The Harley

Facebook / Tickets
And here’s the Boyfs’ latest video, directed by the ace Nik Vestberg:

Next up, and not in entirely unrelated news, we are over the moon to be DJing at this year’s Swn Festival in Cardiff. We’ve had great fun DJing and generally participating in this city-wide festival for the past couple of years, but this year is EVEN MORE EXCITING! For not only will we be DJing at the aftershow for The Cribs (Ryan Jarman produced This Many Boyfriends’ debut record), we will be doing so alongside our excellent friends and purveyors of 90s indie-discos Modern Life is Rubbish, and the one and only Steve Lamacq! Not only is this a huge honour, but it’s going to be one hell of a party – the ultimate indie disco. So if you’re heading Swn-wards, please come and join us! So that’s:

PYT, Steve Lamacq and Modern Life is Rubbish @ The Cribs aftershow
The Moon Club, Womanby Street
Friday 19th October
11pm – 3am
Free for Swn Friday/4 day wristband holders

Facebook event here

And finally, just to keep the month going in these high spirits, we’ve got DAda’s first birthday to look forward to. PYT has found a happy home at DAda, so we’re certainly up for celebrating their special day. And to do so, we’re teaming up with Small Ideas – if these guys don’t know about it, it’s probably not worth listening to. They’ll be curating a stage throughout the day, with a PYT party to follow once the live music is done. At present full plans are under wraps, but we’ll be sure to let y’all know how things unfold. So that’s:

DAda’s First Birthday Party, with PYT and Small Ideas
Saturday 27th October
Afternoon til late
Free for All!

In the meantime, we’re going to nurse the prolonged hangovers caused by the excellent IndyManBeerCon – massive congratulations in order for Will and all the team at Port Street Beer House, and Dunk and all the team at Common, who put together this superb showcase of craft beer in the stunning surroundings of Victoria Baths. Looking forward to the 2013 edition!

PYT xx

Hi all,

It is with huge sadness that we have to announce that tomorrow night’s PYT gig with Withered Hand at The Harley is cancelled. Dan from Withered Hand has come down with a horrid chest infection, and has been advised by medical professionals that he is in no fit state to continue the tour. This is the first time that Dan has ever had to cancel a gig, and also the first time that we have, so as we are sure you understand it is something that is only happening because it is that serious. We were all really looking forward to the show, and will be looking into rescheduling a date with Withered Hand as soon as we can.

Given that Dan’s health is the prime concern at the moment we won’t be rushing to confirm a new show, so will be refunding all ticket holders. We do ask that anyone who bought tickets online through WeGotTickets drops us a quick email to hello(AT)pullyourselftogetherzine(DOT)co(DOT)uk, as we will be giving you all a discount on the rescheduled date, so want to make sure that we’ve got your contact details for when we can make any further announcements.

Once again, we are hugely sorry to be making this decision, and we are sure that you will all join us in wishing Dan a speedy and full recovery to health.

Thanks,
PYT

With Autumn (or ‘tourtumn’, as we’ve taken to calling it of late) just around the corner, we’re delighted to be able to confirm the support slots for our show with the excellent Withered Hand on the 23rd September.

First up, we’ve got Wakefieldians St Gregory Orange. They utilise field recordings, dense dream-like drone-scapes, spoken word, and noise-damaged electronic songcraft, creating music akin to Arab Strap at their blippy end of things. Having just released their fantastic second long-player ‘Midnight at the Sycamore Lounge’ the band have added an almost cinematic heap of dark humour to their sound, employed with clarity and intent, to propel narrative, or to ruminate.

And to open proceedings, Sheffield’s own Mini Skips will ease us into the evening with their gentlefolkysmileyindiepop. Two mainstays of the Sheffield indiepop scene, Vinnie and Markie’s music is intimate whilst also battering your face with poignantly dark humour. Lovely stuff.

So, in summary:

Withered Hand, with support from St Gregory Orange and The Mini Skips
Sunday 23rd September, The Harley
Tickets £6 from The Harley or Wegottickets

Hope to see you folks there!

PYT xx

Well hello there! How the devil are you all? Hope that the 'summer' has been treating you well thus far. Since last we spoke we've put on two of the finest gigs we have ever had the pleasure of working on, and are HUGELY DELIGHTED that so many people came out to see The School, Standard Fare and The Sweet Nothings (more of them in a moment) on a Monday night, and then decided to watch Jack Lewis' Awkward Energy, The Middle Ones and Izzy Isgate instead of the football! Thank you to all who played, came down, bought merch, danced and generally made it ace!

This time round we've got loads of exciting live music news, details of a special edition of the Pull Yourself Together clubnight at DAda this month, updates from the record label and more. Read on dear PYTer, read on…

Allo Again – Allo Darlin' coming back to Sheffield!

Allo Darlin' with support from This Many Boyfriends & The Sweet Nothings
Queens Social Club, Thursday 6th September

After a barnstorming party at Queens Social Club last time they came to Sheffield, we are absolutely delighted to welcome Allo Darlin' back to the City of Steel. Playing tracks from their universally acclaimed second album 'Europe' the band will definitely be in the mood to get people dancing along again! There are few things that spread quite as much joy as seeing these four people on a stage together, and we are stupidly happy to be able to welcome them back to Queens.

We can also confirm the terrific support bands for the evening. Opening things up on the night will be your favourite socialist popband The Sweet Nothings (who were fan-bloody-tastic at our gig with The School last month) and This Many Boyfriends will be getting everyone in the dancing mood ready for Allo Darlin'. We are very happy that This Many Boyfriends will be joining us after having to miss out on the fun at Queens last time.

As if all that popmusic isn't enough of a reason to come down to this gig, we will also be welcoming one of our favourite artist/designers – Sean Mort will be coming to town and setting up his beautiful poster stand at Queens. Sean's work is simply beautiful, you should remember him from his stunning Darren Hayman poster for us a few years back, and he'll have some lovely special edition prints of the poster for the gig on sale alongside his other work!

Tickets are £8 advance, and can be picked up from The Harley, The Wick at Both Ends and online at wegottickets.com

Good news – Withered Hand

Withered Hand with special guests
The Harley, Sunday 23rd September

Next up, Fence Collective's man of many words and many more beautiful songs Withered Hand is coming to The Harley for a very rare full band show ahead of the release of his new limited edition EP 'Inbetweens' which has been produced by Darren Hayman. Lauded by Jarvis Cocker, Rolling Stone and MOJO, Withered Hand is one of our favourite songwriters around, and blew us away so much at Indietracks last year that Hannah actually RAN to the merch tent to make sure he didn't sell out of copies of his glorious first album 'Good News.'

We have some great support acts in the offing too, and will let you know who they are very very soon!

Tickets are £6 advance, and available from The Harley & wegottickets.com

Salut! – Haiku Salut, Golden Fable & Robberie

Haiku Salut with Golden Fable & Robberie
The Redhouse, Friday 27th July

And before those two roll around, how about one of the best pop lineups you are going to see this summer? Haiku Salut are easily one of our favourite postindiepop (if you can think of a real genre they fit into then do share!) around, with their lilting mixture of accordions, ukes, glockenspiels, pianos, loopery and laptopery creating something that sounds like mum playing the Amelie soundtrack. They are seriously great.

Support on the night comes via Sheffield's hotest folkpop band of the moment Robberie, who will make you fall in love with this city in ways you didn't expect, and the fantastic Golden Fable. Golden Fable have been all over the radio this week, hitting 6 Music, Radio One and more as news of their debut album release spreads. This will be a rare chance to see them in a small venue before people cotton on to how great they are!

Tickets are £4 advance from wegottickets.com

One of Two – Sky Larkin PYT Takeover!

So by now we would hope that you are all very aware of the fact that Pull Yourself Together happens on the last Saturday of EVERY MONTH at DAda Bar in Sheffield. You do? Good. Well, we are super excited that the clubnight this month is going under a bit of change of face, as we hand over the wheels of steel to one of our favourite bands. Katie (also of them Wild Beasts) and Nestor from Sky Larkin will be swooping into Sheffield on Saturday 28th July to babysit PYT for us whilst we head off for a jaunt around the country. Anyone who knows Sky Larkin's music will know that this is a real treat, as they are ACE (and indeed permanent fixtures in our record bag for DJ sets) and if Katie's recent set at Rolled School is anything to go by then you will not be able to stop dancing all night!

And finally… – Sheffield, city of POP!

The Sheffield Pop Weekender
August Bank Holiday Weekend, 25-27th August at DAda, The Redhouse & The Rutland Arms

Woah! Pop! HURRAH! This is shaping up to be ONE HELL OF A WEEKEND, as the pop promoters of Sheffield join forces to bring the finest indiepop sounds around to the city. We are over the moon not only to be involved, but to be able to welcome one of our all time favourite clubnights to DJ at the opening party with us. Clicky this link to see the Faceache page with all the info, or head to Anorak if you don't do social networking!

And that's that for now. Those of you braving the rain at Indietracks this weekend, we'll see you in a few hours! Everyone else, stay warm! Might we suggest that this new video from PYT Records alumni Patterns might be a good place to start…

PYT xx

Ok, so we’ve been meaning to do this for quite a while, but it is still just about in time. Long Division is tomorrow, and we are pretty much certain that it is going to prove to be an incredible day of music. With a line-up which is as much about promoting the best new music in Wakefield and West Yorkshire as it is about the big names, it will prove to be a day full of hidden gems. Here are a few picks from Team PYT. That said, please don’t listen to a word we say – the more of you that listen, the less chance we have of getting into the venues…

Get your clash finder here

There is only one place to start, and that is with the first act of the day. Thankfully the festival opens with one of our favourite people around, as The Passing Fancy get Long Division off to an upbeat, smiling, fun pop start. Wonderful. We can promise that you will walk away from The Hop with a real spring in your step once Paul PF is finished with you.

Then we hit clash central, and by only one o’clock. We will be off to the Town Hall to see our very own Advances in Mathematics, whose shoegazing postrock will settle things down nicely. Across town you could also be watching the second brilliant Wakey band of the day, returning hero Mi Mye. We’ve not seen Mi Mye in far far too long, but still know that they are bloody brilliant.

Next up, dash to The Orangery to do some brilliant, driving indiepop from Fever Dream. Don’t get too settled though, as you’ll want to pop around the corner to the Theatre Royal to see the North East’s finest noisy weird timed popsters Mammal Club. In a theatre. Brilliant.

CLASH TWO – The Twilight Sad v Kid Canaveral. Bugger. NOISE NOISE NOISE v ace pop. Oh bugger. This one is difficult to call. I ADORE Twilight Sad, but really really want to see Kid Canaveral. Shit.

Oh, and once that decision is out of the way, it is a three way clash as PYT favourites This Many Boyfriends blow the socks off folks at The Hop, Withered Hand holds your hand and convinces you that the world is an amazing place at Henry Boons, and the mighty promising Fourth Time Believer hit Velvet.

Right, made a choice there? Now the hardest one of the day. Fanzine v Standard Fare v Runaround Kids v Francois & the Atlas Mountains. Crikey. I definitely want to see all of these bands. I suspect that the chance to see Runaround Kids tearing apart their own city on a massive day for music in Wakefield will win out.

Hang about, Napoleon IIIrd is playing at Theatre Royal? BONEY THIRD IN A THEATRE! This could well be the best thing you’ll see all day. FACT.

AND breathe. Then start again. By 7 o’clock I will hopefully be drunk enough to not notice that I have to choose between two of my favourite bands in the world, and also one of the local bands who I most want to see. Young British Artists are by far and away the most exciting band in the country right now, and have been for the past few years. I can’t miss them. BUT, they are on at the same time as At Brut, the band who convinced me many moons ago that writing a fanzine about music was something I absolutely HAD to do. So, watch YBAs, then run to Art Brut, but potentially don’t see all of them because St. Gregory Orange have recorded one of the best new records of the year, and they are on at Theatre Royal.

Back to Mustangs to see another brilliant Wakefield band as The Spills take on the challenge of playing a sexy cowboy themed bar, and they are bound to whip up a noisy bouncy sweaty brilliant mess. Which is exactly the wrong frame of mind to be in to head back the theatre for the pure beauty of Bill Wells and Aidan Moffat.

Half nine pits The Vaselines directly opposite The Longcut. I guess this is a decision which will have to be made based on condition by this point, noisy jumpy shouty sarcasm or noisy dancey running around the stage dancing.

Our Long Division will finish where it started, at The Hop, watching good friends Dutch Uncles making the kind of pop music which deserves to close this wonderful day of music. Unless of course those rumours of a secret set for the after party prove to have any substance…

As an add on to all this fun on Saturday, we would like to extend an invitation to all the hungover folks of Long Division to join us at The Hepworth Wakefield on Sunday, where an afternoon of acoustic music, stunning architecture, amazing artwork and a bloody brilliant cafe will soothe all your pains away.

ENJOY FOLKS! Oh, and if anyone sees Dean from Rhubarb Bomb without a drink at any point then make sure to put one into his hand – he bloody well deserves to enjoy his day!

Well, 2012 is looking rather Indiepoptastic isn’t it? Just as a small re-cap of some of the highlights so far, it seems about time for a video-update, especially as every one of these super bands is playing this year’s Indietracks festival – hooray!

Tigercats – Full Moon Reggae Party

It’s been around for a wee while now, but its worth saying that Tigercats’ debut album, Isle of Dogs, is a real treat; indiepop at its best, in turns toe-tapping, infectious, joyous and – if I’m allowed to get away with saying this – life-affirming. Full Moon Reggae Party is very much a party track, and the video, animated by the band’s own Duncan Barrett is a lovely bit of tropical, psychedelic loveliness.

tigercatsband.com

Allo Darlin’ – Capricornia

It shouldn’t really come as any surprise that Allo Darlin’s second album, Europe, is a bit of a blinder. More mature and assured than their debut, and yet still as tender and heartfelt both lyrically and musically. Capricornia is a perfect showcase of this, and the video – directed by ‘Friend of PYT’ Nik Vestberg, is rather super.

allodarlin.com

This Many Boyfriends – (I Should Be A) Communist

Well, Nik’s been a little bit busy really, as he’s also directed this little beauty for This Many Boyfriends, for their new single which is due out later this month. Anything that involves bear suits and the Brudenell gets our vote.

thismanyboyfriends.com

Standard Fare – 051107

Another one that’s been a while, but still worth revisiting as far as we’re concerned! A train into the Peak District provides a perfect backdrop to this singalong gem.

standardfare.co.uk

Well, things are getting busy for PYT it would seem! So much so we’re offering you not one, but two gigs in just one week. Ahead of the Jack Lewis show at the Red House, we’re VERY happy to be welcoming those swoony popstrels The School to Sheffield. I’m sure you won’t be surprised when we tell you that their new album, Reading Too Much Into Things Like Everything, is simply gorgeous (and also happens to be released tomorrow!), and we can’t think of a better way to brighten up a Monday evening…

The School

Ahead of releasing their Bacharach-esque new LP, we are delighted to bring Cardiff’s finest popsters to Sheffield. Combining such influences as indie-pop and the brightest shimmering 60s productions, The School’s style is a Brit version of sunshine pop with moments of light and shadow, the kind of infectious, hyper-melodic pop you can simultaneously cry and dance to. Sophisticated, happy songs, with a little melancholy thrown in them, inspired by The Beach Boys (and the fantastic American Spring, produced by Brian Wilson), The Beatles, Phil Spector and girl bands from the 60’s. Not forgetting, of course, other current bands with whom they share references and tastes, bands that also wrap their sweet melodies in wonderful keyboard and string arrangements, bands like Belle and Sebastian, Saturday Looks Good To Me, Camera Obscura, Jim Noir, Lucky Soul, The Brunettes or Little My.

http://theschoolband.co.uk/

Standard Fare

In a year where indiepop records are coming thick and fast, Standard Fare set the standard (sorry, pun intended) right at the top to kick things off with their terrific second long-player Out of Sight, Out of Town. As ever, it is a delight to be able to put on one of our very favourite bands.

http://standardfare.co.uk/

The Sweet Nothings

You already know who The Sweet Nothings are right? They’re that Sheffield band that make the noisy but twinkly popsongs about accounting and socialism. They’re dead good. You’ll really like em.

http://thesweetnothings.co.uk/

Tickets £5 adv from http://www.wegottickets.com/event/165793

We hope that this dispatch finds you good and well. We are in a pretty good mood if we tell the truth; this message is full of really exciting news, and as we write it there is sunshine poring through the windows at PYT Towers, we've got the new Tigercats album blasting out, and a nice warm mug of tea. Bliss. So, what can you expect over the next however long it takes you to read this? Exciting news about the new PYT clubnight in Sheffield, details of a new gig we are putting on with Jack Lesser Lewis' new band, and an update on where our PYT artists are up to at the moment!

Before we get going though we would like to say a massive thank you to everyone who came over to The Hepworth Wakefield last month to join us at the Artwalk and watch some pretty amazing music in a stunning location. Patterns, Runners and Her Name Is Calla blew everyone away in the beautiful auditorium overlooking the River Calder. Then of course Tom Morris wandered upstairs into the art gallery proper and played an acoustic set that noone will ever forget. So, huge thanks to all the bands, and to anyone who came to the show. We're hoping that it won't be the last you see of PYT at The Hepworth!

On with the news…

New PYT Clubnight! Pull Yourself Together at DAda!

When we moved PYT over the Sheffield we always knew that it would take a bit of time to find a new home for the night, because we needed to find a venue where it felt just right. Well, after quite a lot of time spent drinking in lovely places around the city we have found the right one! Not only that, they want us to do a disco! So, we are absolutely delighted to announce that as the end of April the last Saturday of the month means only one thing – Pull Yourself Together at DAda!

Here at PYT we think that Saturday nights should be about having a great time with friends right? Well, what better place to do that than at an ace disco! Pull Yourself Together will be the place to combine these things, and have an awesome night dancing to some of your favourite popsongs. After three and a bit years soundtracking Manchester's Northern Quarter, PYT are ready to carry on in just the same way in the Steel City – great popsongs, brilliant drinks and loads of fun. You bring the friends, we'll do the rest.

For anyone who doesn't know it, DAda is a cracking bar on Trippet Lane, which is one street down from West Street in the city centre. It's got a lovely feel to it, and most importantly has room for dancing and a brilliant selection of drinks – it is a Thornbridge pub! We're really looking forward to making DAda our new home, and hope that you can join us on Saturday 28th April to celebrate our first night!

PYT-o-matic presents… Jack Lesser Lewis' Awkward Energy!

We are super excited to announce the first of a heap of gigs we are going to be putting on around Sheffield over the coming months. We're teaming up with our good pals at Pop-o-matic! to bring Jack Lesser Lewis to Sheffo. I know a lot of people might not agree with this, but we reckon Jack is actually the cooler of the Lewis brothers, and can't wait to see him at The Redhouse!

PYT-o-matic presents…

Jack Lesser Lewis' Awkward Energy
The Middle Ones

Fri 15th June, The Redhouse
Tickets £4 advance

In case you don't know of Jack's work, check out his most recent release, a stupidly catchy popsong about a phone conversation with a cat who lives across the street.

Fresh from having their music tweeted around the world by Nelly Furtardo (no, seriously!), our boys Advances in Mathematics are getting ready for a couple of exciting live outings soon. First up, they are in Manchester this very evening playing with the super hyped Sleep Party People at The Castle. After that, they are going to be heading across the Pennines to play at the quite brilliant looking Long Division Festival. Advances are playing on the Town Hall stage, alongside some our favourite acts of the past few years – Runaround Kids, Evans The Death and Zoey Van Goey. It's going to be amazing. 

UPCOMING DATES

16th April - The Castle, Manchester with Sleep Party People and Famy 
2nd June - Long Division Festival, Wakefield

Moustache shaved, Fulhäst stubble emerging…

As we reported last time we spoke, Moustache of Insanity have lived up to their Album of Death and popped their pop-clogs. However, Nik Moustache is back already with his new project Fulhast. He's already just about finished his first release which will be coming out through our good pals over at Fika Recordings later in the year, and now he's ready to hit the road. Expect things to be even more Game Boy / Commodore 64 / rubbish casios based – but just as much fun. We can't wait!

UPCOMING DATES

5th May - The Oddbox Weekender, London
31st August – Indiepop Days, Berlin

And finally…

Oh, and before we go we have to say a massive HAPPY BIRTHDAY to our clubnight-brothers-from-different-mothers Underachievers Please Try Harder who clocked up their 4th Birthday this weekend. From everything we've heard it was the usual mix of amazing bands and brilliant fun dancing, so good that they were previewed in The Guardian. Congrats Dave & Kirsty!

PYT xx

HURRAH! We are absolutely over the moon to announce that we are starting a new clubnight in Sheffield!

When we moved PYT over the Sheffield we always knew that it would take a bit of time to find a new home for the night, because we needed to find a venue where it felt just right. Well, after quite a lot of time spent drinking in lovely places around the city we have found the right one! Not only that, they want us to do a disco! So, we are absolutely delighted to announce that as the end of April the last Saturday of the month means only one thing - Pull Yourself Together at DAda!

Here at PYT we think that Saturday nights should be about having a great time with friends right? Well, what better place to do that than at an ace disco! Pull Yourself Together will be the place to combine these things, and have an awesome night dancing to some of your favourite popsongs. After three and a bit years soundtracking Manchester’s Northern Quarter, PYT are ready to carry on in just the same way in the Steel City – great popsongs, brilliant drinks and loads of fun. You bring the friends, we’ll do the rest.

For anyone who doesn’t know it, DAda is a cracking bar on Trippet Lane, which is one street down from West Street in the city centre. It’s got a lovely feel to it, and most importantly has room for dancing and a brilliant selection of drinks – it is a Thornbridge pub! We’re really looking forward to making DAda our new home, and hope that you can join us on Saturday 28th April to celebrate our first night!

The brilliant poster comes from the pen of Adam at Croatoan Design, and we think it is absolutely ace!

a couple of weeks ago i visitied birmingham for the first time, or at least the first time properly. my previous experiences of the city were a few changes in the depressing underground labyrinth of new street station, and an exciting if ultimately fruitless trip to villa park. here was a city that i actually knew very little about, despite it being one of the biggest in the country. so here was an opportunity over a few days to work out what birmingham actually is, what makes this supposed second city tick?

i’ll start with the good. in terms of place specific cultural experiences, the pen room is one of the finest museums i have been to in a while. whilst walking through the jewellery quarter (which is definitely still full of sparkling things) a tourist information sign for a pen museum was exactly the kind of thing that would turn my head. the pen room opens with a bold claim, that at the height of the city’s industrial output three quarters of everything written in the world used a pen from birmingham. big talk. whilst i have no means available to me to even begin to verify this, i can confirm that there are lots of different pens in this place. more pens that i have ever seen in my life. i had a go at making a steel pen nib. i wrote my name in braille. i looked at lots of pens. a hugely enthusiastic and knowledgeable volunteer provided a bridging point and means of engaging with a pretty overwhelming collection, and thus showed the importance of places like this. if cities and communities are to retain a grip on their cultural and social past, then places like this need to be supported. if you are ever in birmingham i really do suggest heading to the pen room, and make sure to leave a donation to support their work.

from pens, to art. ikon gallery had always been one of those names that i knew, but couldn’t see a time that i would be able to visit. before considering the exhibitions within, the gallery building is marvelous. housed in a converted neo-gothic school, ikon makes great use of its space. in particular, the glass lift inside the building does a great job of presenting the interior of the space; it does that showing you the outside of a building but on the inside trick that i always gawp at (see also the great court at the british museum and john rylands library). the lift also has the added extra of housing one of martin creed’s sound installations, which was a welcome treat as just a week earlier i had failed to find his similar work at the festival hall. i digress.

the three display spaces in the gallery work really well, set across two and a bit floors. in terms of the work on display, timur noviko’s fabric works capture perestroika-era soviet life in a way that i’ve never thought about it before, and his seven pictures on rice paper, produced after the artist had gone blind, are simple, beautiful and inspiring. on the first floor a collection of john flaxman’s sketches are aesthetically interesting, but i’ll admit don’t do a huge amount for me. they are very well displayed though.

however, the space that interested me most in ikon is the ‘tower room.’ currently home to a video installation by/of the angolan artist nastio mosquito, this room seems to exist outside of the rest of the gallery spaces, in a nowhere ground between the first and second floors. from studying the building from the outside you can see where the tower fits in, yet it somehow felt like it was in a different place to me once inside. i’d be really interested to see other uses of this room, as whether it can live up to the title it has been given.

from ikon i drift towards the heart of civic birmingham. the town hall (where i would later see steve reich and the london sinfonietta perform within beautiful surroundings) proudly sits next to the council house and birmingham museum and art gallery. these are big buildings, built by industrialist proud of their city. i pick up shades of leeds here, overblown and unabashed grandstanding in civic terms. the victoria square into chamberlain square run of public space is really well done, and features everything you expect of a regenerated city centre – large scale buildings set around a modern sculpture and/or water feature, and the remains of sculptures which used to dominate the space but are now somewhat overlooked. not necessarily a criticism, certainly not when you consider the issues of public/private spaces in this city (more on that later).

the entrance to the museum and art gallery houses a memorial which i think capture the essence of the boom in museum culture and its civilising aims - by the gains of industry we promote art. you do the hard work, and here we will educate you. on walking up the stairs you are punched in the face by the grandure of the round room, a vast space crammed with paintings on pretty much every available point of the walls which reach upwards to the high domed ceiling. this is a fantastic entry point, and shows something of the respect with which the elders of birmingham past viewed their cultural duties.

with limited time in the gallery, i soaked up the wonderful collection of modern british art which included some brilliant examples of lanyon, heron, hepworth, moore and epstein. there is also a great display from new art west midlands, the highlights of which were grace a williams’ work on notions of photography and art, and lizzie prince’s drawings inspired by brutalist geometry.

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what of birmingham the city though? there are signs of interesting things happening culturally, though i would also note that in the little time i was there i didn’t feel like there was any kind of coherent arts scene, in a way that manchester, sheffield, leeds, nottingham and liverpool have. there are signs of interesting architectural conversations trying to happen around the city, especially with the new library building which i will definitely want to see once it is topped out. however, the overarching feeling i left the city with was one of unease at being constantly ‘managed’ through spaces. pretty much every journey on foot through the city is forced to wind through an enclosed private space, be it the icc’s deluge of conference rooms, the premiere retail experience of the mailbox, the confusion of corporate non-identity of the cube or paradise forum shopping centre. there is a cloying sense of paranoia that is enforced on you as a pedestrain, knowing that you are merely walking from the view of one cctv control room to another, becoming another footfall on a visitor counter whilst being subjected to piped sound and recycled air. birmingham is by no means alone in this approach of managing public/private space, just take a walk through liverpool one or wakefield’s trinity walk to get the same experience. as someone who loves exploring cities and discovering their identity through their streets, what i learnt about birmingham is that it is more interested in commerce than retaining a coherent city identity. which maybe is exactly what the identity of the city is; commerce, conferences and chain coffee.

last week i took my first ever stroll through hyde park, on one of the really icy days towards the back-end of the week before the ‘snow event’ hit the uk. it was really lovely, seeing all the birds casting around on the serpentine and breathing in the fresh air of a large london park. i think these are the things which more and more are going to join up the dots of my london exploration. nice park to walk around – check; really impressive art gallery nearby – check; mission accomplished.

so, on this occasion i was in the park so as to head towards the serpentine gallery. i will admit that up until this point the gallery existed in my head as a name that i head read before, and as a point on a hand drawn map from a friend which recommended the bookshop there as the best repository of art books in the city. (they weren’t wrong about this, but i only had five minutes and no money to spend in there, so will have to return on another occasion to take full advantage of this terrific shop!)

on display until the end of this week (sunday 27 january) is an exhibition of work by the lithuanian film-maker, artist and poet jonas mekas. i hadn’t been aware of quite how much a part of the new york avant-gard mekas had been, which i presume is why one of the first films you reach in the display is documenting a night in with john lennon, yoko ono, andy warhol and more eating dumplings. here is mekas as artist within a circle. yet i feel that if anything this piece was at odds with the rest of the exhibition, which casts the artist’s process and approach as based on something quite different to this somewhat showboating, namedropping video. perhaps that is just my reading of it.

in the time i spent in the gallery three pieces really stood out to me as capturing the essence of jonas mekas’ work, combining poetic-film-making with filmic-poetry. as a film-maker he is best known for his style of ‘film diaries’ which sensitively record the day-to-day, focusing mainly on his family and the arts community of new york. it is this foregrounding of the everyday which i found so captivating. idylls of semeniskiai sees a combination of a 29 poem cycle studying nature and the acts of life in the artist’s native lithuania in the 1940s, coupled with image which he recorded on a return in 1971. the two elements are combined with a lightness of touch which allows both to exist, whilst their combination brings a sense of place to both. this piece shows well the static method of display moving images which runs throughout this exhibition, taking three or four frames of a film, and printing them as a split second glimpse of life. with the poems describing the acts of life, and the images capturing an essence of activity, both media lend differing methods of ‘animation’ to a shared subject with real impact.

further down the same park facing room lavender piece resumes this theme of capturing and displaying life, with no interjection to guide thoughts in a certain direction. sixteen screen display different 16mm films, capturing fragments of activity from across mekas’ life. a view out of a snowy window counterbalances a self-portrait of the artist dancing around his office, alongside images of family trips out with children. my notes for this piece boil down to five words, which i think do it about as much justice as i can. “life. noise. snow. movement. travel.”

these notions of recording life, interspersed with the rhythm of life, come together perfectly in outtakes from the life of a happy man, which is being premiered as part of this exhibition. here mekas has taken an assortment of offcuts of film, the pieces of life which he hasn’t used in artworks before, and brings them together into a feature-length piece. these are outtakes of homelife, the city, nature, lithuania, family and more. this assemblage of life is pieced together in a non-linear random order, meaning that there is no consistent ‘story arc’ to be following, with the artist instead placing the viewer in a position where they are to observe life, rather than seek a narrative within it. i feel that this is what i will take away about mekas’ approach, the observing is more important than the story, the singularity of activity alone is of huge importance. displaying this film in the domed central room of the serpentine gallery is a master stroke, as the viewer cannot be anything but immersed within the installation. as an onlooker you almost become part of the process, your being there observing these observations is almost an intertextual layer of interpretation.

simply put, this is a wonderful exhibition. if you are in or around london this week i fully endorse getting yourself to the serpentine and spending at least a couple of hours absorbing this.

a few weeks before christmas i visited a part of the coast of england which i had never had any cause to go near before. as someone who is quite accustomed, and indeed a hearty supporter of, walks along abandoned beaches in winter, this was obviously a quite exciting prospect. whilst we were based in camber, which i would definitely recommend as a terrific winter beach – camber sands was a huge expanse of nothing, it was the short hop down the coast to dungeness that left a lasting impression.

situated at the dropping off point of kent on the east coast, dungeness is a headland like no other i have seen in this country. as the road winds towards the coast there is a certain point where you switch from being in the uk to regarding an ‘other place.’ the vast expanse of, well, not much, feels far more like the images you see of abandoned scandanavian coastal regions than britain. following signs for the old lighthouse, the barely marked road flanked on one side by ‘the village’ on one side and the expanse of shingle on the other.

the accommodation of dungeness village resembles a cross between railway carriages, tin huts and sheds. at the time i felt this was a mere observation, but it turns out that the majority of the chalet-esque huts are actually built around the base block of railway carriages from the point in the headland’s history when the southern railway owned the majority of the land. these are building constructed to stand up to bracing elements, but also to retain a sense of impermanence. one picks up a sense of a classic ‘stay indoors until the strangers pass’ spaghetti western in terms of atmosphere, though then again i did visit early-ish on a saturday morning, with the only people out and about on the ‘streets’ an assortment of folks gauping at the bleakness (like myself), fishermen (who one presume are all very accustomed to this view) and twitchers who had ventured down from the rspb reserve. that said, the britannia inn was hugely welcoming. there was something quite fantastic about drinking in what felt like the last pub in the country, the warmth of the open fire and strange collection of keyrings almost accentuating the nothingness outside.

the beach at dungeness is famed for being one of the largest expanses of shingle in the world, and as such is of ecological and scientific importance. the headland is protected through various means, including designation as a national nature reserve, special protection area, special area of conservation and a site of specific scientific interest. december wasn’t the right time to go hunting for wildlife, though some research suggests that this part of the world is home to a host of rare spiders, beetles, moths and bees. on my visit, the main focus was on taking a wander along the boardwalk over the shingle to reach the coast.

on the headland itself there are three main landmarks which standout when looking back from the coast. the most attractive two points are the lighthouses which stand at either end of the main residential stretch, with the nuclear power station lurking in the background. at one end is the 1901 built high light tower/the old lighthouse. this name could be seen as something of a misnomer, given that it is actually the fourth lighthouse which has stood on this stretch of coastline. due to the shifting nature of the sea, the beacons constructed in 1615, 1635 and 1790 all became increasingly redundant as the coast receded, meaning that the growing shingle banks were creating a greater distance between the beacons and the ships they were to guide. the light from the 1901 lighthouse, first lit in 1904,  could be seen from 18 miles away. however, the building of the power station in the 1950s blocked the beam from the lighthouse, thus rendering it as redundant as those which preceded it. however, this lighthouse escaped the bulldozer, and stands now as a tourist attraction.

the fifth dungeness lighthouse was first lit in 1961, and continues to provide a beacon for sailors along the east coast now. where the old lighthouse has a very traditional fat at the bottom tapering towards lantern design, this 60s piece of utilitarian engineering stands like an interjection of the modern world into the forgotten surroundings of dungeness, though with far more conventional beauty that the behemoth-esque lines of the nuclear power stations which sit beyond the old lighthouse. i think the 1961 lighthouse is possibly the focal point of this conurbation, but then again i am a sucker for that era of design.

i’ll also posit a controversial point; i’m moved to argue that the power stations actually add to the feel of dungeness. there is something about the looming presence of the huge buildings which offsets the cluster of huts which make up the village – the power stations lend a sense of solidness which adds to the accumulated emptiness of the rest of the landscape, a concrete concretion within the shingle.

yet it is not the power stations which characterise this area. dungeness is all about the relationship between the shingle, sea, rails and time. the human hand shows itself in the placement of objects, yet it is the battle between object, elements and the clock which give this area a real sense of place, a place which is nowhere yet could not exist anywhere but here. dungeness is about huts and boats which were once by the sea, but have been left to decay as the sea continued its journey away from the english coast, receding back into itself, leaving these objects as remainders of a time which may have passed 10 days ago, 10 years ago, 10 generations ago. it is this complex relationship which may yet prove the final undoing of dungeness too, with some theorists positing that the sea will return inland within the next 150 years or so, leaving only the lighthouses above the waves as a reminder of the lives which once floated here.

twelve months on from the last time i wrote about the year in art, i am going to open it with pretty much the same words. a lot has happened over the past 12 months, and i would not have been expecting to close the year out working at a national gallery, having left behind a city i had just been falling for. yet these things happen don’t they? it also means that over the course of 2012 i have shifted from spending my days in the most exciting new gallery around to working with a collection of major historic importance to this country and beyond. as i have continued to develop a relationship with the appreciation of art, here are a handful of shows which stood out for me over the course of 2012…

republic of the moon, fact

one of the first exhibitions which i saw this year, and easily one of the most enjoyable. here fact brought the moon to liverpool, with seven artists declaring their vision for lunar life. the standout work was definitely agnes meyer brandis’ the moon goose analogue, a fantastic project which followed the artist putting a team of geese through their training ready to fly to the moon. alongside the documentation of the training regime the artist had constructed a full lunar control room from which you could see the ‘astronauts’ at work on their moon base (also known as pollinaria in italy).

bill drummond: ragworts, site gallery

for this exhibtion dummond created a series of ‘scores’ which provided the soundtrack to the city of sheffield. placing words into a world without music, drummond created a new means for negotiating thoughts about the city, how it relates to the inhabitants, and visa versa. the scores were placed throughout the city, and led followers around sheffield, with instructions to say hello to birds along the way amongst other actions. seeing the scores together in the gallery space at site, all of a sudden the static words on the page became a passionate landscape vision of a city. this was truly wonderful.

heather & ivan morison, ben rivers and david thorpe – the hepworth wakefield

the first of two exhibitions from my former place of work, the spring 2012 group show brought together three displays looking at notion of utopia and apocalypse. i did enjoy david thorpe’s intricate cabinets and paintings, but this exhibition was really about the interplay between ben rivers’ film slow action and heather & ivan morison’s installation/object theatre/puppet performance anna. where rivers created/edited four forms of utopia, the morisons constructed a world in a state of assault from creeping ice based on anna kavan’s fiction. to have had the opportunity to work with these displays was an absolute joy.

louisa may parker – bank street arts

louisa may parker works with notions of drawing in a way very similar to an artist who appeared in this list last year, and i think that is one of the things which i saw in this display in one of the front rooms of bank street arts in sheffield. alongside a series of intricate and beautiful works on paper, the artist had installed table, book – a sculpture/drawing which consisted of a table, book and weight covered entirely in graphite.

jeremy deller: joy in people – the hayward gallery

i’m not sure that there is much to be said about jeremy deller which hasn’t already been said. ever since seeing his procession at manchester international festival in 2009, i have felt a connection with deller’s work – and more importantly the inspiration behind it. here is an artist who is more interested in the people he is making art about that creating some vaunted conceptual piece. this retrospective at the hayward gallery gathered together work from across the artist’s career, from a recreation of the exhibition he staged in his parents house through to the battle of orgreave (which was also shown at the wonderful s1 artspace this year).

stuart roy clarke: homes of football – national football museum

i have loved stuart roy clarke’s photography for a long time. family holidays as a kid tended to head towards the lake district, which for me was always a great things as it meant i could pester my dad to take me to the homes of football gallery in ambleside. kicking things off for the newly manchester-ed national football museum, clarke’s photography more than ever reminds me about why i love football, at a time when my attachment to the top/professional ranks of the game is growing weaker with each passing bout of silliness which is tearing football apart. much like deller’s art revolves around participants, clarke’s photography is about the things, and more importantly the people around football. don’t expect pictures of big name players engaged in prepared dance routines; this is football from the terraces, and for the terrace. a triumph. (oh, and did i mention that the display is soundtracked by british sea power?)

ansel adams: photography from the mountains and sea – national maritime museum

another display of photography, this time from one of the most iconic american photographers of the twentieth century. i think possibly the most affecting images in this exhibition are not the huge waterscapes for which adams is rightly famous, but actually the handful of photographs which were taken by a teenage adams, with a simple box brownie camera. the depth of image which he was capturing even at this stage when he was learning how photography worked is stunning.

richard long and luke fowler – the hepworth wakefield

my final pick of the year, and the second at the hepworth wakefield, includes two artists whose work always inspires me. to have had the chance to see both of them in action whilst installing their work, and get to have a chat with them only acted to confirm how much i love their work. in this display a selection of richard long’s works on paper were installed alongside three large scale floor pieces, one floor to ceiling wall drawing and a prototype grass sculpture. alongside these very physical pieces, luke fowler’s film the poor stockinger, the luddite cropper and the deluded followers of joanna southcott delved into the workers’ education association and the writing of e.p. thompson in and around yorkshire. the same traits of editing, sound and linear camera movement can be seen through this piece and fowler’s hugely well deserved turner prize nominated all divided selves. on face value it isn’t overly clear how well these two artists would complement each other in a gallery space, but the shift between the natural world and evolution of education was actually a real masterstroke.

i am really really excited to let you all know that this week i have been invited to represent the city of sheffield over on the northern spirit theatre company’s ‘a wondrous place’ project. northern spirit is a fantastic company, who are putting together a new work for 2013, and as part of the research for this they have invited some of the best writers from around the north to celebrate where they live, thus entering into a process of finding out what ‘the north’ means as an idea, as a place, and as a community.

i am truly honoured to have been asked to contribute as one of the ‘spirited people with a surprising perspective on places in the north,’ and to be writing alongside folks like natalie bradbury from the shrieking violet, short story writer amy roberts from liverpool and sheffield’s own doodler and writer missy tassles to name but the writers who have come before me – and i know there are great people yet to come! in a very exciting turn of events the whole process was featured on the guardian’s northerner blog last week, and i fully recommend that you head over to the website and check the amazing work that is already up from the past three weeks.

i will be guest curating the website all week, so expect a blend of architecture, music, walking and vague nonsense on a daily basis!

there is something really enjoyable about visiting a new gallery, especially if it means getting to see a city which you have previously seen only from the train. or maybe from the station, as i reckon i’ve drank coffee there before, but that is another unfinished rhetorical conversation for my head. i had wanted to visit nottingham contemporary for a while, even though i didn’t really know that much about it. i had a vague memory of seeing an interesting piece about the gallery on the culture show, but beyond that there was nothing that could guide my steps as i jumped on the train from sheffield.

that big flashy sign up at the top of that page was the first sight i caught of the gallery, and i’ll admit it didn’t exactly set my heart racing – it isn’t a design rich logo now is it? however, this signpost stood at the top of a staircase which led down to the cafe terrace, which on the day i visited was bathed with mid-morning sunshine, the perfect place for a coffee before embarking on the gallery. first impressions were of interest at how the building worked. from this point, at the very bottom of the building and looking up, the gallery appeared to shoot straight up out of the land for three or four storeys, yet i knew full well that following the run of the street that the majority of the building was actually at street level. i love a building that gets you thinking about how it is put together before you’ve even started with it, much like other pieces of gallery as re-gen seem to work (the lowry and imperial war museum north in salford, the hepworth wakefield, the pompidou in paris).

so, a bit about the exterior before we head inside. the building is supposedly situated on the ‘oldest site in nottingham,’ formerly cave dwellings, a saxon fort, mediaeval town hall and victorian train line. seems like a contentious choice of wording, but at least it isn’t claiming a ‘quarter’ title. what is without doubt is that this area of the city was home to the lace trade, which is reflected in a lovely piece of cladding design by the architects caruso st john. the green/grey concrete moments which make up the majority of the exterior walls of the building have been cast imprinted with a lace design, which only becomes more interesting as you get closer to it. a fine start. coupled with the concrete walls, the building is topped off by gold-tinged aluminium towers, which seems a little distracting from the exterior (but come into their own once within the gallery). i spent quite some time walking round this building, up the steps, checking angles of reflection in windows, back down steps, following lines and generally marvelling at what has been achieved with a pretty small footprint.

moving inside (noting that there doesn’t really seem to be a front door when approaching from the train station end of the city, an urban planner’s nightmare surely?) the building blocks of the gallery emerge, and what a surprise they are exposed concrete. which i really like. i’m unapologetic about how much i like concrete as a building material when it is well used, which it really is here. the staircase leading up from the cafe/studio space, past the admin offices up to the gallery/street level is all straight, heavy blocks, and really shows off quite how tall this building is. whereas david chipperfield galleries leave the concrete on show outside, here the structure is used to emphasis the site, reinforcing ideas about how this gallery is fitting into the city. yet the best is still to come.

those aluminium towers that look a bit plonked on from the outside actually provide the stunning lighting for the gallery spaces, tempered through delightful use of angles and colour washes, to create spaces which feel so so full of air and light. admittedly, i was there on one of the sunniest days of the year, so had the kind of experience which the architects dreamed of, but my did it work. that said, these skylights didn’t have to be the focus, and as a flexible use building they can be blocked out when displaying sensitive work, as they are for the alfred kubin display. alongside this natural light from above, both gallery spaces which touch the street feature huge picture frame windows, which place the street within the gallery, and more interestingly the gallery within the street scene.

it is this placing of the gallery within the city which is the unquestionable highlight for me. i’ll admit that my knowledge of nottingham is restricted to robin hood, brian clough, stuart pearce and the mid-90s forest team, alan sillitoe and the pop fest (which i still haven’t been to yet), but i’m guessing that the arrival of a contemporary art gallery which looks out to the city as much as it does at artistic influences was a bit of a shot in the creative arm. with a really interesting exhibition programme, including the current pairing of francis upritchard’s odd figures with kubin’s disturbing images and the ‘star city: the future under communism‘ exhibition of 2010 (which i nearly bought all the postcards from on this visit – stunning design), nottingham contemporary is presenting intellectually challenging work within a fantastic space, which is underpinned by windows and gallery spaces which work to draw the people of the city in. on the way back to the station at the end of my trip i passed back through the gallery, finding the cafe just as busy with people grabbing a local real ale; i really do hope that this is a sign of the place which the gallery sits in the city, a mixed use resource encompassing culture, education and community.

the alfred kubin & francis upritchard exhibitions are on display until 30th september. the gallery is about five minutes walk from nottingham train station. if you are planning a visit, i can also fully endorse a wander to the malt cross, a terrific ale pub in a converted music hall.

over the past week or so i have seen some wonderful exhibitions in sheffield and leeds, some of which are coming towards their closing dates. here is a quick summary of some of the best, which i would highly recommend fitting into your plans for this weekend.

standing out as a) the most thought provoking and impressive display and b) the one  that closes on saturday, i would put tom ireland’s notes on western expansion , currently on display at bloc projects, at the top of the list of things to see. ireland’s investigation into the relationship(s) between modernist art and the western space programme of the 20th century as proponents of interrelated aesthetic and ideological values is a wonderfully thought out show. somehow this is the second terrific lunar themed exhibition i have seen this year, following republic of the moon at fact in liverpool, and it holds similar qualities to part of the earlier show in that it places the viewer into a relationship with the space/space. ireland’s triumph at the centre of this experience is a soundpiece which slows beethoven’s moonlight sonata down to fill the time that neil armstrong spent walking on the moon. with this ireland builds a work of brilliant poignancy, which changes all relationships within the gallery space by placing the viewer into an atmosphere of slow but recognisable progress towards a recognised but unrecognisable goal. it is a rarity that i see a show where the physical embodiment of the art take such a back seat, but here the ‘art’ on the ground/walls is there as a placemarker on your journey along the soundscape.

hoping down the road from bloc, i cannot even begin to express how much i love the print it exhibition/pop-up artist book shop at site gallery. the entirety of site has been taken over by books, books and more books, and as you may have picked up from reading this blog i am quite a fan of books! the main gallery space sees a collaboration between the artists’ publishing platform copy and the coracle press archive, resulting in a beautiful look at what can be achieved by the medium of the artist book, and some of the best examples i have seen of this in a while. real standouts throughout the exhibition were the work of erica van horn of ireland’s coracle. the standout piece from van horn’s work in my opinion was a series of books detailing the interior of envelopes, before using the medium to explore art history. make sure to check out the related events and talks that copy have planned alongside this display which look fantastic.

hop through into the smaller gallery space and you will find your wallet trying to dive out of your back pocket, as site have pulled together a collection of the best artists books available in their pop-up shop. i mentally spent around £160 in there after a quick snoop around, with work by simon faithful, john dilnot, robert williams and the ever-impressive sheffield publicity department. it is also wonderfully arranged, using pallets as low budget shelving units, a lovely touch.

a quick dash across sheffield is well worth risking the sun/howling wind/soaking rain (delete as applicable) is well worth it to get over to bank street arts, where they also have a pair of fantastic displays of artist books presently. clare rogers’ from here you can almost see the sea: a response to living in plymouth is, quite simply, brilliant. rogers uses a variety of printed to media to explore what her hometown of plymouth means to here, what it looks like, why she loves it, why she hates it, and what it feels like to be there. this sounds like an interesting enough project for a visual artist, but here the artist uses words alone to engage with her subject matter, combining ‘photography’ with poetry and book works to create her image of plymouth. i’ve been back to this exhibition twice already, and suspect i will be there again before it closes at the start of september.

the second artist book display at bank street at the moment is elisabeth tonnard’s sheffield artist books prize 2011 winning a dialogue in useful phrases. i’ll admit that i found the printed version of this piece far more effective than the soundpiece which has been created using project guttenberg audio files to re-contextualise tonnard’s book. still a really interesting idea, which is creates a great dialogue from abstract phrases.

lastly for this roundup, a train trip over to leeds to see a fantastic new exhibition at blip blip blip, the gallery space within leeds college of art. this week saw the opening of jenny west’s projection, and exhibition which explores the relationship between architectural space and domestic objects through the process of drawing. or, in other words, stunningly detailed and precise drawings of jelly moulds which look better than most architectural designs you see. west has a habit of leaving large amounts of her construction work on show within her work, which for me works brilliantly as the process is given as much of an airing at the product. the relationship between the works on paper and the large scale wall drawing create an interesting comparison of scale and working practices, and if you get over there quickly enough you might still be able to grab one of the beautifully presented essays which accompany the artist’s work.

nb – the below image doesn’t do west’s work anywhere close to justice

ever since i gained an awareness of new art, i’ve known about the reputation of sheffield hallam as a school of art. this is the first chance i have had to take in the sheffield degree show since moving over here, and have spent a brilliant afternoon crossing the city to see some really exciting new work across a range of creative fields. admittedly, the nature of a degree show means that it was a pretty mixed bag, but i’m not writing this to put down people who have spent the best part of three/four years working towards this point. i’m just someone who has their own ideas of aesthetic, and i certainly wouldn’t want to make a negative comment about any of the upcoming artists on display as part of creative spark.

the fine art display at s1 artspace was the first time that i have seen the gallery space displaying work other than film, and it was fantastic to see the room so animated. with a mixture of sculptural works, painting, photography and film, the display took on a variety of different directions.

the standout pair of works for me came from jason mould and hannah sarah james. both artists’ work took seemed to deal with ideas of negotiation of landscape, though in contrasting manners. mould’s piece the debatable land takes on a richard long-esque quality, mixing a vinyl wall piece of the english-scottish border with a physical border between soil from both sides of the divide. i got a real sense of the importance of place from mould’s work, and was really impressed; i would really like to see more of this artist.

adjacent to mould’s work was hannah sarah james’ wall drawing 0.7, a wall drawing working around four sides of a supporting pillar. using the simplest of ideas, that vertical line, the artist creates undulating contours which spread around the pillar. it is probably a leap to far to suggest that these mountains were the peaks along mould’s border. a terrific placement of two of the best pieces i saw all day.

shifting around the corner from these pieces sarah simmonite’s progression offers another seemingly simple idea, blocks of colour moving from shade to shade, from a light ecru and moving towards muddy brown. it wasn’t the blocks that drew the eye and interest in this piece though; the spaces between the solid slabs danced with variations, a really nice touch to bring a sense of shared progress to the entire work.

other standout work from the fine art show came from carole cluer, who reworked the ideas of kintsugi repairs using graphite in place of gold. cluer’s artist book complemented her ideas and plate work to great impact. dominating the entrance to the gallery space, annabel snowden’s parachute asked some interesting questions of the viewer, with the main thing lingering for me being an ongoing problem deciphering whether the parachute was falling towards or anchored by the fantastic print on the gallery floor. lastly, victoria bailey’s macintosh-esque wooden frame supporting punctured paper work worked perfectly this afternoon as light flooded through the miniscule holes, creating a sense of life. the texturing of bailey’s paper offered yet more contours, a theme which i really warmed to throughout the works which appealed most to me in this collection.

moving on from the art show, i headed (via a swift trip to millenium gallery to partake in their £1 coffee deal) into the unknown for me, jewellery. i honestly can’t give you anything on the technical abilities of any of the artists on show, as i have no real terms of reference with which to describe what i saw. however, i can tell you which two artists really stood out to me as the ones whose work i really enjoyed. luana poerio’s collection hope of spring saw silver flowers arranged into wooden blocks, with lovely allusions to natural forms and window boxes at the same time.

from the natural to the very man-made, emma swailes’ the sea side memories collection was loads of fun. objects inspired by the british coast, with deckchairs and beach huts supporting some really lovely pieces working around aesthetics of the chip fork. ok, so it might not be ‘beautiful’ or ‘pretty’, but this work really grabbed me and stood out as something i would want to buy in the future for loved ones.

heading on from the jewellery i attempted to find the (very poorly signposted) architecture display. it must be really frustrating for the students to find that their work is displayed in such a chaotic manner, and indeed nigh on impossible to find. short of a sign on a door saying ‘beware of the leopard‘ it couldn’t have been much more difficult to actually find the 4th year architects work, which only discovered by dint of having looked at the 2nd year display from across the atrium and traced a vague line towards something across the way that looked like it might be more architecture. moan over, but seriously, shouldn’t the architecture department be the best at getting you into a space to see the work?

once the final year projects were found, it was worth the trip. working to a brief of designing an international hub for learning on the dearne valley/river don corridor which showcased environmental features, there were some brilliantly thought out buildings here.

liam gladwin’s building made fantastic use of space, placing the public circulation areas at the heart of the design, yet without impinging on the practical usage of area. alongside a very clean and considered interior, gladwin’s exterior seemed thoroughly planned to at once make a strong statement on its materials whilst also blending into the natural world around it. really impressive stuff.

just as impressive in my eyes was tony buck’s concept which combined wood frame, glass and local stone with a green roof to create a building of striking qualities which somehow took me straight back to the moorland visitor centre in edale. i’m a massive fan of said building in edale, and someone buck managed to maintain this combination of the natural, great design and a certain softness throughout his project.

the creative spark exhibitions run until saturday 23rd june, and i would heartily recommend that you find the time to go and give them a look before the weekend. it is really encouraging to see so much great new work going on in sheffield, and i am honestly looking forward to seeing where all of the artists i’ve spoken about above go next. keep your eyes peeled folks.

as a city which has been torn apart by conflict, it would be impossible to write about berlin and not consider how war has impacted upon the place, and how it is remembered. unsurprisingly there are memorials to the loss of life right across the city, with the spectre of the second world war and ongoing loss of life which resulted from the occupation of berlin displayed with a blunt matter of factness which i think few cities would attempt. berlin knows that it has a lot to remember, and doesn’t hide the fact. here i am going to consider two very different, but just as powerful approaches to memory and the differing traces, footprints and impressions they place into the context of the city.

the soviet war memorial at treptower park, like much of architecture of the former russian side of berlin, is about memory and scale. moving from the weeping russian motherland at one end, through to the gigantic red army soldier at the zenith of the gardens, this is an act of the soviet union states remembering those who fought in the battle of berlin, the role they played in the defeat of facisim, and more importantly acting as a ground on which to celebrate the lives of the 5000 men buried here.

the establishment of soviet strength cries out from each different facet of this monument. the weeping mother represents russia, morning her lost sons; looking on from here the scale begins to strike home. the shattered russian flags, fronted by red army soldiers bowed in reverence, cut perfect lines, furthering the sense of how small the individual is in the face of both the war, and the soviet state.

sixteen stone sarcophagi representing the states of the ussr carry the words of stalin, and in places the great leader manages to sneak in as a soviet worker; even in commemorating her dead the russian state was furthering stalin’s image – any opportunity is a propaganda opportunity. yet of these murals it is the image of lenin above a row of red army troops which is most powerful. the perfectly straight line appear once again, with a sense of perspective enforcing the strength of the succesful soviet army.

however, this all shrinks away in comparison with the twelve metre tall statue of a soviet soldier , holding a child, a sword (which held surprisingly tsarist overtones in my opinion…) and standing atop a broken swastika. the statue purports to represent nikolia masalov, a sergant of the guards who risked german machine gun fire to rescue a three year old german child whose mother was missing. this may be the tale behind the monument, but the unmissable message is that the soviet state is powerful, that you are insignificant in the shadow of it, but that it is also at its heart caring for you. a hugely powerful monument, a fitting memorial of those russians who died to defeat nazism, but steeped in hugely political overtones.

moving across the city, the second memorial i’d like to consider is denkmal für die ermordeten juden europas, which directly translates as the memorial to the murdered jews of europe. located right in the heart of berlin’s district of historic power, just down the road from the reichstag and brandenberg gate, this memorial is at the heart of the city, and in a way could be seen to define how berlin, and possibly germany or indeed europe at large, is seeking to bring a different manner of thought into memorial . scale is once again at play here, though in a hugely different manner to that seen at treptower park.

next to the shining american embassy, and just across the road from the tiergarten, the holocaust memorial appears far more understated in comparison to the soviet memorial. there is no huge statue dominating proceedings. in fact, from the street the 19,000 square metre site appears understated to say the least. 2711 grey concrete blocks, seemingly of minute difference across the vast area seem to lack a real impact. at first glance, other than the fact that a site of such size has been set aside for a memorial site rather than maximised for commercial opportunity, this is a possibly too understated monument.

yet the power of the holocaust memorial is evident as soon as you start to move throughout the maze of grey stelae. starting as low level protrusions, indeed seeming not much more than a series of concrete benches, as you move further into the memorial site the stelae slabs become more and more imposing, as the ground level undulates creating a sense of scale and loss. the concrete blocks vary in height from 20cm up to just short of 5 metres, and as you move further into the maze of monuments to lost life you find an inescapable sense of uneasiness, somewhere between loss, claustrophobia and confusion. where the memorial at treptower park makes its point by placing the viewing in a relationship of awe, here you are forced to face a grid system which appears ordered, but offers no support.

in amongst the concrete labyrinth there is a bunkered ‘place of information’, which i’ll be honest, i didn’t find. that said, i didn’t know it was there until i read about it later. what struck me most about this monument was the sense of peace which is created by the downward slope of the floor, which leaves you standing some way below street level and surrounded by concrete which muffles the city. you are faced with this contemplative silence, whilst also facing the anxieties which the structure itself brings on. i know that this memorial has caused a fair amount of controversy due to its lack of a monument or recognised symbols of grief/remembrance, but the questioning of a system of order, brought about by human design, is massively powerful when considering the lives of those taken away during the holocaust.

having spent the best part of half an hour getting deeper into the monolithic towers of the stelae, the sombre mood was shattered by a group of school children tearing around the memorial screaming and shouting. at the time i was really quite offended by this, they were clearly not respecting what this space was all about. yet after i got back i started to think about this memorial in a different way; the central positioning of this site places it very much in a role as an active role as part of the fabric of the city. would stopping kids from using a public space in the manner that they would naturally not be a tiny tiny tiny baby step vaguely in the direction of the problem that this memorial is here to recognise? the decision not to have an obvious entrance point with directions, signage and rules has been very carefully taken, so the means of use must be openly considered. one thing is for certain, this isn’t the kind of behavior that the imposing red guard soldier would abide…

An exhibition at The Lowry features Harry Hammond’s images  from the dawn of rock ‘n’ roll. Dan Feeney applauds a simpler, more innocent time in popular culture.

‘Showbiz.’ What a horrible term. The modern predilection for celebrity culture sees‘news’ of the exact movements of each star dominating the British press. Be it a reality television star switching on the Christmas lights in Kidderminster or a D-list television personality attending the premiere of the latest festive CGI film, the press apparently reacts to the whims of both the talent and the public. It all seems so, well, empty.

It’s a very different world on show at The Lowry’s new exhibition The Birth of British Rock: Photographs by Harry Hammond. Hammond captured some of the defining images of the real stars of British music from the 1940s to 1960s, with iconic shots of The Beatles, Cliff Richard, The Rolling Stones, Shirley Bassey and Lonnie Donegan throughout this touring collection from the V&A’s Department of Theatre and Performance.

As lead photographer for the re-launched New Musical Express in the 1950s, Hammond engaged with the burgeoning rock-’n'-roll scene, developing relationships with these hep cats whilst his contemporaries shunned them, reckoning rock was a short-lived teen phase. Andrew Loog Oldham, the former manager of the Rolling Stones, remembers:  “He always stood out away from the other snappers who loathed us, wished us no good, and couldn’t wait to get back to snapping Vera Lynn.”

When Hammond died at the age of 88 in 2009, some obituaries suggested that his photographs of this period in British cultural history created icons, acknowledging the role the visual image plays in the act of memory. Such was the importance of his work that the V&A acquired his collection in the 1980s to preserve for the nation this sea-change in British culture. Harry Hammond’s bold images capture the essence of the 1950s: hope, energy and youthful enjoyment.

This exhibition brings together more than one hundred of Hammond’s images, alongside audio from the era, to transport viewers back to the era of sharp-suits, slicked-back hair and hoop-skirts. One wonders whether images of today’s pop culture celebs will be deemed gallery-worthy in fifty years’ time.

The Birth of British Rock: Photographs by Harry Hammond, The Lowry until 10 April. Free. A book, Halfway to Paradise: The Birth of British Rock by Alwyn W Turner, has been published to accompany the exhibition. Images: (from top) Little Richard, Cliff Richard, Shirley Bassey, The Beatles.

You won’t find it on the tourist map. Urban explorers Dan Feeney and Sam Bail discover the back street heroes of the unseen and unofficial Piccadilly

Piccadilly has long been the centre of Manchester, with Piccadilly Gardens acting as a welcome to the city centre from most transport termini. L.S. Lowry captured the Gardens back when, well, they were still actual gardens, with overflowing flowerbeds and whatnot. CityCo would now have us believe that this central hub is Manchester’s ‘village green’, an area where families can meet for picnics, where creative types can watch bands across the festival season, and where Christmas revellers can enjoy a big slide, or whatever it is that joins the festive parade this year.

In many ways, the recent proclamation by The Academy of Urbanism that the Northern Quarter is the best ‘neighbourhood’ in Europe only goes to further this communal view of Piccadilly and neighbouring areas. From the cosy heart of the creative district, so the official story goes, you can saunter down to Piccadilly to join shoppers and commuters enjoying Manchester.

Yet betwixt these two wholesome views of the city is the very real boundary that is Back Piccadilly. In one sense it is a physical parting of the ways, whilst on another this back street area represents an unseen Manchester. The lives lived out on Back Piccadilly don’t form part of the rubber-stamped rhetoric of Piccadilly or the Northern Quarter. Which is exactly why we want to go and hang out with them…

Diving off Oldham Street we encounter a nondescript backdoor, offering a ‘Snack Bar’ within but festooned with public health warnings about the dangers of gambling, and more security cameras than is strictly necessary. We enter to find a faux-wood clad corridor leading towards a portal of flashing lights, falling change and garish noises. The world of the amusement arcade is a thing of seaside trips and motorways services for most people, yet inside Nobles Piccadilly Amusements, the unseen lives of Piccadilly stake all or nothing on the roll of a fruit machine. While the young spend their money at high street shops on Saturday afternoons, a more senior part of society can be found here, fighting a seemingly never-ending battle against their coin-swallowing opponents.

Leaving Nobles with inevitably emptier pockets, we move down the narrow alley that is Back Piccadilly. The tall buildings surrounding us throw up questions as to why this area hasn’t been redeveloped yet. In fact, the strange mixture of empty warehouses and half-finished building sites clad in scaffolding so close to the lively city centre hub is as charming as it is dreary. Like many places in Manchester, it even has something of an air of New York.

Walking through the door of Mother Macs on a cold winter afternoon, there is no welcome as warming as this hidden gem, tucked away behind the Piccadilly Gardens Hotel. Mancunian history hangs from the walls, regulars proffer advice about the merits of this hostelry over brand pubs around the corner, and most importantly the open fire-place spreads its warmth through the whole pub. Admittedly, the selection of ales isn’t the best you’ll see, but Mother Macs is a welcome stop-off away from the stifling throng of Piccadilly.

A special position on the list of unusual places in the Piccadilly area is occupied by Empire Exchange, an establishment best known for blasting out painfully loud music to passers-by on the way between Piccadilly Gardens and the train station. Descending into the belly of the blaring beast, past movie posters and super hero mannequins, we find what can only be described as a treasure trove of books, records, DVDs, novelty items and the sort of knick-knacks that some might classify as “memorabilia”. Given the vast selection of goods and occasional rock-bottom prices, as well as the, ahem, “interesting” clientele, it is easy to spend hours in Empire Exchange, digging for the find of the day and eavesdropping on conversations between the shopkeeper and customers. You won’t overhear exclamations like “Mate, if you sell that watch, you’re selling me out!” at the Arndale.

Hungry shoppers should not fear seeking satisfaction off of the beaten tracks, either. Hunger is easily sated with a greasy fry-up at one of the sandwich shops on Newton Street or a warm meal at Cafe Marhaba, possibly the shadiest looking back alley curry place in the city. The interior takes you straight back to the 1960s and the oversized bubbling pans on the cooker resemble witches’ cauldrons. The food, however, is surprisingly tasty. Served in small bowls with delicious home made chapati breads, Marhaba offers the perenrial “rice and three” for less than a fiver.

While the recession has probably shielded this city centre blind spot from the prying eyes of building firms, it surely won’t be long before Back Piccadilly’s empty buildings and dark back alleys get the makeover they deserve. For now, then, take a chance to discover a side of Manchester that remains firmly off the tourist trail – while it still exists.

Images: all Sam Bail.

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Photographer Len Grant has made a career out of Manchester’s regeneration, documenting both new builds and new lives across the city. He talks to Dan Feeney about his latest portraits-and-poems project.

On paper, Len Grant’s latest project appears slightly surreal. Teaming up with the New Yorker-turned-Manc poet Linda Chase, he selected the four compass points of Manchester’s city limits (Chorlton, Wythenshaw, Cheetham Hill and Gorton), gathered up a bed sheet and a pair of poles, and set up a makeshift studio on random street corners in each of the four districts. Grant then invited anyone who happened to walk past to have their photo taken and to chat to Linda Chase about their lives.

“It’s a bit of a diversion from what I’d normally do documenting regeneration,” says Grant, “but it still has the idea of taking portraits and showing one audience what life is like in a different part of the city. Clearly, the people you’d see in Chorlton were different to the ones you met in Wythenshawe, and different again from Cheetham Hill and Gorton. The diversity of the project reflected the diversity of Manchester, which was great.”

Grant’s portrait shots capture the lives and energy of his subjects with a warmth that comes from his deep-seated understanding of the interplay between individuals and communities – this, after all, is a photographer and writer who has spent years documenting the regeneration of East Manchester, and in particular the impact of new homes, schools, shops and hospitals on some of the most deprived communities in the UK. He has an uncanny ability to win people’s trust, and in this project it’s clear that the street studio acted both as an end (a background against which to capture the images) and also a means, drawing in intrigued onlookers.

“There was one point,” he recalls, “where we were just off the main street against a terraced house and there was a Muslim family who were watching us from their window. We beckoned to them, and they eventually came out. First it was the grandfather, then his wife, and then we had a shot with their grandson too. So we had this whole series of images of people who were intrigued about what we were doing. Linda and I would talk to the subjects during and after the shoots, and then Linda would go away and write poems about each of them.

The end result is a series of portraits and poetry that is anything but surreal. In fact, Shooting The Breeze sums up everyday, street life in Manchester in a way that no one else has tried to do. It tells the bigger story of an ordinary city through the small stories of its ordinary inhabitants – and makes for fascinating reading.

Shooting The Breeze is available online from www.blurb.com, £15.95.

At Imperial War Museum North, Gerry Judah’s new sculpture celebrates peace and life, not war and death, discovers Dan Feeney. Meanwhile, the museum itself witnesses new life at Salford Quays

Imperial War Museum North is a place where our everyday understanding of the world is up for negotiation. The museum’s collection examines the cost of human life shattered by conflict, while Daniel Libeskind’s building represents a globe shattered by war. The latest addition to this at times challenging museum is The Crusader, a sculpture by the acclaimed painter, sculptor and designer Gerry Judah. For Judah, it marks the end of an investigation into the impact of war that began with a model of the Auschwitz Birkenau concentration camp at Imperial War Museum London some ten years ago.

“That had a profound impact on me,” he remembers, “because what I was dealing with was a historical aspect, and people’s memories and experience. I was harnessing a lot of factors to make an art piece. What that made me do was develop the work further, and I started seeing that the wars and conflicts in Gaza, the West Bank, Baghdad, Beirut and so forth, all had a very similar texture and impact.”

Situated as it is in the entrance to the main exhibition space, The Crusader brings a new sense of presence to the beginning of most visitors’ engagement with the museum, unlike the hitherto-dominant Harrier jet. Imposing a sense of the impact of war, the seven-metre high, three-dimensional sculpture features war-torn, decimated cities and tower blocks sprouting from a white cross. The viewer is at once drawn to investigate the detail of the destruction whilst also standing back to take in the scale of the piece, and the concepts behind it.

“It was extraordinary the way these buildings had been ripped apart. You saw inside these buildings, and inside people’s lives.”

Judah focuses the viewer on the human aspect of war, and highlights the museum as much more than a repository of the technologies of destruction. “When I saw the photographs of Beirut, it was extraordinary the way these buildings had been ripped apart,” he says. “You saw inside these buildings, and inside these people’s lives. I’ve always been drawn to buildings not just destroyed by conflict but also by neglect and the environment. Regardless of what causes them, it’s the lives that were inside those buildings, that were lived and left because of these conflicts.”

Inside the museum, Judah presents cities and buildings rent asunder even as Imperial War Museum North itself watches Salford Quays and Media City develop around it. The BBC has taken possession of the keys to its new home, with plans to begin moving services into Media City from May 2011. Imperial War Museum North and The Lowry are well placed to capitalise on the continuing development of this once-neglected part of Salford. Jim Forrester, Director of Imperial War Museum North, believes the development of the Media City tram station and link bridge to the museum will “undoubtedly bring more visitors to the whole area as it grows into one of the most important cultural destinations in the UK. The first stage of external landscaping outside the museum is nearing completion, with a new quayside promenade to open this month, and linked to Media City in December by a spectacular new bridge. This will greatly enhance the visitor experience, creating a circular walkway around the major tourist attractions at the Quays.”

Much as Judah’s sculpture represents an internalising and personalising of Libeskind’s vaunted rhetoric, so too will Imperial War Museum North reflect its new partner across the Ship Canal. A special exhibition, War Correspondent: Reporting Under Fire Since 1914, is planned to coincide with the arrival of the BBC next May. Until then, The Crusader offers a timely interjection and new starting point for the exploration of both the collection and the notions of war as well as, more importantly for Judah, peace.

“I think it is the ethos of the museum that was far more important in this case than its collection,” he says. “It’s an odd thing to call this place the Imperial War Museum. For me. I see it as a museum for peace, not one of war. It’s also a museum of life, and I wanted to draw on that. It’s a great place, a great building, and a great city, so I felt I had to do a great piece and make it reach further than just the walls it sits on. That is the duty of culture, that it mustn’t be parochial, and to stretch beyond items of war.”

The Crusader by Gerry Judah, until November 2011, Imperial War Museum North, free. Images: The Crusader, Gerry Judah, courtesy Imperial War Museum/the artist (top and bottom); external view of Imperial War Museum North, courtesy Len Grant. Audioboo below courtesy Dan Feeney.

Dan Feeney is unsettled by the ‘cold abandoned buildings, populated by cold abandoned people’ at the Chinese Arts Centre

‘Memory is the diary we all carry about with us,’ observed Oscar Wilde and artist Chen Chieh-jen’s latest work follows that particular line of argument. It uncovers family memories via documents left behind by the artist’s late father, a Taiwanese anti-Communist activist. Building connections between snatched memories, including an invented autobiography, Chen creates an intriguing portrait of his father alongside an exploration of a Western-led attack upon an enemy state. Empire’s Border II, the resulting three-video installation, is often poignant, sometimes perplexing, but mostly successful.

The main gallery of the Chinese Arts Centre houses a large projection of the central artwork, which charts the internationally acclaimed artist Chen’s journey into his father’s memories. Having discovered the meagre possessions he left behind – just an army jacket, an empty photo album (the pictures burned to protect the identity of those captured) and the fake autobiography that diverted authorities away from his father’s involvement in the anti-Communist National Salvation Army – Chen visits the ‘offices’ of Western Enterprises Inc., a short-lived Taiwanese company that acted as a front for the CIA. In what turns out to be an abandoned factory, the artist confronts memory and myth, placing his family’s historical struggle into the frame of political progress.

The aesthetics of the piece are as important as its content. Chen’s mise-en-scène evokes no colour but grey. The blacks are muted, the whites soiled with dust and decay. Shafts of light pierce abandoned rooms, illuminating the atmosphere more than the space. Lingering shots remain static for moments longer than is strictly comfortable. Using surround-sound to full effect, the throbbing drone soundtrack heightens this dull air – if, that is, you can heighten grey.

Empire’s Border allows Chen Chieh-jen another opportunity to explore post-industrial abandonment, a theme he examined in his film, Bade Area, screened recently in Manchester as part of the AND festival. The film centres on the decaying city of Bade, a town in North West Taiwan. In it, Chen meet figures from his father’s, and his nation’s, memory. The characters, some of whom appear to rise from the dead to accompany the artist, represent Taiwan of the late 1950s, a nation torn asunder by the oppressive Left and the US-sponsored martial law of the Kuomintang Party. In exploring these untold stories, Chen casts himself as both his father and Taiwan, liberating the lives and memories of those he encounters. Yet the overriding feeling is one of cold abandoned buildings, populated by cold abandoned people. The future on offer is left as an unanswered question; a recognition of Taiwan’s ongoing uncertainty.

Empire’s Border II – Western Enterprises Inc., Chinese Arts Centre. Until Sunday 20th November. Free. Images (top to bottom): both Empire’s Border II, courtesy the artist.

Some of the best shots of Manchester can be taken from the most unconventional of locations. So, despite his fear of being collared as a terrorist (more on that later), Dan Feeney heads skyward to create his alternative guide to photography in Manchester.

Shudehill is our starting point for this tour of Manchester’s prime spots for photographers seeking a new view of the city, and it’s all thanks to The Guardian’s recent Manchester TwiTrip. This trip uncovered one of the best vantage points in the city centre: the top floor of the Shudehill Interchange. From atop this car park you can enjoy an unexpectedly great view out across Manchester for free, rather than paying for your 15-minute view of the Printworks’ roof from the Manchester Wheel.

The best view is looking out away from the city centre, with the rolling hills that lie out towards the north emphasising just how close city and countryside actually are. Yet standing between the Peaks and the city is that symbol of Manchester and its regeneration – the tower crane, here working on the armadillo-like new Co-operative building. Indeed, the roof of the Interchange would be a great spot for charting this new addition to the city centre.

From Shudehill, it’s but a short stretch of the legs to another unusual vantage point. The Manchester Arndale Car Park is fast becoming one of the favoured photo-shoot destinations for bands and hipsters, with the backdrop of the Northern Quarter offering creative distinction to said head shots. Yet the true highlight are the shots that can be taken of the Arndale Tower itself, as well as the aforementioned Manchester Wheel and Urbis. In terms of composition, by wandering around the roof of the shopping centre photographers can bring these iconic buildings into view as their muse, manipulating them and the minute differences of shadow and glare offered by the ever-changeable weather.

Leaving the heart of the city behind, a short walk to Charles Street brings another aspect of the city into focus. For such a compact city centre, Manchester is home to a fair number of train stations. If you include Salford Central Station, there are five within walking distance of each other (and there may be another soon – plans for a new station by Manchester Central have apparently been proposed). With this in mind, surely any documentary photographer should capture the view from the Charles Street/Sackville Street Car Park, which is positioned almost on top of the railway line between Piccadilly and Oxford Road stations. The view back to Platform 14, taking in the corner of the University’s Sackville Street Building (UMIST, in old money) is a nice juxtaposition of red brick and plastic, whilse the view along the line to Oxford Road captures the Palace Hotel rising up out of the train line that once fuelled the decadence therein.

The final stop of our tour offers possibly the best view of all. The Oxford Street/Great Bridgewater Street Car Park, probably better recognised as the one above the Tai Wu restaurant, affords photographers the chance to capture the old and new of the city, the pretty and the downright ugly. From here you can look down Oxford Street and onto Oxford Road, capturing the hubbub of city life flowing in that direction, before watching it trail off up Portland Street towards Piccadilly. Moving the frame up, the Town Hall, Town Hall Extension and Central Library are all eye-catching, yet some of the most interesting shots come from the blatant façadism that can be seen from this raised position. The chimneys rising over Oxford Street seem as brittle as Lego from this view, rather than dominating aspects of the skyline.

For all that these car parks offer fantastic views across the city, it’s worth pointing out that photography in such unconventional places isn’t without its risks. Having worked around these views in one morning, it was with surprise that in one of the final destinations a solitary car sat, engine on, watching, as I shot the city. It may have been nothing more than paranoia, but suddenly I was very aware that whilst I was capturing images of Manchester, NCP were capturing my movements across the city. Why should there be a sense of dread for someone taking images of public space? Tate Modern’s Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera recently asked just this question. Closer to home, the Loiterers Resistance Movement constantly challenge what is deemed to be illegal within public space, and Redeye, alongside the increasingly forward-thinking CityCo, has been leading a campaign to declare Manchester a ‘free photography city’. So grab your camera and find out how successful they have been – and if you find yourself suffering from the same creeping NCP paranoia as me, let me know.

View From Such Great Heights in a larger map

At Spinningfields, The Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair enters its third year. Dan Feeney gets crafty

The recent boom in cupcake makers is surely the gastronomic equivalent of displacement activity. Instead of facing up to impending economic gloom, it seems that creative folk are instead spending their time crafting cakes, and putting effort into toothsome pursuits. But to be fair, long before sweet treats came to the fore, jewellery and craft making were on the rise – as evidenced by the growing popularity of this month’s Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair.

Now three years old, the fair is an established event that showcases the wares of over 150 of the best designer-makers in the fields of ceramics, glass, jewellery, metal, wood, lighting, textiles, furniture and paper. A relaxed atmosphere allows both public and trade to meet the artists, discovering the stories and techniques behind the objects on sale.

With over 6,000 visitors last year, the fair represents one of the better efforts offered by Spinningfields – it succeeds in bringing a sense of creative community and life to Hardman Boulevard, an area of the city that can, at times, feel a little cold and corporate. It is something that the Spinningfields team must be only too aware of, and, instead of leaving Spinningfields to the white collar workers, it continually strives to pull in other visitors – thanks to a programme of events that ranges from outdoor cinema, an art auction, a duck race down the Irwell or this winter’s skating rink. With the success of events such as the craft fair, then, it’s a strategy that does appear to be paying off.

But back to the craft fair, whose highlights this year include Maxine Sutton’s embroidered and screen-printed textiles; leather bags and accessories from Wolfram Lohr; April Neate’s colourful and playful aluminium-based jewellery; and environmentally friendly paper designs and products by Tamasyn Gambell. Despite a £6 entry fee, the Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair does still offer the public affordable access to up-and-coming producers, and a chance to pick up the best new crafts before the festive rush hits.

Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair, 21-24 October, Spinningfields. £6/£5. Images (top to bottom): Tamasyn Gambell; GNCCF.

New music shindig In The City is back this week. Dan Feeney applauds its move to the Northern Quarter – and to Manchester’s best-loved music venues

In the City, Manchester’s annual music industry convention, was the brainchild of Yvette Livesey and the late-lamented Tony Wilson, cooked up back in the now nearly forgotten days when people actually paid to consume music. So the fact that In The City is still seen as relevant to an ever-evolving music industry is testament to the thought that goes into arranging it. And, over the past few years, more importance has been put on the live side of the mega-event, with music fans becoming just as much a part of In The City as the A&R men loudly comparing the size of their cheque-books at the back of the room.

Shifting ITC away from its traditional Peter Street home (at the Midland) to Piccadilly and the Northern Quarter is just one sign of this changing focus. Rather than seeing bands try to put on a good show in non-venues such as Electric Boogaloo or Bar38, this year the Northern Quarter’s Ruby Lounge, Band On The Wall, Night & Day and Castle pub form the hub of the musical action. The move to proper live music venues is coupled with possibly the best line-up in years, boasting the lo-fi garage noise of No Age, post-dubstep from Mount Kimbie, indie-pop with Sky Larkin and a debut UK show from LA’s Kisses.

In The City also remains a showcase for the best unsigned bands around, giving them the chance to convince the industry bigwigs who are in Manchester that they are worth taking a chance on. The bands to keep an eye on this year are D/R/U/G/S, Brown Brogues, Eagulls, Advances in Mathematics, Patterns and This Many Boyfriends. But don’t just take our word for it. Finding the good among the merely mediocre has always been one of the most rewarding parts of In The City, and it pays to watch people you’ve never heard of as much as it does to blag your way in to see the hotly-tipped acts.

Alongside live music, delegates can access keynote addresses and panel debates featuring some of the biggest names within the music industry. Highlights include Bertis Downs (REM’s ‘manager and lawyer’), Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason, panels on the future of music blogging and Elbow’s Guy Garvey heading up a discussion on the Musicians Union’s controversial offer of support for pay-to-play gigs. Seeking out answers to some of the most difficult questions facing the music industry, ITC often also plays host to some fairly heated debate – but it is exactly that passion for the industry that, you can’t help but wonder, keeps the industry’s movers and shakers flocking back to Manchester every year for.

In The City, 13-15 October, venues across Manchester. Day tickets, £16; 3 day festival wristbands £29; 3 day delegate pass, £200. Check out ITC’s handy clash-finding iPhone app. – perfect for organising your time during the convention. Images (top to bottom): Sky Larkin, courtesy the artists; No Age, copyright Sub Pop.

A new exhibition at The International 3, Smotherland, sees the cosily domestic transformed into the stuff of nightmares. Dan Feeney gets the fear

Ghastly figures dominate an entire wall of the gallery. Revelling in their apparent misdemeanours, their pasted-on smiles somehow evoke both the Brothers Grimm and The League of Gentlemen in one frantic gesture. A disturbing group of painted peg people stands in their shadow, bringing fear and revulsion to the humble household implement, hinting at their creator’s desire to turn the everyday into a dream-like, or more aptly nightmarish, construct.

This mixture of comic-book style drawing and unnerving, 3D scenarios – created with the use of wooden pegs, found pieces of wood and charity-shop pictures – is the basis of a new exhibition at The International 3, a show by the Manchester-born artist Alison Erika Forde. It makes for a playful-yet-uncomfortable atmosphere, evoking something akin to the darkened corners of a forest that nestles within the white cube of the gallery.

It would appear that Manchester’s galleries are going through something of a tree phase at the moment. As Olafur Eliasson’s The Forked Forest Path brings the forest inside at the Whitworth, in her first solo exhibition Forde similarly creates an imagined space through the interplay between works. With autumn sweeping in outside, it has also found a home inside gallery spaces. Smotherland may not force you to duck underneath branches in the same way as Eliasson’s twisting, dark wood, but it does place you in uncomfortable positions, and by the time you leave International 3 you’ll be suspecting the worst in every darkened corner.

Smotherland by Alison Erika Forde, International 3, until 31 October. Free entry. Images (top to bottom): Pipe Down You; The Weeds, both Alison Erika Forde.