Leslie Kerwin visits the exhibition and meets curator, Zoe Watson to find out how she shining a spotlight on the shared thrill of live performance.

It was Émile Durkheim who first coined the term ‘collective effervescence’. The sociologist was fascinated by the sacred, powerful force of a crowd united by a shared anticipation: the rise from a pew, the soar of a football, the second before a performer sings. In the Lowry’s latest art exhibition, the eye of the spotlight is this time turned on the audience for an experience as unearthly as it is mind-twirlingly meta.  

Put together over several years by curator Zoe Watson. ‘Curtain Up’ is a multi-sensory exhibition that twists between several rooms. A maze of paintings, photographs, cinema, and participatory sculpture, the exhibition is a scrawling love letter to everyone who has ever had their heart swelled by a performance – or had the hairs on their neck stand on end. It features the work of a string of artists – including brand new works from Manchester-based artists Chris Paul Daniels and Rowland Hill, and award-winning German artist Ulla von Brandenburg – and sprawls across settings as diverse as red velvet theatres to clattering nightclubs.  

‘Curtain Up’ is much like a carnival ride: calm upon clambering onto, and quick to tilt into a brightly-lit frenzy of dreamlike sensation. The entryway galleries are carefully-placed to create a sense of wonder, featuring immense and somewhat liminal pieces from Bridget Smith and Ulla von Brandenburg that pull you into a theatre only minutes from opening its doors. A series of paintings by Denzil Forrester and Joy Labinjo bridge the rose-tinted nostalgias of community centre performances and thumping nightclubs, and the historic importance of local performances spaces is charmingly captured by collage artist Abigail Reynolds.  

Mere feet away from the soft whimsy of childhood memories, the deeper crevices of ‘Curtain Up’ unveil an edgier, moodier response to the theme of crowd anticipation. Chris Paul Daniels’ ‘Give Yourself a Round of Applause’ is a monologue built from the back-of-the-mind thoughts and feelings of a theatre audience, whose 15-minute film features footage sourced from the North West Film Archive. Meanwhile, Rowland Hill presents her biggest and most impressive installation to date: ‘Relic’, a dizzying audio-visual experience built from 14 years of documenting the Loughborough Fair – one of the oldest surviving medieval charter fairs – and uniquely, involves audience members in the piece itself during an unforgettable 12-minute loop.  

“All of these were artists I’d been following for a very long time, so I was really familiar with their work when I was thinking about the concept of the show,” says Watson.

“I realised that being in the Lowry sort of shapes the show. Every day, I’m seeing people come in and out of the building, and at different times of the day, there’s different activity in the building. But there’s always people in the space: that always inspired and influenced the show.  

“It’s a celebration of people, and a celebration of coming together collectively to experience things. I hope that people realise the power of that, and really protect these spaces that do amazing performances and things.”  

Diverse, nostalgic, and with an unshakeably ‘curiouser and curiouser’ feel, ‘Curtain Up’ is a delightfully meta experience built upon a unique and deeply human concept. With its mix of static and moving installations, this is an exhibition best digested slowly.

Remember to feel the anticipation – and enjoy the knowledge that you’re sharing it with your fellow visitors too.  

 Curtain Up is at Lowry, Salford, from 18 April to 21 June 2026.  

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Created by artists John-Paul Brown and Sophy King, ‘The Guardians of Living Matter’ is a multi-sensory exhibition spread across several distinct rooms. Set in a research lab in the distant future, visitors are invited to explore the work of two environmental scientists as they study the lifeforms slowly invading their offices. Cheery Post-it notes are peppered across the space as bizarre, otherworldly tendrils break through the walls. Bolstered by low soundtrack of birdsong and electricity that echoes from room to room, a gigantic, glowing web of real fungus gazes down from the ceiling, watching and reacting to your presence through machines.

Despite the visions of apocalypse that may surface from such a description, The Guardians of Living Matter finds itself far from the likes of ‘The Last of Us’ and ‘The Girl with All the Gifts’. Rather, its vision of a sentient fungal takeover brings with it a degree of optimism for a world where the climate crisis, finally, seems to have cooled down, and scientists can now experiment with a new, post-climate field of environmental research. Much like a parent picking up after their toddler, the new fungal lifeform has stepped in to magically fix the disaster, while humanity is relegated to the proverbial naughty step to think about what it’s done.

In the wake of ongoing concern over AI and the environment, Brown and King have chosen to shift the narrative to what could happen if the two worked alongside each other instead. In a conscious effort to remain carbon-friendly, every material from the exhibition is repurposed from across Manchester – and will be repurposed again after the exhibition ends in March. The mycelium statue was built with discarded tree branches, and the fungus grown over the course of 8 months with the help of gardening experts in Hulme. All the materials are available to be touched, held, and examined on a special sensory wall, alongside a vast array of literature that visitors can use to learn more about the Earth’s fungus.

For Brown and King, the sense of reassurance is a central tenet of the piece. With stories of climate disaster and environmental decline dominating headlines for decades, ‘The Guardians of Living Matter’ tackles climate exhaustion head-on by raising questions about collaboration, beauty, and the manifestation of hope. In this reality, AI has become a low-carbon, non-destructive tool for change and protection, and a world where humanity is overpowered by both nature and its own creations is allowed to be beautiful. It’s a delight to wander through the space knowing this is the vision of Brown and King’s optimistic future – and more delightful still to wonder how your own optimistic future would look in comparison.

‘The Guardians of Living Matter’ is unique, conceptual, and charmingly earnest in its hope for the future, and promises a different experience with every visit. This exhibition is a daring ‘what if?’ in a world often weighed down by climate pessimism, and a real treat to explore and uncover. A fantastic visit.

The Guardians of Living Matter is at the Lowry, Salford, until 29 March 2026.

The post The Guardians of Living Matter: Review appeared first on Quays Life.

It is 2076 – the climate crisis is fading, the Earth is in recovery, humanity is rebuilding, and the world is breathing a sigh of relief on its second chance at life. Beneath it all stretches the biggest communication network humanity has never seen, a tangled chimera of fungus and A.I. curling deep beneath the earth.

‘The Guardians of Living Matter’ invites visitors to speculate on this transformed world, from the heart of a multi-sensory research lab that weaves climate research with artistic imagination.

It is an uplifting concept that inspires us to imagine change and see hope as an active transformative force.

Ahead of the exhibition’s launch Leslie Kerwin talks to artist, John-Paul Brown about his inspiration for the project.

What triggered your interest in the climate crisis?

John-Paul: “Prepare for a 20 year answer! I never even considered recycling, walking instead of taking the car, anything like that, until maybe I was 24 or 25. One of my first jobs was working freelance in photographic studios, and they would have these huge room sets. They would build a kitchen or a bathroom, and I’d photograph that over the course of several days. And then once it’s approved, all of that goes in the bin. So that was my first time understanding waste.

“Then I went travelling in the Maldives, shooting a yacht… There was a school of fish washed up, a rubber dinghy shredded and loads of trash. We cleaned up about 12 bags of trash – and this is the most remote place I’ve ever been in my life! That kind of thing really does a paradigm shift in your brain.

“So when I came back, I stopped flying. I stopped driving and changed my bank account. I did all these things”.

Can you tell us a little bit about the exhibition and the techniques and materials you’ve used?

John-Paul: “The exhibition is responding to the climate in general and trying to envision another world in the future. Myself, Sophy King and other artists are collaborating on this project, ‘The Guardians of Living Matter’. We are very much about sustainability, and if not sustainability, then the recovery of materials that would otherwise perish, or be burned, or not be recycled in any way whatsoever.

“There are several companies that will get credited in this exhibition because of materials they’ve been generous enough to donate.

“[It’s about] not only what materials we choose to use, but what we’re going to do with it post-exhibition, like how much of this is an artwork that we keep, how much of this is material that we can use to become another piece of artwork in the future”.

With the exhibition, one thing that really did stick out to me was the huge emphasis on mycelium and linking it to AI – what was the thinking behind that?

John-Paul: “Mycelium is the biggest organism on the planet. There’s a whole connected system that’s a knowledge exchange with trees and roots and other soil. It’s essential to life on the planet, and it has its own language.

“If we as humans could listen to what that network was saying, how it communicates with trees, how they have this nutrient exchange, maybe we could have that knowledge and take over our planet in a better way, and maybe AI can do that for us”.

With the growth of AI, do you believe that it’s going to impact physical art?

John-Paul: “I kind of think it’s a bit outdated already. I did a random test when the first A.I. generators were coming round, and so I sat there blank minded with a text to image generator, and I didn’t have a clue what I wanted it to come up with. So I typed in Mark E. Smith and L.S. Lowry drinking Guinness in Manchester.

“Mark E. Smith had his hair pretty good and his jawline pretty good. But L.S. Lowry was monstrous. He looked like a Francis Bacon painting. I was horrified.

“The very next day I got my bike, I cycled to Manchester Southern Cemetery, and. I found L.S. Lowry’s grave – ‘Mr Lowry, I’m really sorry about this, I put your name in A.I.. It’s not worked out well.’

“Six months later, I did it again. This time it was a picture-perfect photograph. So, I found that kind of interesting, but I think it’s not been very creative. I think the bubble’s burst on that. A.I. just has a different skill set”.

I suppose it’s quite different working individually compared to collaborating with someone. How does that shape up the the creative process?

John-Paul: “Me and Sophy have collaborated for a few years now. First and foremost in Parallel, which is a network that brings together artists and scientists. So I’ve worked with several different scientists – some astrophysicists, someone who works on The Hadron Collider, material scientists, and these knowledge exchanges are really good, really important, really healthy, because everyone in life gets bored of their own jobs. So artists like collaborating with people who really give them a stimulus and a sense of, ‘Oh, I never thought of it that way’.

“So that’s how me and Sophy got to know each other. And we work really well together in idea sharing, and we’ve done some curatorial work together as well. But when it comes to two people making the same piece of artwork, then it is a process. It is an ebb and flow, getting to know someone. I think I’d find the experience really difficult with someone else”.

What do you want people to be thinking or feeling after the exhibition?

John-Paul: “I think I’m pretty aware that a lot of people have high anxiety about climate change, and safer artificial intelligence and technology. So, I hope we create a space where they can digest both of those things in a way that they don’t feel anxious, and it can leave them in the headspace of being able to enter the conversation again.

“I think there is so much happening right now, in this country and abroad – there’s just too much doom. There’s too much gloom. It’s all so heavy. Everyone’s having a bad time. Everything’s getting more expensive. And so I’m hoping we put on a show that brings some people together and makes them be in that space, even if it’s for an hour, and leave feeling like ‘ohh, actually, not everything’s bad.’”

The Guardians of Living Matter is at Lowry, Salford from 31 January to 29 March 2026.

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The wide-ranging exhibition of feminist art showcases work from more than 90 women artists across two decades of art and activism, including radical artwork which in its time was considered so obscene police raided the exhibition where it was on display and shut it down.

The Manchester exhibition is organised by Tate Britain in collaboration with the Whitworth, The University of Manchester and National Galleries of Scotland. It runs across 6 rooms exploring key themes of maternal and domestic experiences, anti-racist and LGBTQ+ activism, Greenham Common and the peace movement, and punk and independent music.

The rooms are organised chronologically from 1970 to 1990, a decision it took curator Lindsey Young two years to settle on. “It’s uncomfortable, because there isn’t feminist work by artists of colour visible until the late 70s,” she explains.

Lindsey spent five years working on Women in Revolt! before it was initially displayed in Tate Britain in 2023. She cites three strong reasons behind her inspiration.

“The first is, I wanted to make a present for my mum,” she says. “She was a single mum, she was a nurse, she was funny, she was brilliant, and the world really kind of f*****d her over. It’s those injustices, small and large, that just infiltrate women’s everyday lives.”

The second reason comes from Lindsey’s time working at the Tate. “I was asked early on to make this display about the 1980s. And I ended up going for all the queer work, and all the work from people of colour. And I remember them saying ‘Oh this is so unusual’, and to me, I’d just told the most obvious story of the 80s. That got me thinking, what can you do in an institution like this?

“The third reason is because I was called curator of contemporary art, British art, but I realised I didn’t know about British art. I knew about a white, male British art, because that’s what I’d been taught.”

Despite long careers, many of the artists featured have been excluded until now in artistic narratives of the time. And this is the first time many of the works featured have been displayed since the 1970s.

Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990’ is open from 7 March to 1 June 2025 with the same opening hours as Whitworth Art Gallery.

The exhibition includes Bobby Bakers ‘An Edible Family in a Mobile Home’, a sculptural installation of edible, life-sized family members made from cakes, meringues and biscuits, served to visitors with a cup of tea.

An Edible Family in a Mobile Home is also free to enter and is open until 20 April 2025 during the following special opening hours: Wednesday: 10.30am–4pm; Thursday: 2pm–8pm; Friday: 10.30am–4pm; Saturday: 10.30am–4pm and Sunday: 10.30am–4pm.

Alongside the exhibition, the Whitworth is running a programme of free events.

Content warning: Women in Revolt! addresses a range of social issues that could be distressing. Gina Birch – Three Minute Scream (1979) plays on a continuous loop with other audio installations, earplugs will be available from the Visitor Team.

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In the Lowry galleries a short film, made in 1957, runs on a loop about the artist’s life in Pendlebury, Salford. While preparing for his role as L.S. Lowry in Mrs Lowry and Son, Timothy Spall watched that same film six or seven times a day to capture the humanity and physicality of Laurie Lowry, the man behind the paintings. “You don’t see him speaking, you see him wandering around, it’s a postage stamp portrait of how he did it, his influences and so on,” Spall explains. “Films about artists can be very dull particularly if they reinforce our ideas of a romantic character with flowing hair. There was this clumsiness about Lowry and this wonderful, spritely ungainly thing. There’s this – for want of a better word – ordinariness.

“I’ve found out that all artists are like any human being – they have the same worries however much driven by their desire to record what they see. And often, contrary to popular opinion or romantic opinion, artists are not romantic, dashing, rather lovely characters. They are often surprisingly very ordinary and unpalatable in some cases. But they use their great talent as artists to communicate their feelings and often they can teach us things about us and our environment”.

The unpalatable part of Lowry’s history presented in the film, is the psychological abuse he suffered at the hands of his mother, Elizabeth, whom he cared for in their two-up, two-down terraced home until she died in 1939, when Lowry was 52-years-old.

The film is adapted from a Radio 4 and later a stage play of the same name, also by writer Martyn Hesford. Set in 1934, between the hardship of two World Wars, it is more or less a two-hander which focuses on the complicated and claustrophobic relationship between Lowry and his hyper-critical mother, played by Vanessa Redgrave.

Although bed-ridden, Elizabeth manages to control her bachelor son through constant checks on the minutiae of his life, such as clocking the exact time he arrives home, demanding his coat, damp from a Manchester downpour, doesn’t drip water on the floor and quizzing him about washing his hands. At times appearing vulnerable, Elizabeth pleads for her son never to leave her in one sentence, yet as Vanessa Redgrave reminds us there is nothing redeeming in her character, for her next breath is used as a spike: “After all, what woman would have you?”

We know little about Elizabeth’s life aside from that which involved her son. The film leaves us little the wiser, but as Ms Redgrave remarks, that keeps our focus on the artist. “I don’t expect them (the audience) to feel anything for her because you don’t learn quite enough about her,” she says. “When you see the film, you learn more about who she was, but especially about who her son was.

“What makes me want to watch the film is to see this man, a human being, living in a crucible of suffering and simultaneously his spirit is connecting through the paint to every human being that he sees. Great art – where does it come from? That’s what makes one want to see this story.”

Although heavily influenced by his mother, Lowry’s talent was rarely encouraged by her. In the film we see her reading out bad newspaper reviews calling his work an ‘insult to the people of Lancashire’ as if he had painted in order to embarrass her. In her view his paintings are ‘squalid industrial scenes that nobody wants to buy’ and he is a disappointment to her snobbish desire for social climbing, just like his father was before him.   

“He does suffer but also it was the only life he knew,” says Spall. “It was difficult. We see her disapproving, but he grew up enthralled to her every need. There was no other, as far as we know, no other human being infiltrated into that intimacy, because he was conditioned to be like that. He got his joy, his pleasure and his satisfaction all from her. He had friends as we all know, individual friends, he never mixed them.

“As far as he did take this abuse, the painting also grows out of that abuse, but it also grows out of a stubbornness which he inherited from her. It’s also private, it’s not revenge but like Vanessa said – the spirit, the compulsion. He knew that he was upsetting her, and I think that’s in the work.

“It’s a bit like saying if Dickens hadn’t grown up with an extraordinary father who was a failure and ended up having to go and work in a bottling factory at the age of 12 or 13, coming from a middle class background would he be Charles Dickens? Probably not, because he was forced to live in an environment that he wouldn’t have done before and so he understood it. You can’t take the man out of the circumstance”.

When Lowry’s father died, both he and his mother were saddled with debts which had accumulated from the family striving to live beyond their means in the middle-class area of Victoria Park. When the family’s aspirations come crashing down, Elizabeth becomes embittered and angered at now living within ear-shot of the cotton mills and industrial chimneys that feature in so many of Lowry’s paintings. While she feels demeaned to find herself alongside the working classes, Lowry embraces his situation. Where she sees bleakness, he sees beauty and acceptance. And while on the outside Lowry would seem to have much to complain about, his demeaner maintains a hope, humour and playfulness that comes out in his interactions with the kids, playing street games as he goes about his rent collecting rounds.

This playfulness comes across too in Lowry’s paintings, which early reviewers derided as childish – a criticism with which, in the film, his appearance-conscious mother is only too quick to agree.

“You could be lulled into thinking he was an innocent, but there is a mass of sophistication in his work,” says Spall. “The more I look at him and the more I think about him I realise that he is a brilliant, brilliant artist. There’s nobody like him. He’s imitating nobody and nobody can really imitate him. He’s completely and absolutely, totally and utterly unique. And this thing about him painting like a child. When you go and look at his early work in this gallery here, he was a draftsman, this was a development. He wasn’t a naïve, he wasn’t a primitive. Picasso said: ‘It took me 70 years to learn how to paint like a child.’ That’s Picasso – no-one actually says we’ve got our own Picasso, it’s staring you in the face – he’s called Laurence Lowry”.

No doubt the film will bring a new insight into Lowry’s work. “I had respect but not enough respect,” says Ms Redgrave. “One of the wonderful things about working in this profession is that you get a chance to escape your own ignorance.”

Sadly, Lowry received little recognition during his mother’s lifetime. We can only imagine how probably even more so than her son, Elizabeth would have delighted in learning of the arts centre and five-star hotel in Salford that now bear his name. Perhaps that is why Lowry found such beauty in authentic acceptance, because his mother never had the confidence to enjoy anything someone had not previously deemed beautiful or worthy of attention. In the film’s story at least, Elizabeth is portrayed as a women who feels shame about where the post-war depression has brought her, and her son, for all his hard-work and talent, lived most of his life in the shadow of that shame.

For those who want to learn more about the making of the film, The Lowry is hosting a special display alongside its permanent Lowry exhibition, which includes behind the scenes photographs, props from the set, film clips, mood boards, shooting schedules and the final screenplay signed by the film’s stars.

The exhibition is also a chance to view a selection of paintings and watercolours by Timothy Spall, which he painted during and after filming as L.S. Lowry.

“God knows what people will make of them but they’re out there for people to say what they like,” Spall laughs because as an artist of any kind he knows only too well. “You stick your neck out, you’re going to get it chopped every now and then”.

Mrs Lowry & Son opens nationwide on Friday 30 August 2019. The Mrs Lowry & Son display at The Lowry Galleries, Salford Quays sits alongside The Lowry’s permanent exhibition, LS Lowry: The Art & The Artist.

County Durham centenary celebrations for mining artist Norman Cornish.

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Mrs Lowry & Son stars Timothy Spall as artist LS Lowry and Vanessa Redgrave as his mother Elizabeth, with whom the artist lived until her death in 1939, when Lowry was 52-years-old.

Giving an insight into their mother-son relationship, we see a bed-ridden and bitter, Elizabeth actively trying to dissuade her bachelor son from pursuing his artistic ambitions, and never failing to voice her opinion at what a disappointment he is to her.

Thankfully history viewed his work much more favourably than his mother ever did. And the gallery that bears his name is giving a unique insight into the making of the film before it opens nationwide on 30 August 2019.

The special display will include behind the scenes photographs, props from the set, film clips, mood boards, shooting schedules and the final screenplay signed by the film’s stars.

“This is a real treat for LS Lowry fans,” says Claire Stewart, curator of The Lowry Collection. “Mrs Lowry & Son brings to life the very complicated relationship that Lowry had with his mother – who features in a number of his paintings and drawings that we have in the collection”.

There is also a chance to view a selection of paintings and watercolours by actor, Timothy Spall, which he painted during and after filming as LS Lowry.

“We’re delighted to be working with the producers to give visitors to our permanent exhibition this special insight ahead of the film’s release later in the summer,” adds Claire. “Timothy Spall is a talented painter in his own right and this is a special opportunity to see his paintings”.

Read our interview with the film’s stars Timothy Spall and Vanessa Redgrave.

The  Mrs Lowry & Son display opens at The Lowry Galleries, Salford Quays on Saturday 20 July 2019 and will sit alongside The Lowry’s permanent exhibition, LS Lowry: The Art & The Artist.

The Lowry is hosting a special ‘Gala Premiere’ of the upcoming LS Lowry biopic, Mrs Lowry & Son, on Tuesday 27 August. Tickets for the red carpet event are on sale priced at £15. Timothy Spall will be among those attending the premiere in the venue’s Lyric Theatre and will take part in an on-stage ‘In Conversation’ with the film’s director, former Royal Shakespeare Company director, Adrian Noble, after the screening.

County Durham centenary celebrations for mining artist Norman Cornish.

The post Behind the scenes of LS Lowry cinema biopic Mrs Lowry & Son appeared first on Quays Life.

The experience begins before we even get inside, as we admire the handiwork in the ‘social tent’ where Bucket List Bingo is on offer alongside a whole host of craft activities.

Resplendent in the sun, crochet flowers adorning the space, need no watering, and the equally weather-proof, knitted bunting is certainly not in any danger of being diminished by the odd shower of rain. These colourful creations are the handiwork of Smith’s Knits of Eccles, where the caravan was parked up the previous day.

Inside the caravan-cum-gallery-cum-cinema, are a series of artworks created by retirees, dispelling many of the myths surrounding the experience of growing old.

Admission is free, but tickets are given out to go inside the Golden Years Caravan, to watch a film.

Seated on the old caravan bench type pew, which of course was covered in the obligatory velvet , surrounded by more bunting in violet hues, I watch with awe, as stories unfold from a variety of contributors, all with one thing in common – their advancing years.

I learn about a 66-year-old woman, who supports a school in Gambia, and a gentleman who, when he turned up to register for his degree at Manchester University had a slight initial problem, as the University’s record system ‘only’ went back as far as 1930 and this silver surfer was born in 1929!

The film, produced by Thirty Pound Gentleman, Film Company and executive produced by Art with Heart and Manchester Cares and filmed, edited and directed by Rosie Eliza, is comical, poignant, uplifting and thought provoking.

In my view, the project deserves to continue and be experienced by a wider audience. I am told that with future funding this could be possible and I certainly hope that more people have the privilege of seeing the film, even if they are not as fortunate as me to behold it within the Golden Years Caravan!

Golden Years Caravan a free, drop-in art exhibition from Art with Heart was at Waterside Arts on 21 July 2019.

Manchester Jewish Museum CEO, Max Dunbar explains temporary move to Central Library.

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At that time, it was part of a pre-auction display at Sotheby’s, where it was sold for £282,000 – then a record price for one of Lowry’s works.

Before its private sale in 1996, Lowry had exhibited the painting publicly only once, at an exhibition in London in 1939.

Now it is going under the hammer again at Sotheby’s on 18 June 2019, and this time is expected to fetch in the region of £1.2m.

Ahead of the auction, for five days only, The Lowry Gallery at Salford Quays is showing the painting alongside its free exhibition LS Lowry: The Art & The Artist.

“This exceptional painting is both a ‘classic’ Lowry, depicting the hard life of the industrial cities at the turn of the 20th century, and also quite rare in its depiction of a cricket match, even though cricket has always been very much part of Manchester life,” says Simon Hucker, senior specialist for modern and post-war British art at Sotheby’s.

“Coinciding with the run-up to the Cricket World Cup in June, this special exhibition in Lowry’s beloved Salford is a fantastic opportunity for art lovers and cricket fans alike to see a different element of Lowry’s world-view.”

The display at The Lowry kick-starts a summer of cricket in Greater Manchester – as neighbouring Emirates Old Trafford gets set to host fixtures as part of the ICC Cricket World Cup in June and July.

It also comes among a new buzz about Lowry’s life ahead of the release of a new film this summer, Mrs Lowry & Son. The film starring Timothy Spall and Vanessa Redgrave, depicts the relationship between Lowry (Spall) and his mother Elizabeth (Redgrave) with whom the artist lived until her death in 1939, when Lowry was 52-years-old.

A Cricket Match, is available to view at The Lowry arts centre until 5pm on Monday 27 May 2019 in its free LS Lowry: The Art & The Artist exhibition. Open Sun-Fri, 11am-5pm; and Sat, 10am-5pm.

County Durham centenary celebrations for mining artist Norman Cornish.

The post Rare Lowry painting on display for a limited five days appeared first on Quays Life.

The British-Irish artist and choreographer has taken over two of the venue’s gallery spaces with his multi-media and multi-dimensional project, Live Creations.

Joe’s practice merges physical and visual arts, incorporating theatre and gallery performance, curatorial projects, lecture-performance, drawing and spray paint works. In this exhibition, Joe brings all these elements together, using the Lowry’s white-walled gallery space as a blank canvas studio in which to create new work as part of the three-week residency.

Unlike previous major exhibitions at The Lowry, visitors can experience an artist’s work-in-progress. During the exhibition Joe will rotate between research and experiment with spray paint and a sound piece. He is inviting seven dancers into the space to research a new dance work with a working title ‘Before We’re Dead.’

As the work progresses Joe will present an exhibition of visual art works and the dancers will perform ‘Before We’re Dead’ as well as one of Joe’s previous choreographed pieces, ‘On the habit of being oneself.’

These performances can be viewed alongside Joe’s film installation, ‘Here and Not’, created in collaboration with Sam Williams and new wall pieces, drawn in spray paint.

Visiting on the opening weekend there was a sense that the visitors will also play a part in what will be created, and that adds an excitement to this work in progress that we may be part of something not-yet visualised. A sound-installation runs through the main gallery, where Joe is working on new drawings and spray paintings. Some of his works are exhibited on the walls in the same gallery and one of his films is running on a screen at the entrance to the gallery.

Joe’s spray paintings, although abstract, have the appearance of colourful mitochondria, the energy powerhouses of the cells. This feels quite fitting for art that is experienced with over-laid voices talking about the human experience of inhabiting a body.

Live Creations is the fourth of the Lowry’s Edit series, which gives artists and performers a physical space to work and time to develop previously unexplored ideas into new works.. Previous installations being Homebird by Manchester’s DJ Paulette,  London-based artist Paddy Hartley and Salford-based textile collective, Thread.

Live Creations by Joe Moran is at The Lowry’s Andrew and Zoe Law Galleries from 23 March to 14 April 2019.

Joe Moran and the dancers will be in residence in the Galleries on Saturday 30 and Sunday 31 March; Monday 1 and Thursday 4 to Sunday 7 April. There will be a final performance of Joe’s new work on Saturday 13 April. See The Lowry website for details.

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Norman Cornish’s depiction of mining life in north east England captured the working heart of pitmen and their communities. It was an industrial lifestyle and landscape that defined generations and yet within Cornish’s lifetime would transform beyond recognition.

The last North East deep mine closed in 2005, nine years before Cornish’s death in 2014. His paintings remain one of the clearest chronicles of both the economic and social history of the region and of the coal mining industry during the 20^th century.

As broadcaster, Melvyn Bragg explains: “Where is this community which was the engine of the greatest revolution in the world – the Industrial Revolution? These are the men who made the real British Empire in steam and engineering and shipbuilding, and fed it with a vital power of coal. It’s gone. It has been all but wiped from the landscape and we mourn it and are only just beginning to understand how much it needs to be celebrated. The work of Norman Cornish will lead us there.

“He stands as a magnificent Chronicler of one of the most important passages in English history.

“The paintings and drawing he brings to us of the hard-lived lives of a community which defied the odds will be enduring. He has not only preserved a life lived by millions of people in this country and others around the world, he has given it significance and permanence that only a real artist can achieve.”

Cornish’s talent for art seems to have been there from his earliest days. In 1923, on a on a pre-school visit to King Street Primary School, he won first prize (an old halfpenny) for his drawing of a lady’s boot. Despite a serious health set-back when he contracted diphtheria aged 7, Cornish excelled at school, passing the Eleven Plus to gain a place at The Alderman Wraith Grammar School.

At the age of 14, like most of his male contemporaries in Spennymoor, Cornish left education to join the Dean and Chapter Colliery three-miles along the road at Ferryhill. The pit was nicknamed locally as ‘The Butchers Shop’, owing to the number of accidents and there are 177 deaths recorded by Durham Mining Museum. Cornish once said of his first day: “When I signed on the dotted line the official said in his deep voice ‘You’ve just signed your death warrant son.'”

Cornish worked as an underground coal miner for 33-years and as part of Spennymoor Settlement Sketching Club recorded his experiences through art.

During his years in the pit, Cornish’s art work was exhibited both nationally and locally. The National Coal Board bought five of his paintings for their London offices and in 1962 he was commissioned to paint a 30-foot mural typifying life in County Durham for the new County Hall in Durham City, for which he was paid £1000 and given three-months unpaid leave from the colliery.

But despite this recognition it was only when a worsening back complaint forced him to leave mining in 1966 that he changed career to become a full-time professional artist.

Spennymoor at that time was changing rapidly and many of the street scenes that Norman painted are the only record of a time and place that no longer exist. The value of Norman’s work as a social-historical document as well as an artistic body of work was becoming apparent. His significance as a major contemporary artist was reinforced in 1974 when he was awarded an honorary Master of Arts degree from Newcastle University.

Further honours followed with an an honorary Doctorate in Civil Law from the University of Northumbria in 1995, to whom he presented a body of his work for their permanent collection in 1997, and an MBE for his contribution to art in 2008.

After his death, Cornish’s studio was donated to Beamish Museum, whose plans to develop a 1950s town include the re-creation of the Cornish family home from 33 Bishops Close Street, Spennymoor.

This year, 100 years since his birth, Cornish’s family has worked in partnership with curators, academics, artists, biographers, galleries and the community to draw together a centenary celebration of his life and work, with many previously unseen pieces on display in six exhibitions across County Durham throughout 2019.

In his hometown, a new exhibition at the Bob Abley Art Gallery in Spennymoor tells the story of his mural depicting the Durham Miners’ Gala.

The exhibition features a range of preparatory paintings, drawings, sketches and correspondence plotting the artist’s sometimes challenging journey from the commission of the nine-metre mural by Durham County Council to its installation at Durham’s County Hall, Aykley Heads where it remains.

In Bishop Auckland, the Mining Art Gallery, part of The Auckland Project focuses on community identity in Norman Cornish – A Slice of Life. The exhibition is co-curated by residents of Norman’s home-town of Spennymoor, alongside his children John and Ann, all guided by the gallery’s curator Angela Thomas of The Auckland Project.

“We felt it was important to give a voice to the communities Norman lived amongst and took inspiration from,” Angela says.

“We’ve invited them to choose some of their favourite works and think about what they mean to them today, highlighting how Norman’s work continues to resonate with all kinds of people. There has been a hugely positive response to Norman’s work from visitors since the gallery opened in 2017, and we hope the centenary celebrations encourage even more people to come and discover his unique point of view.”

Other highlights in the region include The Norman Cornish Trail in the artist’s hometown of Spennymoor. Here visitors can walk in Cornish’s footsteps guided by a free trail guide or app offering insights into many original locations which inspired his paintings – taking people back to a time when coal was once the life-blood of industry and of the communities who mined it.

The Story of the Durham Miners’ Gala Mural runs throughout the centenary year from 6 April 2019 to the end of February 2020.

Norman Cornish – A Slice of Life opens at the Mining Art Gallery, Bishop Auckland Market Place on 6 April and runs until 5 January 2020.

Norman Cornish – The Portraits. Gala Gallery, Durham 30 June -1 September 2019.

Cornish – A Man of Destiny at The Greenfield Gallery, Greenfield Arts 10 October 2019 – 11 December 2019.

Norman Cornish – The Sketchbooks at Palace Green Library, Durham University 16 November 2019 – 23 February 2020.

Norman Cornish – The Definitive Collection at The Bowes Museum 16 November 2019 to 23 February 2020.

Norman Cornish’s Former Home Beamish Museum, permanent display.

Norman Cornish Revealed at Gallery North, University of Northumbria, 28 November to 20 December 2019.

For more details visit www.normancornish.com

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