The Holden Gallery

Simeon Barclay: Life Room featured in The Guardian Guide's Top 5 cultural highlights this week!
We are open weekdays 12 - 6pm, and late on Thursday until 7pm.

Thanks to everyone who joined us last night to celebrate the opening of Simeon Barclay's Life Room. We are open until 6pm today!
http://www.holdengallery.mmu.ac.uk/…/si meon-barclay-life-r…/

Entries for the 5th John Ruskin Prize opened today. Calls for artists, makers and designers to respond to the theme: Agent of Change in the bicentenary year of John Ruskin's birth.
£5K of prizes to be won and a shortlist exhibition for 25 selected creatives here at the Holden Gallery.
Start planning your entry: More on this years theme, selection panel and how to enter at: ruskinprize.co.uk

TONIGHT! Two previews under one roof. Our exhibition Simeon Barclay Life Room previews, and our neighbours Grosvenor Gallery open Catalyst, an exhibition of work by Fine Art students curated by Matt Retallick, part of Conversations in Curation at Manchester School of Art.
Preview: Simeon Barclay - Life Room & Catalyst. Both are open from 5:30 - 7:30 pm

One week until we open Simeon Barclay: Life Room, which previews Thursday 7th February, 5:30 - 7:30pm. All welcome! Preview: Simeon Barclay - Life Room Image: Simeon Barclay, Truly Madly Deeply #1, 2017

Simeon Barclay's 'Handicap' will be shown for the first time outside London in Life Room, thanks to the Arts Council Collection Simeon Barclay: Life Room opens 7th Feb: http://www.holdengallery.mmu.ac.uk/…/si meon-barclay-life-r…/
Image: Simeon Barclay, Handicap, 2016. Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London. © the artist

Simeon Barclay: Life Room opens in 2 weeks.
Creative Tourist's Exhibitions Editor, Sara Jaspan has previewed the upcoming show at creativetourist.com and you can read about it here:

Thanks to all who came to INTERRUPTIONS over the last two weeks.
Special thanks to Chris Paul Daniels, Sam Meech & Raz Ullah, K Craig and Jenny Baines who each transformed the gallery through performances and installations, over four special nights.
More Interruptions will intersect the programme throughout the year…

Interruptions #3: K CRAIG
Tomorrow: 22nd Jan From 18:00 / Performance starts at 18:30
... K Craig presents From The World Without Us, part of an ongoing artistic research project into Cosmic Pessimism, the sublime, mysticism and the End of the World. This audio/visual piece brings together macro photography, digital distortion, ritual film and sequenced samples to respond to ideas of what waits in a world beyond ours.
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Designed by birthday studio

We're looking forward to Interruptions: Sam Meech & Raz Ullah this evening.
Our neighbours Grosvenor Gallery also have a preview: 'this must be the place' which will be on at the same time - so plenty going on!

Join us tomorrow evening from 6pm to experience portals and live video systems with Sam Meech and Raz Ullah, and a live performance starting at 6:30pm.
http://www.holdengallery.mmu.ac.uk/interr uptions/

Sound checks done.
INTERRUPTIONS kicks off tomorrow with Chris Paul Daniels' programme of film screenings, from 6pm.
And on Thursday we have Sam Meech & Raz Ullah's experimental AV performance, also 6pm
... >>> https://bit.ly/2VF8tKV
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INTERRUPTIONS continues this week
Each event takes place between 6 and 8pm, and is free and open to all.
22.01... Interruptions: K Craig Installation and audio visual performance by K Craig (Performance starts 18:30)
23.01 Interruptions: Jenny Baines Series of 16mm film installations by Jenny Baines
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The Holden Gallery is delighted to present Simeon Barclay’s first solo exhibition in Manchester. Barclay – whose work operates at the intersection of contemporary art, fashion, music and popular culture – will present a survey of existing work alongside new work which will include a response to the historic collections at Manchester School of Art.
Barclay’s work draws on an ongoing interest in how we develop our sense of self, how culture and tradition, as well as personal ...experience, shape our identities. In his youth, Barclay became fascinated with Vogue magazine, its glamour and theatricality, providing aspirational imagery in stark contrast with the everyday reality of life in small-town West Yorkshire. Furthermore, Barclay’s background in manufacturing – having worked at a factory for 16 years – feeds into his practice, informing his glossy aesthetic and use of industrial fabricating techniques. Through these seemingly disparate and contradictory influences, Barclay encourages the breaking of rigid societal boundaries and challenges expectations of identity, gender, race, class and heritage.
Barclay will produce new work in response to the North West Film Archive and the Slide Library at the Visual Resource Centre, both part of the Library Services Special Collections at Manchester Metropolitan University. The exhibition title Life Room was inspired by the film A Visit to An Art School, made in 1929 and based at Manchester School of Art, which is in the North West Film Archive.
The exhibition continues 8th February - 29th March 2019 http://www.holdengallery.mmu.ac.uk/…/si meon-barclay-life-r…/
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Join us for a fortnight of Interruptions, dealing with modes of projection in film, audio, performance and 16mm.
15th Jan: Interruptions: Chris Paul Daniels 17th Jan: Interruptions: Sam Meech & Raz Ullah 22nd Jan: Interruptions: K Craig... 23rd Jan: Interruptions: Jenny Baines
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Feedback / Form: Analogue meets digital in a series of experimental installations and generative performance using video feedback. The Holden gallery will become host to projection-mapped portals, chaotic video systems, and immersive interactive works that entangle the viewer with the environment - a mise-en-abyme. The evening will conclude with a short experimental AV performance by Raz Ullah and Sam Meech, conjuring sound and image to give feedback form.
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>> Interruptions
Interruptions is a number of events, workshops and performances that intersects the Holden Gallery's annual programme of exhibitions. Its short-term format enables different methods of working, allowing invited artists to experiment in the large scale gallery space, and encourages collaborative practice across disciplines in a series of one-off events.
The first group of Interruptions take place in January, and focuses around different modes of practice that deal in projection. Each event takes place between 6 and 8pm, and are free and open to all.
Tues 15th Jan: Interruptions: Chris Paul Daniels Thurs 17th Jan: Audio visual performance by Sam Meech and Raz Ullah Tues 22nd Jan: Interruptions: K Craig Wed 23rd Jan: Interruptions: Jenny Baines
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Sam Meech is an artist and videosmith working with people, projectors and machine knitting. His work includes large scale knitted data visualisations, public realm animations, community cinema installations and projection design for theatre. He has worked with a range of organisations including the National Film-board of Canada, Open Data Institute, Royal Opera House, Liverpool Biennial, FACT, and the Whitworth.
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This is odd , i,m an artist living down in kent , i've not seen the present exhibition that closes today..but...on reading rc. guardian review from couple weeks back would of loved too. Very good review it was..so my loss...in not seeing it or myself...is it going to travel south do you know ....good luck all...ross b

Always great shows here. This is no exception.