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All that is solid melts into air... - We Are OCA

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All that is solid melts into air… thumb

All that is solid melts into air…

Adrian_Street
A gem of a study visit in Manchester on Saturday 23 November.
Following his recent exhibition at the Venice Biennale, Turner prize-winner Jeremy Deller has curated a show that takes a personal look at the impact of the Industrial Revolution on British popular culture. His selection ranges from contemporary music, film and photography with a vast range of 19th century paintings, prints and objects. Among the earliest exhibits are images of Victorian factories ablaze at night and an apocalyptic painting by John Martin. Yet he also includes accounts of individual reactions to industrialisation from a painting of a forge by the self-taught blacksmith, James Sharples to documentation of the life of Adrian Street who turned his back on the mines to become a flamboyant androgynous international wrestler. The artist has also created a soundtrack to the exhibition that includes the incessant racket of the factory floor and heavy metal and glam rock.
800x442_GP358_The-Adoration-of-the-Cage-Fighters_2012-FULL
After lunch the group will visit Manchester Art Gallery’s display of Grayson Perry’s The Vanity of Small Differences, six tapestries, which aspire to tell the story of the influence of social class on contemporary aesthetic taste. Like David Hockney, the artist has been inspired by William Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress since the six tapestries chart the “class journey” made by young Tim Rakewell. They include many of the characters, incidents and objects that Grayson Perry encountered on journeys through Sunderland, Tunbridge Wells and The Cotswolds for the television series ‘All in the Best Possible Taste with Grayson Perry’.
(c) Manchester City Galleries; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation
Finally the group will explore A Highland Romance, Manchester Art Gallery’s new display of paintings by Scottish and English artists, which explore how ideas of ‘Scotland’ and ‘Scottishness’ have changed over the last two centuries. The exhibition presents an interesting complement to Jeremy Deller’s exhibition since it shows how during the Victorian period when artists were responding to the dynamic changes in the economy, they tended to mothball Britain north of the border in an anachronistic world of kilted lairds and lowing cattle. A Highland Romance includes A Spate in the Highlands by Peter Graham, The Portrait of Sir Alexander Keith by Sir David Wilkie and two watercolours by JMW Turner.
This study visit is likely to be of interest to a wide range of OCA students. Places are free, to book email enquiries@oca-uk.com
Image Credits:
1. Adrian Street and his father, 1973 (photo: Dennis Hutchinson) ©Dennis Hutchinson
2. The Adoration of the Cage-Fighters, Grayson Perry
3. A Spate in the Highlands, Peter Graham, Manchester City Galleries


Posted by author: Gerald

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