We're open later every first Wednesday of the month with live events including music and poetry, talks and discussions, art performances and late opening in the cafe and shop.
Manchester Art Gallery
Wednesday 7 November 2018, 5pm–9pm
Free, some events require booking
Whose Power on Display?
A group of Manchester Art Gallery staff, artist-collaborators and gallery users worked with artist Sonia Boyce to start a process of change. In January 2018 we decided to temporarily remove Hylas and the Nymphs by JW Waterhouse to encourage discussion about the politics of class, gender, race and sexuality in the gallery’s collection displays.
Join us, Roberta Mazza and RENU as we explore themes and issues raised by the temporary removal and the public reactions to this act.
Voicing the Naiads talk and discussion with Roberta Mazza 5:30pm–6:30pm
RENU: They Dance in the Dark composer, producer, percussionist 7pm–8:30pm
Also…
Shirley Baker: two new books of Shirley Baker’s photographs launched from 6.30pm.
Philosophy cafe, enjoy art and explore life’s big questions, 6pm–8pm
The café bar and shop will be open and drinks can be purchased for the talk and music event.
Voicing the Naiads: Women, Classics and the Victorians
5:30pm-6:30pm
In this talk, Roberta Mazza will analyse Waterhouse’s Hylas and the Nymphs from the perspective of a feminist classicist and ancient historian. She will explain how the reaction to the removal of the painting led her to reconsider the myth and its multiple meanings in the course of time: is it possible to give a new, post-Victorian voice to the Naiads? What do they have to say to people living in 2018 Manchester?
Roberta Mazza is a Lecturer at the Department of Classics, Ancient History and Archaeology, University of Manchester. She specialises on Egypt under the Roman empire and papyrology, and teaches a course unit on Roman Women through objects. Her academic blog, Faces and Voices, discusses various topics related with her research and why antiquity still matters.
Booking
Free, booking essential, book at Eventbrite.
RENU
They Dance in the Dark
7pm-8:30pm
Touring on the back of her new album – They Dance in the Dark – London and Berlin based composer, producer, percussionist RENU performs a plasmic electrical voyage which undulates and ebbs its way through a cosmos of mixed media. An odyssey of live electronics, referencing the dark hooky anthems of the 80s and 90s, layered through de-colonial narratives and framed into a multi-percussion set, which reflects the global rhythmic mind of this queer artist. The body performances of supernatural-queer characters fall into a perfect composition of cultivated weirdness. Expect that rarest of juxtapositions, a big show that is timeless and, much to its credit, current.
‘Not like other dance records… enchanting and unusual’ The Quietus
‘Very beautiful… sublime’ BBC Radio 6
‘Stately magic’ BBC Late Junction
Best of Top 10 Albums 2017 Art Forum Magazine (NYC)
Booking
Free, but booking essential, book tickets at Ticketline.
Shirley Baker
Book launch
6pm–8pm
Following her popular exhibition here in 2017, we’re excited to be launching two new books of Shirley Baker’s photographs.
Without a Trace.
Compelling street photography from Manchester and Salford during the slum clearance of the 60s. Selected by Shirley’s daughter, Nan Levy, who is keen to make her mother’s work widely available.
Dog Show 1961-1978
When Shirley Baker began taking photographs at dog shows in the 1960s the hairdos of the owners were more impressive than those of their groomed canines. Not only a fascinating portrait of the phenomenon, Dog Show also captures the tender, amusing and at times obsessive relationship between humans and their dogs.
From 6-8pm in the shop.
