Manchester Art Gallery

Today I went to my new (old) city's art gallery that I had visited few times before. One of the best thing in the UK is that there's free entry to the majority of museums, so budget limits never stop me from checking out new exhibitions.

The museum is just few metres away from Piccadilly Gardens, the heart of Manchester and consists of two buildings actually connected with a glass corridor and hall.

Manchester Art Gallery

Most of the exhibition spaces are used for the display of the permanent collection: British paintings from Victorian times throughout the centuries until modern and contemporary era. The pieces are periodically organised into rooms and the older ones don't raise my interest much with an exception of well-known Bristolian graffiti artist Banksy's work "Love is in the air" hanging totally out of the blue in the Early 19th century room!

(Btw if you are in England, I strongly advise to visit Bristol, home town of Banksy where he started his career. You can see some of his famous works on the streets and anyways it's a very pretty city, loads to see and do.) 

Graffiti in Bristol

The highlight of today's visit is the Radical Figures: Post-war British Figurative Painting exhibition in one of the small rooms used for temporary collections. The works are individually exciting (the absolute favourites are Francis Bacon's painting of the "screaming popes" series and Euan Uglow's "With eyes wide open") and as a selection it manages to showcase the variety of styles, influences and topics of the era. I would have liked to see more paintings of this kind.

Interior of Manchester Art Gallery

The temporary exhibition at the top level is also quite interesting, it's a collection of works around the topic of Britain's transformation from heavy-industrialized country to the domination of the entertainment industry. The story is told through a number of areas, such as family trees of famous singers where we see that all the ancestors were coal miners, blacksmiths or similar, or there was a factory "house rules" on display with conditions that would be considered terribly cruel today. The most shocking pieces were photos of Amazon warehouse with km-long shelves where workers wore machines meant to monitor working speed thus helping efficiency. Also one of the explanation text said the majority of warehouse workers are on zero hours contract. It really made me think about the conditions this post-industrialized state can offer to people and if this is the reason for some retailers' cheap prices, how acceptable is that. 

The exhibition is called All That Is Solid Melts Into Air and is on display until 19 January 2014.

All in all, I can recommend for art lovers to pay a visit to the gallery in their spare time as it's free, but don't expect to be amazed by lot of exciting contemporary artwork or famous paintings - this museum is on a lower scale and the majority of collection is from old times.