The 'public art' of Ford Madox Brown: Manchester's town hall murals

If there is one building that every visitor to Manchester (not to mention every resident) must see, it's the town hall. A building founded on cotton and industry, it's a working monument to the trade that made Manchester what it was, from the statues of great men that stand in the entrance ways to the bee mosaics laid into its floor to ceilings that are covered in the coats of arms of Manchester's former trading destinations. The architect, Alfred Waterhouse, even aimed to capture the area's history in its architecture through a series of murals, realised as Ford Madox Brown's twelve scenes in the great hall. Unfortunately, unless you've been invited to an event in the great hall, it's unlikely you've made it up close to Brown's great work of public art. Partly this is because, as curator of Manchester Art gallery's new exhibition Ford Madox Brown: Pre-Raphaelite Pioneer, Julian Treuherz, says, “It's in use all the time. It's a working building”, and partly because the public by and large don't know they are allowed to look around the building. Now, as part of the exhibition, the murals will be freely open most Sundays.

When the murals were painted, says Julian, the town hall would have been more accessible (although, he admits, “the very, very poor would not have got through its door”) as it was regularly used as a venue for public meetings. Waterhouse intended art to be an integral part of the building, with murals throughout – though this eventually proved to costly and time-consuming as Brown's murals in the great hall alone took fifteen years to complete.

Commissioning murals for the building at all was, says Julian, an act of “complete daring” by the architect following the failure of similar schemes in the Houses of Parliament (Brown's proposals for the Houses of Parliament murals, which were not chosen, are in the Manchester Art Gallery show) and the Oxford Union which, unsuited the the UK's damp climate, soon faded. Waterhouse learned from this and the preparation for murals in Manchester town hall was carefully thought out. Hot air was installed behind the spaces where the murals would go, and stained glass kept to a minimum, free of flashy colours that would shine onto and distract from the paintings. A Gambier Parry style of spirit fresco was chosen, and the walls prepared so that the pigment would react with the surface of the walls – making them “truly architectural, not easel painting”, says Julian, as “they're meant to tell at a distance in this space”.

Whilst Waterhouse tried to ensure the murals were a success technically, Brown faced other difficulties. Winning the town hall commission is described by Julian as a 'lifeline' for Brown in the last years of his life, but it was not easy: he suffered from gout and ailments brought about by the cold in the building in winter and a stroke meant the loss temporarily of the use of his right hand. Nor did the council offer their unfailing support, vetoing his plan to end the series of murals with a depiction of the Peterloo Massacre. His painting of the opening of the Bridgewater Canal was also unpopular, with its pomp and circumstance and bright, bawdy colours.

Many of the events in the murals have only a “tenuous link to Manchester” as, explains Julian, “Manchester did not really have a history with lots of heroic events and great personalities.” A Roman Fort is built in Mancenion by a worker writhing with tattoos. Christianity is brought to Manchester following the baptism of King Edwin at York. Closer to home the Fly Shuttle is discovered at Bury, jeered by baying luddites. The world famous scientist John Dalton's discovery of natural gases, a pastoral scene, is overlooked by a curious, almost-cartoonish cow. Brown intended the murals to be 'typical' of Manchester's history rather than 'documentary'. In some cases he even imagines how the future might be, envisaging crowds of children at Humphrey Chetham's school. Animals and children recur throughout the pictures, which are often light-hearted. As Julian says, Brown's paintings are humorous, containing “a lot of fun and wit and satire”. He is “anti-hierarchy and egalitarian” as an artist and “emphasises role of ordinary people, has a lot of fun at the expense of authority figures.” He paints his friends, family and patrons into the pictures – and even himself as the Archbishop of Canterbury.

As the accompanying exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery shows, Brown was in his element as a storyteller. Passionate about literature, he often depicted scenes from Shakespeare and other great works, for example creating series of narrative stained glass windows both for churches and private houses.

Brown believed in “equality between the fine and decorative arts”, designing many of the frames for his paintings, and the exhibition also displays examples of his furniture. He also excelled as a portrait painter, eliciting a candid directness from his sitters, among them Madeleine Scott, daughter of the famous Guardian editor CP Scott, perched atop a then-fashionable tricycle. Another of his most striking paintings, 'Mauvais Sujet (The Writing Lesson)', which depicts a sensuous young girl biting into an apple, her hair in disarray, shows Brown's concern for society: proceeds went to Lancashire Relief Fund to help those affected by the Lancashire cotton famine.

Brown's talent for storytelling and portraiture combine in pictures such as the vivid 'Last of England', where you can see the steely determination on the emigrants' faces, and 'Work', one of his best known paintings. Described by Julian as showing “a humble incident – the type you wouldn't have been allowed to exhibit in the Royal Academy”, it comprises a street scene based around the laying of a sewer in London. Presented is a cross-section of nineteenth century life, from the rich on horseback to workers bent over in toil, right down to the unemployed, beggars and the very poor – those who had to sell wild plants such as chickweed in the street. In the background, layers of advertisements on the wall show the concerns of the time and reflect Brown's interests, including posters for workers' colleges, and the scene is watched over by the social thinker Thomas Carlyle. As Julian explains: “Ford Madox Brown challenged prevailing ideas of what art should be. Victorian artists were governed by decorum. They did not paint life as we saw it in the street.”

At £8 for entry, perhaps the Art Gallery show is suited to enthusiasts. But even when the exhibition has finished, the town hall murals are accessible to the public – just ask at the front desk and, as long as there are no events on, you should be able to wander the great hall at your will.

Ford Madox Brown: Pre-Raphaelite Pioneer, opens at Manchester Art Gallery, Mosley Street, on Saturday September 24 and runs until Sunday January 29 2011. Entry is £8 for adults, £6 for concessions and free for under-18s.

www.manchestergalleries.org

Photos used by permission of Manchester Art Gallery (click for larger images)

Meeting William Mitchell (the modernist magazine issue 2)

"Today it has become necessary to demolish the myth of the 'star' artist who only produces masterpieces for a small group of ultra-intelligent people...the artist must step down from his pedestal and be prepared to make a sign for a butcher's shop (if he knows how to do it). The artist must cast off the last rags of romanticism and become active as a man among men, well up in present-day techniques, materials and working methods. The designer of today re-establishes the long-lost contact between art and the public, between living people and art as a living thing."

Bruno Munari, Design as Art, 1966

At the start of July I traveled to London to meet William Mitchell, a prominent post-war architectural sculptor (and innovator in the use of materials such as a new type of concrete called Faircrete) whose work I have been visiting across Greater Manchester and Liverpool over the past year. I spent the afternoon with Mitchell and his wife Joy at their flat in Marylebone, where we watched black and white archive footage from several episodes of Tomorrow's World that were presented by Mitchell (he can't remember exactly when), and their local chip shop, where the couple's lively anecdotes continued (and lunch was paid for with the flourish of a £50 note).

We discussed things including: industrial design (Mitchell helped design the first 125 and 250 mph trains, which were tested at Marylebone); Prince Philip's (in)famous reaction "What the hell is that?" to his Minut Men sculptures outside Salford University (then Salford Technical College) when the Allerton Building was opened in 1967 (ironically, says Mitchell, the Prince had been heard to complain of a "lack of adventurousness" in contemporary architecture, and Mitchell's connection to Prince Philip goes back further, to when they both served in the navy during the war); the big personalities and back stories behind some of Manchester's most high profile buildings (such as the Piccadilly Hotel in Piccadilly Gardens, now the Ramada); his many commissions across the world and working with groups such as schoolchildren; having his own company, William Mitchell Design Consultants Group; Mitchell's numerous, sometimes controversial, speaking engagements; his Dodi and Diana memorial in Harrods; the rediscovery and reassessment of his work, including the renovation of a mural in Hawaii; public space and how to define 'public art'; the dying out of skills such as mosaic making, and why mosaics are not widely commissioned any more; the stigma attached to social housing, even in the post-war period; and the market-led state of art and architecture today ("it's not the quality of the art that makes the headlines but the record prices”).

The maquette for the doors to Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral hangs in the entrance to the Mitchells' flat, which also contains pieces of furniture he made, including two tables in the same style as his mosaic in the Piccadilly Hotel (possibly my favourite Mitchell piece) inset with waste products such as bits of old pianos. "You forget to look at them," said his wife, but the couple kindly moved their furniture around while I took photos.

The text below is a slightly longer version of the interview that will appear in Issue 2 of the modernist, accompanied by photos supplied by the Mitchells. the modernist is quarterly publication produced by Manchester Modernist Society. Issues cost £3.75 each — or £15 for a subscription (including postage).

Issue 2, which is themed 'brilliant', also features: Ben Tallis on Orford Ness; Eddy Rhead on the Arndale's Cromford Court set; Stephen Hale on painter Kit Wood; Laura Gaither on Conrad collectibles; Jack Hale on Salford's Stella Maris Salvation Army centre; Matthew Whitfield on Southgate, Runcorn; Richard Brook on Manchester's District Bank; and news and reviews.

Issue 2 will be launched, with wine, at Ferrious (in a converted railway arch on Whitworth Street West) on Thursday September 15 from 6-8pm.

It will also be available from Cornerhouse bookshop, Magma and RIBA Hub in Manchester, News from Nowhere in Liverpool, Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, Site gallery in Sheffield, Aye-Aye books in Glasgow, Magma and Tate Modern bookshops in London, PLACE in Belfast, do you read me?! in Berlin, Papercut in Stockholm, or online here.

William Mitchell: Artist, Designer, Inventor

A man, armed with a tube, is doodling giant-scale on a concrete wall. Dressed in white overalls he explains, from behind a protective helmet, that he is blasting the wall with grit, enthusiastically advocating the technique's potential for widespread decorative use. The man is William Mitchell, artist, designer, innovator, inventor – and sometime television personality. Mitchell made an entertaining presenter and the programme demonstrating sandblasting was just one of the episodes of Tomorrow's World he was asked to present because “I could talk at the same time and didn't confuse people with art”. He remembers,“I got lots of letters from doctors saying I would die at a very young age as my lungs would be filled with dust and to stop what I was doing” – although at 86 he is still very much alive and opinionated.

In the 1960s and '70s Mitchell, who had studied Industrial Design at the Royal College of Art, pioneered new techniques and materials, working with other professions such as architects, engineers and builders. In another edition of Tomorrow's World, Mitchell balances on a plank of wood above a building site in Croydon, where he is installing a textured concrete wall in an office block. He explains: “There were not many people in my line of work who would go out on the roof with the builders. That was unusual. If it was now I would have had to wear protective clothing I couldn't even get up the stairs in.” The most remarkable episode, though, is that in which he demonstrates a new technique he has come up with for advertising – an unrealised plan that have illuminated Manchester's Piccadilly Gardens with a 350ft by 65ft sign comprising thousands of lightbulbs triggered by films and photoelectric cells. Mitchell says you can still see the holes on Piccadilly Plaza where the bulbs would have gone.

Planners across the UK – and as far afield as America and Hawaii – wanted a piece of Mitchell for their developments, and he undertook hundreds of public and private commissions. These range from the small, functional and unobtrusive – clocks in schools, motorway detailing – to the grand – the massive (in Mitchell's eyes, "almost barbaric") doors to Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral (the design for which had to be signed off by the Pope) and, later, the Egyptian Room at Harrods. Mitchell was so prolific he can't remember the exact location and details of each artwork, but there are a several in some of Manchester's most striking and iconic Modernist buildings – a bold fibreglass mural in the entrance to the plush CIS Tower, panels around the lift shaft in the snaking Gateway House on Piccadilly Approach and sculptured decoration covering the Humanities Building at the University of Manchester.

Mitchell's most publicly visible work in Manchester and Salford is his Minut Men, three giant concrete monsters outside the University of Salford. Mitchell says he had to set them on fire to get the plastic moulds off* (something he notes would never be allowed today, especially so close to the main road!), and the figures are extraordinarily detailed, covered with patterns and inlaid with mosaic. He explains: “I wanted to do something with the material which was not indicative of trying to be something else. As it was new, let it be new. It had as much to do with the practicality and being outside. I also had to take into account, was it waterproof and was it vandal proof?”

Often, says Mitchell, his artworks used a “very, very involved process”, a challenge to himself to prove they were possible. He remembers: “It was almost an exercise in character building, the artworks were so hard to get to the finish of!” Another unusual use of materials can be seen in the epic mosaic, gleaming with objects such as bottle tops and textured by the addition of gravel, that climbs the full height of the staircase in the Piccadilly Hotel in Manchester's Piccadilly Gardens. Made of bits of furniture and pianos set in resin, Mitchell says "there's a richness to it". It took up the whole of his studio and he had a whole team sanding it down as he wanted to show “there was still the possibility of doing hand craftwork”.

Mitchell finds public art to be a problematic concept: “One of the troubles of public art is the public are not asked whether or not they want it.” Yet you can tell Mitchell is proud of the artworks which people have taken to heart: he was pleased to hear of a fashion show being held in front of the Minut Men in Salford, and recounts that Salford students defended the figures from attack by rivals from Manchester University. He even tells a story of tenants taking it upon themselves to clean one of his artworks in a council block. Mitchell also considers his fantastical creatures for the water gardens in Harlow, Essex – modern day gargoyles for a new town – to be a success. Too often, he says, artworks of the period were “thought of as brooches to stick on the building”, whereas art needs to “give a sense of the international, community and place”. Harlow, he thinks, was different as “they were starting to put an infrastructure in, an environment”.

Mitchell would like to see a percentage for public art built into new developments today: “I think it's appalling architects don't consider art. It is so categorised today, art and architecture. There isn't any interrelationship to my mind. At one time there was the possibility of an integrated art form but now you don't get anything like that.

“Every square inch in London is built up as far as ground level. Architecturally, buildings take no notice of the pedestrian. Where the building hits the ground is more like the basement than a public thoroughfare.”

Today, some of Mitchell's works have already been demolished, whereas others are in buildings that have fallen out of favour and face uncertain futures. He's stoical about artworks being lost when buildings are knocked down, although he thinks it's important that “some are kept to give an idea of what the time was like and the type of things you could do”. The social and historical significance of these remarkable artworks is now being reassessed. In Islington, London in 2008, one of Mitchell's works for a school was the first mural of its kind to be listed in its own right, not in the context of the listing of the building to which it was attached. In a library in Kirkby near Liverpool too, a mural has recently been restored and reinstalled. It had languished in storage after the library, ironically, “took it down to be modern”. Those trying (unsuccessfully so far) to get the Turnpike Centre in Leigh listed, which, when it was opened in 1971 featured a new, open-plan library design, also highlight Mitchell's distinctive concrete frieze on the front.

Mitchell still receives requests to undertake commissions, mainly from the Far East, where he says "the money is". He is currently working on a book, which will be “part instruction book” (“always paint the concrete”, he insists) and “part adventure book”. There couldn't be anything more appropriate for this brilliant artist. As he sums up his long career, “It has been an adventure! I was a person of my time. Nowadays I'd be put in a box!"

* Rumour has it that some of the moulds still hang in the Modernist bungalow built by the Allerton Building's architect John Parkinson Whittle in Didsbury as his family home.

For photos and more information about the works discussed above visit Mitchell's extensive website at www.william-mitchell.com.

If you want to find out more

A Pathe Newsreel of Mitchell at work in 1960:

CEMENT MURALS

An essay by Dawn Pereira, who has been researching public art commissioned by the London County Council at the University of East London, on Mitchell's legacy

A resource which provides a fascinating introduction into the influence of art on town planning in post-war Britain, with an overview of the Festival of Britain, new towns, housing, comprehensive education etc

Jonathan Schofield on concrete public art in Manchester

The Shrieking Violet is two! Issue 15

Issue 15 of the Shrieking Violet is out now, roughly coinciding with the fanzine's second birthday (which would have been August 1 if real life hadn't got in the way!).

It features a passionate defence of urban green space Birley Fields (under threat from MMU's new 'super campus') by 'lefty, greeny veggie', Keith Reynolds, who writes the blog Valiant Veggie about creating a mini-wildlife habitat on a balcony in inner-city Hulme, as recently featured in the Manchester Evening News. Keith is "passionate about his work (in mental health), community development, nature and green issues and making stumbling efforts to be "the change he'd like to see in the world".

Brian Rosa, an artist, curator, urban researcher and PhD candidate in human geography at The University of Manchester, writes about Manchester as the 'original modern' city.

John Mather is a Civil Engineer by profession. His passion for swimming has led him to compete in Windermere's 'Great North Swim' and also swim between Scotland's Western Isles. He once ventured into Siberia's (very cold) Lake Baikal. John has returned closer to home to contribute a page about Levenshulme Baths from an illustrated guide he is compiling to Greater Manchester's swimming pools.

I have written a mini-guide to the summer wildflowers which can be commonly found in Manchester, inspired by the nature writer Richard Mabey whose most recent book is entitled Weeds: A Cultural History (listen to Mabey in the Wild, his recent Radio 4 mini-series on wildflowers here). I have also included my interview with Ancoats Peeps artist Dan Dubowitz.

The Shrieking Violet is all about taking inspiration from the everyday, and Sam Lewis from London-based band Being There, who have just recorded their debut album, asks whether the American beat poet Frank O'Hara was saying something or nothing. Alex Boswell has drawn a picture of Frank O'Hara.

Bury artist and poet Josef Minta has contributed some poems accompanied by an illustration. He has just published his first collection of poems and images for the Kindle, called The Abbreviated Day.

Manu Pérez, who is originally from Seville but lives and works in Manchester, has written a recipe for traditional Spanish Easter dish torrijas (this fanzine has been a long while in the making!).

The cover is by Manchester-based graphic designer Alyson Exall.

Read issue 15 online here:

Open publication - Free publishing - More fanzines

Free paper copies have been left in various locations around the city centre such as Good Grief! shop, Oklahoma, Koffee Pot, Common, An Outlet, Manchester Craft Centre, Nexus Art Cafe and Piccadilly Records. The fanzine can be downloaded and printed here. Issues 1-14 can also be downloaded here.

To request a free copy in the post email Natalie.Rose.Bradbury@googlemail.com. Email this address also if you would like to contribute to future editions or are interested in helping out with making the design more interesting and exciting, or join the facebook group here.

More news

The Manchester's Modernist Heroines walk (a collaborative project with Manchester Modernist Society and the Loiterers Resistance Movement) will be repeated on Saturday September 3 during the DIY Feminist Festival. Meet at 2pm in Platt Fields Park. For more information see www.nowhere-fest.blogspot.com.

Ancoats Peeps: Dan Dubowitz and the Presence of Absence

Walking around Ancoats, it's hard to believe it was the birthplace of the industrial revolution, that the quiet, cobblestoned streets would once have been ringing with the clog-heavy footsteps of thousands of workers crowding into the mills. Almost as hard to imagine is that businesses still operated out of its centuries-old mills well into the twentieth century, clinging on even as production was moved to cheaper factories in the developing world. Walk around the area for long enough, though, and you start to spot things. Brass portholes, barely noticeable, are attached to the outside of boarded up mills and empty buildings. Many look from a distance like just another piece of the buildings, pock-marked as they are with functional bits of metal. Crouch down, though, and peep, and you're looking into another world, a place where workers have just popped out for lunch and could be back at any time. At the end of each of the Ancoats Peeps is a scene, a tiny bit of history; close-ups of machinery, slowly rotating objects, a room with workers' pin-ups still on the wall, the inside of a public toilet. Some have a photographic stillness – until you realise a tiny detail is moving. You're not really sure what you're looking at, or even where you're looking at, but want to look again and again and again, waiting for someone to return or something to come back to life and spring into production again.

The Ancoats Peeps, of which there around a dozen in total, dotted about Ancoats (their exact number and location is delightfully mysterious), are part of a project that's spanned the best part of the last decade. When the last of industry was moving out of the area and buildings had been compulsorily purchased for redevelopment, the Ancoats Urban Village Company decided to hold a nationwide competition for an artist to undertake a public sculpture as part of the regeneration of the area, which was by then run-down and crime ridden. Artist and architect Dan Dubowitz won the commission; however, when he arrived in Ancoats in 2003, he was clear that a sculpture would not be right for the area. “I went and handed the cheque back. The area doesn't need another visual object to try and define it. There is a tendency towards edifices and big objects but Ancoats needed something subtle you would stumble across. It needed something about the whole area and the identity of the area that people could be involved in. The whole area is a sculpture in a way, a visual beast.”

Whilst most of the historic mills of Ancoats (those that weren't victims of arson) are still standing, in many ways the area is being rebuilt all over again. Not just in conversions and new apartment blocks, but culturally, as an area, in people's perceptions, as a place to live and work, a community, and it was this that Dan found he needed to address – why regenerate the area, when it was derelict, over any other part of the city, instead of just leaving it to rot or knocking it down and starting all over again? He explained: “I discovered a real problem that no object could ever address, which was cultural continuity. Ancoats has been such an important place and about certain things – capitalism and communism, written about by people like Engels – and now it's a wasteland. It's going from industrial to domesticity. I had to ask: 'How is it going to be about that if it was once about dark Satanic mills? What is Ancoats going to be used for next?' There aren't really professions whose job it is to ask those questions but they still need to be brought to the table on a weekly basis and asked over again. I was asking, 'If we're going to build, what should we be building and why?'"

Dan has experience of working on cultural masterplans around the country, although he admits: “Some of them don't really kick off and get that far. Public art is a very fraught field. The idea that art is something that beautifies an area does not help. So often the brief of an artist is to try to rescue something, for example liven up a public space when they decide it needs something. There is a huge value in involving an artist at an early stage – but it shouldn't be assumed that it will lead to a physical artwork.” The regeneration company agreed to let Dan approach the project organically. Dan was given his own studio and set about deciding what form his involvement as an artist should take. He started by exploring Ancoats and its stories, getting to know the dynamics of the area and the diaspora of its people by conducting hundreds of interviews. “There were still one or two man businesses in Ancoats – little guys with repair shops hanging on in corners. Lots of people have their own stories from different periods.”

Dan had decided to focus on art rather than architecture when he realised he was more interested in wastelands and derelict buildings, and working with what was already there, than putting new buildings up. Once he had gained access to the deserted mills of Ancoats, he starting documenting the place as he found it: “Once I got inside I'd just stay there all day. I developed a kind of photography using very long exposures and through that I got to know the place.” The resulting photos are beautiful. You feel like you're looking at a scene from a fairytale like sleeping beauty. Once industry moved out, nature moved in. Under glass ceilings, mills become greenhouses, overgrown with ferns and trees. In other cases, whole rooms were found intact, walled up. Some of these photos now sit in light-boxes in Cutting Room Square – the first ever public square in Ancoats, and another product of the regeneration process.

Part of the success of the Ancoats Peeps is that Dan was working with a diverse team that included not just town planners, engineers, architects and a landscape designer but a photographer and archaeologists. The latter unearthed all sorts of artefacts relating to the area's history, including eighteenth century ladies' shoes and a penny that had lain undisturbed in a roof of a mill since it was built. Dan realised the value of leaving things where they were: “I said, if we found things walled up, instead of putting things in a museum why don't we put them back? The team really understood the wider ramifications of things we found and their interest to wider types of people.” Dan appreciated the willingness of different members to bring their expertise to the team, but also “step outside the group and think outside the box”. There was real commitment to the area: “We sat in a room and knew that if we all made decisions this part of the city would be different. We weren't interested in writing reports that would just sit on a shelf.” He admits: “Ancoats was all-consuming. It took over my whole life.The space is really quite special. It really got under the skins of people. It has a spirit. It's something with no rational words, that you can't put your finger on.”

Dan described the creation and siting of the Peeps as “a long and complicated process”. Each Peep was installed on a building site – some of which were then themselves abandoned and became the new ruins of Ancoats, half-built skeletons, when the slump and depression hit (in one case, Dan had to steal in and rescue a Peep from a building whose owners had gone in to receivership). Dan ended up banning the use of the word “art”, preferring the word “features” for his work, and funding came from the European Regional Development Fund rather than the usual arts channels. The reasoning was that “the Peeps would be features in the street and a part of the streetscape, where you'd usually put benches”.

Whilst the buildings have had shell repairs to stop their deterioration, their fate is still far from decided. Though they are no longer ruins, several are still empty and “frozen in a kind of limbo”. However, Dan sees the completion of the part new-build Ice Plant residential development, which recently hosted an exhibition of his photos as well as a display of artefacts rescued from the area, as a turning point. With the Halle orchestra looking at moving into St Peter's church, he'd like to see the area buzz with culture and become a hive for arts activity – “like Victoria Baths”. Mainly, he acknowledges, “it just needs more people in it”. The regeneration of the area has created its own set of tales, and Dan and the team recently ran a weekend of walks around the area telling the story of the Peeps, which attracted 1,000 people – including former workers who came back to reminisce (one visitor even recognised themselves in some photos of Whit Walks that they'd forgotten existed). It's quite a transformation for an area that Dan admits “was such a no-go part of the city”. Now the project has come to a natural conclusion, Dan reflects: “We all wanted to see the area change in people's minds – we hope if those 1,000 people begin to see what we see then they will tell another 1,000 people.”

For more information and to purchase the accompanying book, The Peeps: The Presence of Absence, published by Manchester University Press, visit www.ancoatspeeps.com.

For more information on Dan's other work visit www.civicworks.net.

Folkestone Triennial: A Million Miles from Home

Once, Folkestone was a destination. Authors from Charles Dickens to Agatha Christie found inspiration in the town and so popular was it with those with money and leisure that a bar in the Grand Hotel is named after Mrs Keppels, the mistress of once frequent visitor Edward VII. It's hard to imagine its glory days now. Like so many other seaside towns, which fell out of favour in the era of cheap overseas holidays, it's enjoyed better times. The opening of the Channel Tunnel saw off ferries to France and even the Orient Express, which until recently passed through Folkestone on its way to the continent, has ceased to stop at the harbour station. In the past few years, a new (extremely ugly) shopping centre has been built in an attempt to revitalise the declining town centre, and the Folkestone Triennial initiated, aiming to reinvigorate the town culturally.

The first festival, in 2008, installed works by leading artists in prominent places around the town, inspired by both Folkestone's heritage and the cultural baggage of seaside towns – from teen pregnancy to pigeons. Some of the artworks have become permanent, and settled into the fabric of the town – Richard Wentworth's plaques denoting non-native tree species, Tracy Emin's casts of discarded children's items, Mark Wallinger's cliff-top pebbles commemorating the lives of local men lost in the first world war and Richard Wilson's beach huts, refashioned from a former crazy golf course. The second Folkestone Triennial builds on the first, with international artists opening up the town's hidden, deserted and overlooked places (whether through dereliction, decline or obsolescence), from lowly back rooms and storage spaces to a grand Masonic Hall. I went to secondary school in Folkestone, and the Triennial is not just an art treasure hunt, challenging you to find works scattered about the town, but an alternative guidebook, taking you from the West End to the East Cliff and giving a new perspective on the sights in between.

One space usually unseen by the public is a dank, dark deckchair store underneath the cliff-top Leas promenade, where French-Algerian artist Zineb Sedira's films play on mismatched video screens around the room in an effective, immersive installation. Her films document two Algerian lighthouses and the sometimes isolated lives experienced by those who work in them. Tucked away in a corner of the south east, Folkestone isn't really on the way to anywhere except France and, watching Sedira's films in a space cut into the cliff, it feels like you're detached from the rest of the world, on an island even, protected from the waves that crash against the rocks on screen. It's hard to forget that Calais is 30 miles from Folkestone – less than half the distance to London, and a number of works dwell on themes of immigration, displacement and cultural alienation. These include a floor of office space in the high street given over to an installation by Israeli artist Smadar Dreyfus, where visitors stumble around different rooms, filled with the sounds of children's classrooms. The total darkness and unfamiliarity mean it's completely disorientating.

Right at the Western end of the Leas is what looks, if you notice it at all, like an unusually large piece of topiary. Hidden below a gently swaying mass of leaves is a Martello tower, one of many solid, round structures that were built to defend the coast against Napoleonic attack. They still stand along the Kent coast in various states of repair, from crumbled ruins to now-desirable house conversions. This Martello tower is so deserted it has gone beyond a ruin to a jungle, and Spanish artist Cristina Iglesias has cut a wavy path up to it through the undergrowth. With leaves above your head, and the foliage multiplied by mirrors and castings of branches, it's like you're walking into a hedge. You emerge into a viewing platform, separated from the Martello tower by a living moat of brambles and nettles, to admire the tower. It might be hidden, but it's still standing after centuries in front of the ancient Kent hills.

The tower's nearest neighbours are mansions overlooking the sea set in spacious, sun-catching grounds. On the same stretch, and slightly further towards the town, is the massive Grand Hotel. With vintage open-top Jaguars parked outside and afternoon tea served to live music on a grand piano, it's one of the few places where it's possible to imagine how glamorous Folkestone would once have been. Yet Brazilian artist Tonico Lemos Auad leads you through the vast, spacious rooms with plush carpets and elaborate wallpaper to a plain back-room with floorboards and old furniture – a part of the hotel that isn't normally seen by visitors. It houses a giant scratchcard which visitors are invited to scrape to reveal images of seaside festivals, from Brazilian carnivals to Folkestone's annual Charivari parade. Auad has also placed work in another sometimes hidden space, down at the harbour – low tide reveals Carrancas, carved figureheads inspired by Brazilian good-luck talismans, attached to poles amongst the boats that have come to rest on the (usually submerged) harbour mud.

At the nearby Harbour station, the train tracks snake right out into the sea on a pier for trains to be loaded onto boats. A sculpture by Paloma Varga Weisz has landed on the tracks, on top of what could be a magic carpet – only it's been grounded and Folkestone's its final destination. The figures on the rug are going nowhere, and neither is anyone else – the station was closed in 2009. The station and pier are decrepit, but have spectacular views over the sea to the White Cliffs of Dover, where cross-channel traffic continues.

By the sea a bell, removed from a church because it no longer fits the tuning of the other bells, is suspended over wasteland, waiting for passers-by to ring it. The surrounding area is also in suspense – once home to the Rotunda fun fair, source of memories of childhood birthday parties and, when we were older, Friday night trips to the rides, it was cleared for redevelopment (a supermarket, casino, leisure complex and housing were all suggested for the site), before the recession and a tussle over opposing plans for the land put development on hold.

The other side of the Harbour, at Sunny Sands, the town's sandy beach, I was sceptical about seeing Cornelia Parker's mermaid sculpture, thinking I wouldn't find much of interest in a sculpture copied from an iconic artwork so associated with another place. In real life though the figure, cast from a local woman, is rather lovely – she stares out to sea, calm and serene on a rock above the crowded chaos of beachgoers with their personal stereos, livid skin and screaming children.

Back up the cliff, in the town, Hew Locke has placed colourfully painted wooden boats on a bright sea of lightbulbs in secluded St Eanswythe's Church. Hanging below the wooden beams of the roof (you realise the nave of the church itself is shaped like an upturned boat), and above antique wooden pews, the boats make you notice the beauty of the friezes and stained glass windows that are already there.

One sign of the town's changing fortunes is the restoration and reopening of the Leas Lift, a Victorian water lift. £1 gets you up or down the cliff – soundtracked by an installation by Martin Creed. I took the Lift up the cliff, and the ascent is matched by a musical composition performed by local string players. It rises like a musical scale, starting off with a low grinding and ending in a high pitch, in a reassuringly smooth transition as the lift stutters and clacks its way towards the Leas.

Other highlights of the festival include Spencer Finch's giant colour wheel and flags, changed daily to match the colour of the sea. Strange Cargo, who have long been doing good projects in the town, complement the Triennial's artworks with plaques drawing your attention to the quirkier aspects of the town's history, drawn from the memories of local people. Perhaps best of all, though, are Ruth Ewan's subtle interventions into the town's timing. She has placed clocks in prominent (and some not so prominent) places in the town, from a pub to a fireplace in the woodlined bar of the Grand Hotel, next to important-looking portraits, to the former town hall and even an entirely new clock on the Leas. The clocks have been changed to French republican time – meaning they only go up to ten, making you do a double take and look again more closely!

It's not often enough you get to be a tourist in your home town. It's three years since I last spent any significant amount of time in the area, but Folkestone's transformation from the place where I grew up has been considerable with new bars, cafes, galleries, independent businesses and venues, and even a University College Folkestone. The Triennial seems to be having a knock-on effect, with its own fringe festival this year – something to explore next time I visit!

Folkestone Triennial is free and runs until September 25.

www.folkestonetriennial.org.uk

the modernist magazine and other news

the modernist is a new, quarterly magazine for lovers of modernism, published by Manchester Modernist Society. Whilst it leans towards architecture and design, primarily in the North West, I was asked to write an article about the constructed language Esperanto, which shares many of modernism's ideals. The article came about following a chance discussion about encountering a strange, early to mid twentieth century young people's magazine (published in Manchester) in the National Co-operative Archive called Our Circle which was so enthused by a Esperanto and its possibilities for fostering international freedom and contributing to world peace and universal brotherhood that it published stories, lessons and correspondence from its readers in Esperanto.

The theme of the first issue is 'bold', and other contributions include: a foreword by Jonathan Meades; Blackburn market; Aidan Turner-Bishop on cooling towers; Richard Brook on an iconic logo; Dr Steve Millington on the Mancunian Way; Matthew Whitfield on the 1965 plan for Liverpool; David Oates' photos of Oscar Niemeyer's Brazil; Eddy Rhead on tripe restaurants; Stephen Hale on mods; and news and reviews.

the modernist will be launched at CUBE gallery on Thursday June 23 from 6.30-8.30pm, with wine!

Issues cost just £3.75 — or £15 for a subscription (including postage).

It is available from Cornerhouse bookshop in Manchester, Aye-Aye books in Glasgow, News from Nowhere in Liverpool and Do You Read Me in Berlin and can be purchased online here.

Read more about it at www.the-modernist-mag.co.uk.

Read it online here:

Open publication - Free publishing - More architecture

In other news:

Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention went really well. Thanks to everyone who came and browsed, helped sell out Deerly Beloved Bakery's stall, ran and took part in lino-cutting and embroidery and fanzine-making workshops and watched the film and spoke and listened. There are a few write-ups floating around, as well as lots of photos taken by Alex Zamora from Fever Zine here, and there are some more photos here and here and here. Maybe there will be something similar next year...

More news:

Hayley Flynn nominated The Shrieking Violet in the monthly blog section of Blank Pages, Blank Media's magazine, which meant I had to write about my blogging experience then nominate a blog (my choice was not very imaginative!).

Read it here:

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Open publication - Free publishing - More art

Rotherham Zine Library asked me to do an interview about The Shrieking Violet fanzine! Read it here.

54th Venice Biennale

Four years ago I visited Venice for the first time, an impromptu trip booked a couple of days beforehand to join a friend at the Biennale. It was a rewarding experience – Venice is the ideal city to wander round unplanned and without a map – in fact it's best experienced lost as you never know what's waiting around the next corner. I was overwhelmed not just by the canals and narrow passageways, but excited and inspired by a few days of wandering around a city taken over by art. As well as the two main Biennale venues – the Arsenale and the Giardini – I constantly stumbled across pavilions spread throughout the city, peering at art tucked into the corners and attic spaces of palazzos, on show right next to the ever-present, gently lapping, intensely blue water. I had to miss the Biennale two years ago, as Venice can be a very expensive city to visit, especially when unemployed. Being in the lucky position of having a job meant funds permitted me to attend this year, but it was a flying visit with a day at the Giardini and a day at the Arsenale and not as much time as I would have liked to have visited the independent pavilions.

Even by the standards of Venice – itself a floating, watery marvel (for a short documentary about how Venice 'works' visit http://vimeo.com/21688538), the Arsenale is spectacular, a series of vast spaces where ships were once built and various outbuildings which still contain the rusty, broken remnants of machinery. I found it all too easy to be distracted from the art by the surroundings and much of the art that stood out for me was that which took on the epic space by standing up to the hefty brick columns and reaching upwards to the high ceilings. Adrian Villar Rojas' dense display of monumental clay sculptures stand like cracked, uprooted trees in the Argentinian pavilion, and other highlights are some of the para-pavilions – pavilions constructed by artists across the Biennale to house the work of other artists.

Song Dong's para-pavilion makes an impressive introduction to the Arsenale – a recreation of a traditional Chinese home surrounded by a maze of wardrobes salvaged from local families. Each is similar but subtly different – remnants of their past still stick to them including scraps of wallpaper and stickers, reminders of the individuals that once owned them – although they're all connected by a recurring green curtain. It seems appropriate that the parapavilion houses personal work by both Moroccan Yto Barraba and Ryan Gander. Barraba's plays with the reliability of memory – Family Tree is built from the faded, leftover spaces where photographs once sat on the wall of a family home, and her film Hand-Me Downs is a series of childhood stories effectively set to found film footage – whilst Gander's is a tiny self-portrait of the artist sprawled out of his wheelchair.

Another highlight at the Arsenale is Christian Marclay's The Clock, a rare opportunity to forget your surroundings – and a film in which you could quite easily lose yourself. The Clock is a twenty four hour collage of clips which literally follows the clock around the day, capturing the suspense as well as the boredom of waiting for the time to change – and rousing a few laughs from visitors stretched out on sofas and settled down to escape the torrential rain outside.

I found the shows at the Giardini, where countries have their own pavilion in the grounds, for the most part, more interesting. This year there was a trend towards transforming the pavilions until they were unrecognisable – the Dutch pavilion has been reinvented as a theatre because, as we're told in the show, it's completely unsuited to showing art despite being an icon of modernist architecture. Greece's is reclad in wood and filled with water, the visitor experience stripped down to crossing a bridge across a new, artificial lagoon. The roof has been removed from the British pavilion, where Mike Nelson's installation I, Imposter recreates a dwelling in Istanbul, down to the smells and head-ducking lowness of the ceilings. Visitors are left to wander round a series of rooms which bear the traces of recent human activity – as if someone's just left. It's eerily realistic, and the inclusion of two darkrooms – hung with photos of buildings which inspired the work – make make you suspend your disbelief and wonder if you might be in a 'real' building, transported piece by piece to Venice and painstakingly rebuilt.

Although I preferred pavilions which stuck to one or two artists, such as the understated elegance of the Austrian pavilion, which houses sculptures and films by Markus Schinwald, and the interplay between the sculpture of father and son Dominik and Jiří (who stopped making sculpture before his son was born) Lang in the Czech pavilion, rather than group shows, other highlights at the Giardini include Jan Švankmajer's disquieting and subtly ominous 1968 film The Garden in the thought-provoking Danish Pavilion, themed around free speech. In the main venue at the Giardini, Ryan Gander's imagining of what a 25 euro coin would look like, stuck to the floor as if it's landed from the future, is worth a look (if you don't walk straight over it!), and I enjoyed Amalia Pica's work, including Venn Diagram, which goes back to the censorship facing society in her native Argentina during the dictatorship of the 1970s.

One thing I didn't remember from my last visit to the Biennale is how bizarre and surreal the experience can be. Much of the work consists of grotesque spectacle – thousands of stuffed pigeons overlook visitors to the Giardini, placed there by artist Maurizio Cattelan, whilst Hong Kong's Frog King (inhabiting a cavern that's like a bit of Camden Market transported to Venice) greets visitors outside the Arsenale. Italy's pavilion, bewildering and often kitsch, incorporates a terrifying installation on the mafia that uses every technique possible to disorientate and confuse – darkness, corridors, loud noises. Visiting the overbearing Swiss pavilion – a claustrophobic cave constructed from consumer detritus and graphic, inescapable images of human violence – is also a genuinely uncomfortable experience – although the effect is slightly lessened by staff crouching with brown tape making repairs and the whole thing starts to fall apart when the cotton bud structures begin disintegrating. Algorithm, a pipe organ attached to an ATM in the US pavilion is, whilst not exactly subtle, at least, entertaining – especially watching the reactions of members of the public who have queued up to take out cash to a musical soundtrack.

Venice Biennale is on until November 27.

A ticket allowing entry to the Arsenale and Giardini costs €20.

Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention — stallholders

Twigs and Apples (Preston)

Twigs and Apples is a North West UK based zine collective, started in 2009. It operates as an open collective and as such has a wide range of content, including art, writing, poetry, illustration, film and music reviews, sports writing, vegan recipes, photography, DIY and craft, philosophy and the odd rant. Twigs and Apples is fuelled by biscuits, tea, and bicycle rides into the night.

http://twigsandapples.webs.com

http://twigsandapples.blogspot.com

Pink Mince (London)

Pink Mince is a queer zine published in London, UK every couple of months or so by Dan Rhatigan. Its aim is “to delight, titillate, amuse, provoke, and inspire”. That is to say: it features jokes and blokes, possibly with a point behind it all.

http://pinkmince.com

Christa Harris/Camberwell Books (Manchester/London)

Christa Harris is a Manchester based book artist with work in several national archives including TATE Britain. At Victoria Baths she will present a stall showcasing work from a variety of friends and colleagues, including zines from Norwich based artist Sammy Merry (http://incident88.blogspot.com), and bookworks from the Camberwell Book Arts MA (www.camberwell bookarts.blogspot.com). She will be happy to answer any questions about book arts, bookmaking and small/self publishing and will be disseminating information on a variety of related topics including basic bookbinding, advice for small publishers, how to get an isbn etc.

MUSEUMS PRESS (Manchester)

Launched in June 2009 MUSEUMS PRESS is a small independent publishing house based in Manchester. Its publications have included a range of formats and subjects from heavily compiled books, comics and poster packages to photocopied fanzines and individual artists’ prints.

www.museumspress.co.uk

Manchester Municipal Design Corporation & Ultimate Holding Company (Manchester)

The Manchester Municipal Design Corporation works through cross-disciplinary collaborations involving publications, provocations, events, exhibitions and interventions. It has published two issues of Things Happen, a fanzine about Manchester and Salford, and co-produced a map of the creative ecology of the two cities with Laura Mansfield.

Ultimate Holding Company is a creative social engagement project, artists’ collective and design studio. It has operated at the junction of visual art, design and socio-political activism since 2002. UHC’s process-driven ethos seeks out co-production and public collaboration, looking to encourage new connections to the arts through social solidarity.

The MMDC now works within UHC at Hotspur House, and they are together establishing a Design Without Boundaries-esque creative space on the 4th Floor of the building. The third issue of Things Happen, due later in the year, will be a Hotspur Special, after a comic that may or may not have been printed here.

www.uhc.org.uk

www.mmdc.org.uk

http://thefourthfloor.tumblr.com

Ultra Horse (Nottingham)

Ultra Horse zines is a Nottingham based zine conglomerate split between one crafty comic drawing girl and a lovably crude zine making boy. Their style could be described as the product you’d get if Viz was cut up with David Shrigley and served as a hot quesadilla from Taco Bell.

http://ultrahorse.blogspot.com

OWT Creative (Manchester)

OWT creative is a five-strong design collective based in Manchester. OWT focuses on producing a monthly zine showcasing work from themselves and other up and coming creative talent in the North West. Each zine has a set theme to which OWT invites young creatives to contribute a response to be it photography, illustration, graphics or creative writing, as long as it’s imaginative. OWT recently produced issue #6 and are accepting contributions for issue #7, the theme of which is ‘Science’.

www.owtcreative.com

Threads and Letters (Manchester)

Rebecca Aimée Lanyon Willmott is a self publisher, poet, storyteller and textile artist. A love of storytelling and stitching inspired the publication Threads and Letters, uniting textiles and literature. Handcrafted on cotton paper, it has a traditional book theme, reflected in the Gothic fonts and framing. Its contents include: an article on the button collection at Platt Hall, Gallery of Costume, Manchester, embroidery as puppet illustration, activist textiles and patterned poetry. When at the fair, It comes with a button bookmark and is bound with linen thread and printed on recycled paper.

http://threadsandletters.blogspot.com

Sugar Paper (Manchester)

Sugar Paper is a bi-annual craft zine always featuring 20 things to make and do, from knitting to dressing like your favourite fictional character! The Sugar Paper Gang have two aims: to get everyone crafting and to make crafting BADASS!

http://sugarpapergang.blogspot.com

Nude (nationwide)

Nude is an eclectic, independently-produced magazine covering all aspects of indie and retro culture, with a strong emphasis on the vibrant new crafting scene as well as numerous aspects of visual culture; comics, illustration, designer toys and street art and zines.

www.nudemagazine.co.uk

Emily & Anne (Manchester/London)

Emily Howells and Anne Wilkins met at Kingston University where they both studied Illustration & Animation BA. After graduating they decided to work together, as it is a lot more fun than working by yourself. Their first film, A Film about Poo (2009), musically promotes the importance of washing your hands, and was made with long-term collaborator and musician Billy Payne. The film went on to show at fifty film festivals worldwide, winning seven awards including the audience’s choice at New York International Children's Film Festival 2010, and the Golden Poo Award at London International Animation Festival 2009. When they are not animating, the girls also draw illustrations, and have produced three zines to date — one about growing up, one about French dogs in hats and one about poo. Emily and Anne love drawing so much they often don’t sleep, and have created work for clients such as the BFI, BBC Learning and Bolton Museum & Archives.

www.emilyandanne.co.uk

Silent V (Norwich)

Currently on its fourth installment, Kyle Baddeley’s Silent V is an absurdist comic saga set in a twisted cartoon world populated by mansize talking buzzards, scheming scientists, and malevolent teddy bears. Its madcap, non-linear structure often leaves the reader questioning the characters’ motivations, whilst continually throwing up new plot tangents. Filled with sudden, unexpected violence and funny dialogue, Silent V is both dark and hilarious.

http://gulagcomics.livejournal.com

www.webcomicsnation.com/bakesale

Charlotte Fiona Percival and Born Restless (Sheffield/Manchester)

Charlotte is an eternal obsessive with her own enthusiasms and other people’s.

www.gnarlotte.wordpress.com

Born Restless is Hayley, an eternal doodler, embroiderer and cut and paste-er. She is interested in mistakes and trying to copy or create creepy images that usually end up looking wonky and silly instead. Her hands won’t stop.

www.welovetolove.blogspot.com

www.etsy.com/shop/bornrestless

Vapid Kitten (Manchester)

Vapid Kitten is published quarterly and is now up to its fourth edition. The ‘zine is ‘for the lazy feminist.’ It’s designed to be a platform for commentary on modern society for those of us with an opinion but no desire to protest about it. This is done through the often quirky contributions of various artists and writers around a different theme each issue. Themes so far include Feminism, Green, Craft, and digital vs analogue.

http://vapidkittenblogs.blogspot.com

Love to Print (Birmingham)

Karoline Rennie is an illustrator who makes her own zines and small artists’ books using screen printing or Japanese gocco printing combined with digital printing. She collaborates with other women illustrators to make limited edition zines, colouring books and postcard books featuring their work. She also sells her own handmade cards, mini prints and zines made by other women.

Memo (Leeds)

Helen Entwisle is a freelance illustrator and screen printer currently based in Leeds. Her work includes hand drawn and screen printed illustration, self-published zines, hand printed stationery, limited edition prints, tote bags and accessories. She puts together a collaborative zine called Ten Fingers.

www.hellomemo.com

The Hare Newspaper (Glossop)

The Hare Newspaper is an independent publication, released once a month and stocked in Manchester, Edinburgh, London, Cardiff and its birthplace, the sleepy Derbyshire town of Glossop.

Mr Hare and his woodland chums turn their attentions to a wide-range of topic, with sport, both international and domestic, politics, music and academia their main focuses. With 20 monthly issues under the belt and several spin-offs – such as Modern Spiv andThe Hare Sports Mag – already in circulation, it is an exciting time to join the form.

The Hare is always looking to grow its production team and, in the process, further diversify its voice. If you would like to write/draw/distribute for The Hare, you need only contact the team at theharenewspaper@hotmail.co.uk or via the website and they will gladly consider your submission for inclusion.

www.theharenewspaper.co.uk

Salford Zine Library (Salford)

Salford Zine Library was formed in January 2010 and aims to showcase and share creative work in the self-published form. The archive is open to all to contribute. You can visit the Library at Islington Mill, Salford.

http://salfordzinelibrary.blogspot.com