A collection of paintings will be exhibited at Firbob and Peacock Gallery, 76 King Street, Knutsford, Cheshire, WA16 6ED from 27th August to 27th September 2008. (Admission free.) This is my first full exhibition outside the Greater Manchester area.

Rhapsody in Red Brick A collection of 27 mostly brand new works are to be exhibited at The Portico Library & Gallery, 57 Mosley Street, Manchester, M2 3HY Tel: 0161 236 6785, www.theportico.org.uk from Thursday 1st May (private view 6-8pm) until Thursday 29th May 2008. Admission free. Although most of the new works are scenes of Manchester in my usual style, although on larger 50x70cm canvas rather than the usual 40x50cm, some of them are a wee bit more experimental or show a more narrative subject matter. More info about the exhibition can be found in the April 08 Portico Quarterly Magazine. An Adobe PDF version is available here. A small selection of the new works that were shown at the exhibition can be viewed online here.

In Autumn 2007 a selection of stills of some of my paintings of Manchester scenes were used in a music video by the gradely, up and coming, Manchester Indie band The Tides. You can see this video and find out more about the band at their Myspace page. http://www.myspace.com/thetidesinfo The video with the paintings is called ‘Edit’ and is about half way down the page on the right. It was made by Buzz Fuzz. Alternatively, it can be found on YouTube at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7yTgkHKNgQ

In October 2007 I was invited by The Portico Library and Gallery to be one of the three judges at The Assembly, 11th annual Schools' Exhibition and Art Prize. Information about the event including a list of the eventual prize winners can be found here. The above picture is one of the winners, Self Portrait by Eleanor Savage of The Oldham Hulme Grammar School which won The Bloxham Charitable Trust Prize. Judging the entries wasn't in any way easy and I can honestly say I would have liked to have been able to award a lot more prizes than we as judges were able to, such was the high quality of a lot of the work. Each judge had differing points of view and there was a lot of debate, but I think we struck a fair balance in the end.

A painting of Manchester University which I painted in 2003, entitled Manchester University No. 1, (pictured below) is being used by the University itself, or more specifically, the University of Manchester School of Law, as the poster for the 'Socio-Legal Studies Association Annual Conference' (Tuesday 18th - Thursday 20th March 2008). More info about this event can be found here.

 
In Summer 2007 I featured in the 5th episode of Zeitgeist a television art's programme made by Channel M broadcast on 1st July 2007 and repeated since. The feature is eight minutes long and mainly includes an interview in my studio and footage of me working and it was made by Paul Arnold of Salford University. Personally, I was very pleased with how it turned out, once I'd recovered from the shock of seeing myself in a form that was a lot chubbier and slightly older than the image I carry around in my mind. They must have used a trick lens or something! More information about the programme and a link to view this episode can be found here.

On 31st May 2007 a couple of my paintings where shown at Transcultural Writing Open day at Lancaster University Institute for Advanced Studies, which also included photography, learning information displays, film screenings (including the 1960's Manchester Classic 'A Taste of Honey' which I thoroughly enjoyed watching after so many years since I last saw it), and readings by the poet, novelist and critic David Dabydeen. More information about the event can be found here.
 

 

January 2007 Blyth Gallery, Manchester.

A collection of new paintings were shown in a joint exhibition with local artist Steven Scholes between 9th January 2007 and 3rd February 2007 at the Blyth Gallery, Amazon House, Brazil St, Manchester M1 3PJ. Tel 0161 236 1004. www.artmanchester.com A review of this exhibition by Art’s Correspondent Angela Kelly of Manchester Metro News entitled Portrait of Our City can be found here. My next full exhibition will be at the Portico Library & Gallery, Manchester in May 2008. More details later in the year.
 

A review of my previous exhibition at the Portico Library and Gallery, Manchester in 2006 can be found here

Links to further reviews can be found on the Press Reviews page.

A selection of paintings are also on display online at www.Painting-Gallery.org

 

During the last year I was honoured to have many of my paintings used as part of the Moving Manchester (Mediating Marginalities) project organised by Professor Lynne Pearce, (Project Director), Dr Robert Crawshaw, Dr Graham Mort, Dr Corinne Fowler (Researcher), Jo McVicker (Administrator), PHD students and a Management Advisory Group at Lancaster University. The project deals with how the immigrant experience has influenced literature in Manchester and the North West. The novelists Muli Amaye and Zahid Hussain, and the performance poet, Shamshad Khan are also involved in the project, the launch of which was at Manchester Central Library in June 2006 where they read extracts from their works. I also attended the launch and exhibited two of my paintings including one, The Midland Hotel, painted especially with the project in mind. More information about the Moving Manchester Project can be found at it’s official website at:
 www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/projects/movingmanchester/news.htm

The official blog of the project is at http://mediatingmarginalities.blogspot.com/

Marketing Manchester Postcards

Paintings by Teeside School children

BBC Poll