Castlefield Gallery

Listen to a playlist of some of Horace's favourite music HERE

Tale of the Frozen Bits is an exhibition of new work by artist and Castlefield Gallery Associate El Morgan, opening at Castlefield Gallery on 12 February 2023.

The exhibition explores something of the rich and surprising history of fertility drugs. Morgan’s work for the show touches on an eclectic array of materials and medical discoveries from Nun’s urine to midwife toads and industrial freezers. Across two film works, screen prints and merchandise Morgan crafts a unique take on fertility treatment bringing to the fore the practical mechanisms that surround having ‘bits’ of oneself stored and frozen for potential future use.

Ahead of the exhibition we host a conversation with the artist, Professor of Clinical Embryology at the University of Manchester Daniel Brison and Professor of Reproductive Biomedicine at the University of Manchester John Aplin.

If you would like to find out more about the subject of fertility treatment the website of the UK regulator, the Human Fertility and Embryology Authority, is a good place to start  https://www.hfea.gov.uk, as well as Fertility Network UK https://fertilitynetworkuk.org

Find out more about CYBERJUNK here

Artist Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley uses the forms and imagery of video games to create works that consider "what archives have left out and how we can archive now.” Danielle works predominantly in animation, sound, performance and Video Games to communicate the experiences of being a Black Trans person. Danielle's practice focuses on recording the lives of Black Trans people, intertwining lived experience with fiction to imaginatively retell Trans stories. Spurred on by a desire to record the "History of Trans people both living and past" their work can often be seen as a Trans archive where Black Trans people are stored for the future.

"Throughout history, Black queer and Trans people have been erased from the archives. Because of this it is necessary not only to archive our existence, but also the many creative narratives we have used and continue to use to share our experiences." Brathwaite-Shirley

Brathwaite-Shirley's work has been exhibited at: ICA, London; Arebyte Gallery, London; David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles; Quad, Derby; Science Gallery, London and TATE Modern, London.

www.daniellebrathwaiteshirley.com

David Blandy investigates the stories and cultural forces that inform and influence our behaviour. Collaboration is central to his practice, examining communal and personal heritage and interdependence. He has developed a gaming art practice writing original RPG’s, examining social justice, climate change and posthuman futures. He works in installation, performance, writing, gaming and sound, and has had national and international solo exhibitions of his work. Nominated for the Film London Jarman award with Larry Achiampong in 2018. He has exhibited & performed at venues nationally and worldwide such as Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea; Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge; Art Tower Mito, Tokyo; Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum, Helsinki; Tate Modern, London; The Baltic, Gateshead; Turner Contemporary, Margate; Spike Island, Bristol; Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Germany; MoMA PS1, New York, and Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai. He is represented by Seventeen Gallery, London.

www.davidblandy.co.uk

Dr Alex Mason speaks with Hardeep Pandhal and David Steans, about Sardonic Harmony. Sardonic Harmony is a collaborative lyric video featuring writing and sound by artists Hardeep Pandhal, Roy Claire Potter, Stefan Sadler, and David Steans. Pandhal was invited by Castlefield Gallery to make a new work to be presented online coinciding with the inaugural exhibition of the Manchester Hip Hop Archive; a heritage project that preserves and celebrates the history of Manchester-based rap music and hip-hop culture.

To find out more and to watch Sardonic Harmony click here

Dr Alex Mason is an early careers researcher, using literature, film and Hip Hop to explore the relationship between race, higher education and architecture. He currently works in the Arts & Humanities Knowledge Exchange team at the University of Sheffield, organising projects that creatively explore and centre marginalised histories, people and places. Alex recently co-organised the international Hip Hop & Higher Education online conference, which celebrated the critical and creative elements of Hip Hop whilst interrogating its current relationship with UK universities. He writes regularly for Bad Form Review and can be found at @adrm25.

Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes is Reader in English Literature and Film at Manchester Metropolitan University and co-lead of the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies. He is author of Body Gothic (2014), Horror Film and Affect (2016) and Gothic Cinema (2020), and editor of Horror: A Literary History (2016) and Twenty-First-Century Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion (with Maisha Wester, 2019). Xavier is chief editor of the Horror Studies academic book series published by the University of Wales Press.

Find out more about Jocelyn McGregor’s solo exhibition, Mantle at Castlefield Gallery in 2022  HERE

Nicola Ellis is joined by Dr Marsha Bradfield and Andrew Wilson to discuss collaborating with people in different environments, and workplaces with particular reference to Ellis’ artist placement at Ritherdon & Co Ltd (a family-run manufacturer of specialist steel enclosures, est. 1895) and her exhibition at Castlefield Gallery (13 June – 1 August 2021) which presented a body of work from this placement – to see documentation and other resources relating to that exhibition please visit: castlefieldgallery.co.uk

Dr Marsha Bradfield describes herself as an artist-curator-educator-fundraiser-researcher-writer and company director. Marsha teaches on several courses as well being a PhD supervisor and researcher at Chelsea College of Arts. As part of her own practice, Marsha creates events, artworks, exhibitions, curricula, websites, publications and other projects that explore the subject of interdependence – the way in which things are connected to, and rely on, one another taking forms like relationships, systems and exchanges. She recently completed a fellowship in AI and machine learning for the BeFantastic TechArt triennial in Bangalore (2020). She is also a founding member of Incidental Unit, the third iteration of Artist Placement Group. Marsha recently co-curated a six-city touring programme to explore their legacy across the UK.

Andrew Wilson experiments with structures that facilitate collaboration between
people with different kinds of knowledge. He is a co-founder and organisers of: Para-Lab (with Annie Carpenter, 2017-) and Superposition (2013-2017), both collectives of artists and scientists; the Making Space (a cooperatively run shared workspace, 2013-); Same Skies
(a citizen-led political network and think tank 2015-); and two
co-operatives that develop software www.studiofor.co.

In the first of a new series of Podcasts, created in collaboration with Venture Arts, artist Sally Hirst explores the Obstructions exhibition at Castlefield Gallery.

Venture Arts is a visual arts charity based in Hulme, Manchester (UK), working alongside learning disabled artists to create exciting new collaborative visual art work.

Ahead of her Castlefield Gallery solo exhibition Mantle, artist and Castlefield Gallery Associate Jocelyn McGregor will discuss her practice with photography curator and editor Mariama Attah.

Taking inspiration from folklore, surrealism and supernatural fiction, McGregor investigates the identification of the female with nature, the home and the machine. McGregor's solo exhibition will form part of Castlefield Gallery's 2021/22 exhibition programme (exhibition dates to be announced). 

As we look forward to reopening this September with our as yet unseen exhibition Soft Bodies, we have commissioned a special episode of exhibiting artist Emma Cousin’s podcast ‘Chats in Lockdown’.

For this episode Cousin invited writer Rajesh Parameswaran (author of I Am an Executioner: Love Stories (2013) described by The Washington Post as “the advent of a genuinely distinctive voice in American fiction.”) and fellow exhibiting artist Megan Snowe.

Their conversation takes the Soft Bodies exhibition as a starting point as well as the restrictions and changes to our daily activities caused by Covid-19, such as the increasing presence of video conferencing in our lives. The discussion takes places via the internet between London and New York and takes in such subjects as the disembodying and embodying nature of technology. The removal of things from the body, phantom limbs, body trash and the potential of inhabiting our non-flesh-based erogenous selves.

The podcast also features music from Semi Precious, who collaborated with artist Jake Moore on Other Life (2019) also exhibited as part of the Soft Bodies exhibition.