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Home , Adam Chodzko, Castlefield Gallery, Cornerhouse, Manchester, Manchester Art Gallery, The Lowry

British Show 6

28 January – 2 April 2006 at venues across .

The most ambitious survey of recent British art arrives in Manchester

A TOURING EXHIBITION Supported by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation 10 November 2005

Works by fifty artists and artists’ groups, selected from contemporary artists living and working in the UK, will appear in Manchester in January for the Hayward Gallery’s sixth British Art Show. Including by Northwest-based and alumni artists, the British Art Show is a unique chance to view recent developments in British art, and to experience a visual festival on a city-wide scale. Every major art gallery in Manchester – Gallery, Chinese Arts Centre, , The International 3, , and The – will be taking part.

Fresh from its success at BALTIC in Gateshead – where it was seen by over 42,000 visitors in its first month – the British Art Show moves to Manchester in January, bringing new artworks and special commissions to the city. Manchester will launch M-Path (2006), a new commission by where visitors will be invited to swap their shoes for a second-hand pair for their duration of their visit to Cornerhouse. The artist has been working with Manchester-based community groups to collect the shoes, and hopes that the choice of footwear will influence the visitor’s walk through the show – and their perception of it. A new large-scale wall by Toby Paterson, looking at architecture and how the places we live in are shaped, has been commissioned specially for British Art Show 6 and will be displayed at Urbis. A number of works will be shown exclusively in Manchester including Phil Collins’s film, el mundo no escuchará, which captures Smith’s fans in Bogotá, Columbia, singing karaoke to seminal Smiths’ album The World Won’t Listen, Nathan Coley’s new Jerusalem Syndrome (2005) and Saskia Olde Wolbers’ film Placebo (2002).

Manchester also sees the launch of a live art programme that includes Doug Fishbone’s labyrinthine slide lecture through history, philosophy, politics and sexual mores. - based juneau/projects/ stage a sonic performance involving four CD walkmans and a drill. Mark Leckey’s band Jack too Jack perform The Destructors, a frenzied audio-visual assault set to a fast-moving collage of images taken from popular culture. Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska collaborate with Ben White and Eileen Simpson to produce a live musical accompaniment to their new film, compiled from material released from the Northwest Film Archive at Manchester Metropolitan University. Believing that the arts community is under- represented in the police force, Chris Evans stages a police careers talk for art and design students in an attempt to redress the balance.

The artwork within the British Art Show 6 reflects the diversity and internationalism within current British art, with 50% of artists born outside the UK and over half of the selected artists women. The Northwest is strongly represented: Andrew MacDonald, Paul Rooney and Matthew Houlding all live and work in the region and Adam Chodzko, Carey Young and Phil Collins all studied in Manchester.

In developing the shortlist for the British Art Show 6, curators Andrea Schlieker and Alex Farquharson travelled extensively throughout the UK and considered the work of over 500 artists. They said: ‘It is a particularly exciting moment for us to assemble this exhibition, as the art scene in Britain is now broader in outlook, more vibrant and internationally oriented than at any other time in the British Art Show’s 26-year history.’

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For further information and images, please contact Susie Stubbs, 07919 575 740, email [email protected] or Judith Holmes/Eleanor Bryson in the Hayward Gallery Press Office on 020 7921 0887/0631 or email [email protected]

Notes to editors 1. The British Art Show is a Hayward Gallery touring exhibition from the South Bank Centre, , organised on behalf of Arts Council , and presented in association with BALTIC Centre for , and venues across Manchester, and . 2. The British Art Show is a uniquely collaborative project, bringing together a broad range of partners, contemporary art galleries to city museums to artist-run spaces in each of the cities on the tour. It was first staged in 1979. 3. The curators of the British Art Show 6 are Andrea Schlieker and Alex Farquharson. Andrea Schlieker is a freelance curator, lecturer and writer. She was curator at the Arnolfini, Bristol (1984–1985), ICA, London (1985–1988) and Serpentine Gallery, London (1988–1995). She is Curator of the Fourth Plinth Project in , and lectures at Sotheby’s Institute in London. Alex Farquharson is a freelance curator, critic and lecturer. He was Exhibitions Director at Centre for Visual Arts in (1999–2000) and Exhibitions Director at Spacex in (1996–1998). As well as curating numerous international exhibitions and contributing to art publications, he lectures at the in London. 4. The British Art Show 6 will be supported in Manchester by Revelation: Reflecting British Art in the (, 21 January – 2 April 2006). This specially created companion exhibition to the British Art Show looks at the history of the British Art Show as it is represented in the Arts Council Collection, and features some of the most famous and controversial names in the British modern and contemporary art scene over the past 25 years, including , Lucian Freud, Tony Cragg and Richard Long. It tours simultaneously to Graves, (28 January – 22 April 2006). 4. The Tour: GATESHEAD 24 Sept 2005 – 8 Jan 2006 BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art MANCHESTER 28 Jan – 2 Apr 2006 ; Chinese Arts Centre; Cornerhouse; The International 3; Manchester Art Gallery; Urbis; The Whitworth Art Gallery NOTTINGHAM 22 Apr – 25 Jun 2006 Angel Row Gallery; New Art Exchange; The Bonington Gallery; Djanogly Art Gallery; Nottingham Castle; Yard Gallery BRISTOL 15 Jul – 17 Sept 2006 Arnolfini; Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery; ROOM; Royal West of England Academy; Spike Island; Station