Sunday, 28 April 2019

Gallery Visit - Manchester Art Gallery


Manchester Art Gallery

Image result for manchester art gallery

This semester's first gallery visit was the Manchester Art Gallery due to its great and large collection of both historical and contemporary exhibitions. Upon arrival we went in groups to learn about a few of the pieces in the gallery's collection. With the main portion of it being historical, I wasn't as invested in those pieces, but we did do some readings on the paintings which opened me up to how many of them had deeper hidden meanings. For example, in a group we had to do a reading on the painting of Ellis Cornelia Knight.

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We found many iconographical readings such as her holding a pen possibly representing that she was an author which in her times would of been frond upon due to her gender. Doing readings on her gender and the possibility of her being gay which we took from the facial expression of her gazing deeply into the painter's eyes, who was a girl and how she is ignoring all the other surrounding portraits of men in the room who are all facing towards her. Also hidden in the belt is a portrait of the painter to show that it was a woman, which in that time was rare due to the portrait being the top of painting's hierarchy, females would usually be constricted to crafts or animals due to them not being allowed art education to understand analogy.
Moving on to the contemporary section of the gallery, we explored the new collections which held some artists that I had researched before such as Abigail Reynolds, who creates photo collages out of two contrasting images, revealing both through cut out window sections in the pieces.

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It was a good reminder think of what I was interested in before university and how my thoughts towards art have changed. For example, this would have been a go to method for me because of its repressiveness, but now some of my work has become more abstract and less A-level, I can see why doing just copy cat art wasn't a development. Also in the exhibition was a piece that caught my eye due to the metallic appearance.


Created by Gilbert and George, this piece called Royal red was laid out in the style of old postage stamps along with Victorian landmarks that all coincide with the Royal family. Going past the meaning of the piece I preferred the look and style of it. I loved the shine of the metallics and how it gave a regal effect using the golds which tied it all together. I feel like my style would work well with this medium so I would like to experiment with it in the future. In one way I already have with the print workshop. 

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