Apartment currently features in Art World Magazine; in an interesting article by Kate Feld that explores alternative gallery spaces, along with Apartment, Porch Gallery, Phlight, Bog Standard Gallery, Caravan Gallery and 312 feature.

ARCHIVE

Top Right is a full list of the previous shows and events that Apartment has hosted, with full colour images of every work we have shown. Please also explore the list of artists that have shown.

Thanks for visiting!

Apartment ~ News

Apartment is awaiting news on funding to inform visitors to our blog of forthcoming exhibitions. Berlin based artist Nikola Irmer is the next confirmed show, details will follow soon. Lamport Court where Apartment is based continues to be a centre of various cultural activity. LoneLady (above) continues to create electrifying music on the seventh floor, and has just released a vinyl; ‘Early the haste comes’ is available in all good outlets, for more information on LoneLady visit Lamport Court based independent record label Filthy Home Recordings. Lamport Court poetry magazine continues to support new writing. Paul Harfleet is about to feature his Pansy Project at the Homotopia Festival in Liverpool. Hilary Jack is currently exhibiting at CUBE in Manchester and is preparing a show for Transition Gallery in London. This is not to mention the other bands, artists, DJ’s and musicians based in this unlikely artistic hub.

Radio Appearance!...

Paul Harfleet (Co-Director) and E.P.Niblock (writer in residence) will be appearing on BBC Radio Manchester Thursday 13th September just after 10pm. Tune in to listen to the latest news form Apartment and hear some of Euphemia's explorations at Apartment so far.

Source Article

Below a review of Maeve Rendle's Mount Purgatory exhibition at Apartment features in issue 51 of 'SOURCE' magazine, the review written by Pavel Buchler explores Maeve Rendle's use of photography in her practice: click to enlarge and read.

Apartment News!

Apartment is back in Manchester; a huge thanks to all those that came to see the show in Berlin and were so positive about it, we also had hundreds of hits to the blog so thank you for visiting. We are now hoping to develop a project at Apartment with an amazing artist we met in Berlin; watch this space for information. We have also selected and are in the process of curating a show at CUBE for their first OPEN exhibition, the opening is on Thursday July 12^th. In other news Hilary currently has a show at Transition Gallery in London and Paul is also showing Pansy Project photos at Tooks Chambers until July 13th and is contributing to a symposia on June 28th at MIRIAD where he will be talking about Apartment. For further information on the recent show in Berlin see below, and for more on Axel Lapp Projects click here; the next artist showing at Axel Lapp Projects is Josephine Flynn. Berlin is amazing, there is such a thriving art scene there; some of the highlights include ‘Homie’ a space run from a flat by Daniel Seiple. There are loads of smaller galleries around Mitte which are well worth checking out (see links below for more) a highlight of the bigger musuems is Matthew Buckingham at Hamburger Bahnhof the show is on ‘til August.

Meeting Point - Axel Lapp Projects, Berlin

Apartment are currently in Berlin at Axel Lapp Projects. We are showing a selection of Apartment’s previous exhibitors at the space (Invalidenstraße 161, D-10115 Berlin); so if you happen to be in Berlin; do come to see us we will be there hosting the gallery until the show ends on June 23rd. Entitled ‘Meeting Point’ the exhibition features; Dave Gledhill, Paul Harfleet, Hilary Jack, Naomi Kashiwagi, Lisa Penny, Maeve Rendle, Cherry Tenneson, Martine Myrup, David Wilkinson and Beáta Veszely; more details below:

Twice a year Axel Lapp Projects invites and showcases the work of artist-run spaces based outside Berlin in a programme entitled INTERLUDE. For the first of this programme Axel Lapp has selected Apartment, a project and exhibition space, run from a sixth floor one bedroom council flat in central Manchester, UK, co-directed by Hilary Jack and Paul Harfleet. For INTERLUDE 1, Hilary Jack and Paul Harfleet have brought together the work of ten artists from Manchester, Budapest, London and Glasgow in a show entitled ‘Meeting Point’. The work offers an insight into the breadth of activity that Apartment has facilitated over the last three years and reflects Lapp’s own interest and commitment to this Manchester based exhibition space.

Above; visitors to the preview,

Apartment is based in a flat, and unlike many artist led spaces that operate in this way, the curators choose to present the work alongside the possessions that Paul Harfleet lives amongst. This curatorial decision enables the artwork to position itself in contrast to the objects or to hide within them, camouflaged by the everyday detritus. Each artist presented here, at Axel Lapp Projects, has exhibited at Apartment and has dealt with this reality in a variety of interesting ways.

When artwork is shown at Apartment the interior of the flat frames the work. At Axel Lapp Projects, Apartment itself is an absent participant, no longer available as a supporting framework for the presentation of the art work. Therefore the works are able to be re-seen without the context of Apartment, revealing to the curators, the complex relationships that have been formed between the artists and their practices over the three years that Apartment has existed. For the audience the various works are seen within the gallery context and with the knowledge that these relationships were forged in a domestic location; here the artists come together creating a meeting point where the work can be seen in a group show and in a totally new context.

David Gledhill

David Gledhill is a painter based in Manchester UK. Central to David Gledhill's painting is the adaptation of imagery produced through other media. Working with found photographs, he locates and magnifies formalstrategies and agendas, in order to 'de-naturalise' them. For this exhibition he has produced a multi-panel transcription from an early documentary about Berlin. The resulting 'stills' are part of a sequence filmed from a train. Gledhill has shown frequently in the UK, most recently at Phillips Gallery, Manchester and The Storey Gallery, Lancaster. David Gledhill, Film Transcriptions, 1,2,3,4, oil on canvas

Paul Harfleet

Paul Harfleet plants pansies where homophobic abuse has been experienced in the streets he entitles the location after the abuse received then posts it on his website www.thepansyproject.com. Based in Manchester and co-curator of Apartment, Harfleet has exhibited internationally, in 2006 at Conflux, New York and recently at the BFI London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival. Here the artist presents 200 posters of a pansy entitled; “Heh! Queer Boy!” The artist has named and signed each poster referencing the repeated homophobia the work marks, in inviting visitors to take a poster the work acts as a cipher enabling news of the project to spread through anecdote.

“Heh! Queer Boy!” - 200 signed posters.

Hilary Jack

Hilary Jack works across media focusing on the repair and re-use of discarded material found on city streets. In doing so she references the excesses of an economy based on built-in-obsolescence. Co-curator of Apartment she has exhibited internationally, most recently in Conflux 06, New York and at Transition Gallery, London. For ‘Meeting Point’ Hilary Jack uses Axel Lapp projects as studio, workplace and exhibition space to focus on themes of loss and separation. Throughout the duration of the exhibition Jack will create a new partner for a single, lost, black glove, found and photographed, on waste land at the site of the Berlin Wall on a previous research trip to Berlin.

‘Glove’ - found glove and knitting

Naomi Kashiwagi

Naomi Kashiwagi’s interest lies with the utilitarian and conceptual function of objects and technologies. For ‘Meeting Point’ Kashiwagi responds to the exhibition setting of Axel Lapp projects by introducing a series of paradoxical re-appropriations of archaic and obsolete equipment, such as a type writer, a barometer and hand typed index system uses references from new technology. Kashiwagi is a recent MA graduate living in Manchester.
‘Araichment’, - found objects.

Martine Myrup

Martine Myrup is a Danish artist living in Glasgow, Scotland. “It is far more illuminating to let the animal’s behaviour determine one’s words, but certainly often more difficult, as there are often no appropriate words in any human language, known to us.” From ‘The Mentality of Apes’ by Wolfgang Köhler (1925) Myrup is interested in the ideas of melancholia and nostalgia. Her work explores the frailness and brevity of human life, while balancing in between melancholy and a subtle humour, seeking to point out the preciousness of gentle gestures. Myrup is currently working on a series of animations and will be exhibiting new work at Intermedia in Glasgow in August Myrup was selected from open submission for a solo show at Apartment entitled “Domestic Disturbances” earlier this year. She has exhibited internationally with recent shows at Sidekick, Nottingham and The Market Gallery, Glasgow. Peculiar Flight; her first artist book was published in April last year

‘Robin’ - animation on laptop, and ‘Act 3’ – cut black and white photograph.

Lisa Penny

Lisa Penny works with drawing, collage and found material from factual publications such ‘Life World Library’ and National Geographic. Penny uses found images and visual information which is subverted to tell a different narrative, for ‘Meeting Point’ Penny shows a diptych collage constructed from found magazine pages of two iconic male figures. Lisa Penny is based in London and has exhibited internationally she currently has a solo show at Galerie Inges, Stubbenkammerstr. 4, 10437 Berlin

‘The Passengers’ - collaged found images

Maeve Rendle

Maeve Rendle’s practice focuses on ways in which art works come into being and take on life through the process of being created. For ‘Meeting Point’ Rendle exhibits a set of twelve photographs which have been reduced to eight by her defective Pentax camera. Rendle is based in Manchester and was recently an Artist in Residence at Apartment culminated in her first solo show earlier this year.
‘Notch’ – 6” x 4” photographs

Cherry Tenneson

Cherry Tenneson is both an artist and a trained sign maker. ‘Slider Sign” installed on a sliding door in the gallery reflects Tenneson’s preoccupation with the authority that the artist has over an audience and general public. The work consists of a black anodised aluminium frame housing a black slider text panel which moves across two sections, one green and one red. Users of the slider sign can move the black slider panel to reveal their applicable message from either one of the two sections.

'Door Slider’ - door mounted sign

Beáta Veszely

Beáta Veszely continues her exploration into the symbiotic relationship between horse and human as a paradigm for being-in-the-world. Veszely is based in Budapest and has exhibited on a wide scale internationally, most recently in solo shows at Modern Art, Oxford, UK and Galerija Balen Zagreb, Croatia. Veszely shows her video work; ‘On the Way to Heaven 2’displaying the spiritual and physical connection between horse and rider.

‘On the Way to Heaven 2’ - video projection

David Wilkinson

David Wilkinson’s work is based in the iconography of the sausage as a rediscovered archetype. Also to an extent a form of autobiography, as he is involved in producing and supplying sausages in Budapest, Hungary. Another attempt to link art with life. For ‘Meeting Point’ David presents ‘The Birth of Consciousness’ a sculptural work depicting two plaster sausages in a nest of dust made from the contents of the vacuum cleaner bag at Gagosian Gallery, London . David is based in London and Budapest and has exhibited internationally, recently at Ormeau Baths, Belfast, Northern Ireland and in solo show at The Dorottya Galleria Budapest.

‘The Birth of Consciousness’ - sculpture and found objects

Guardian Article

The article left recently featured in the Weekend Guardian magazine appearing in the 'Space' section, the regular segment focuses on how people utilise their living space in different ways. click the image to read.

Maeve Rendle / Mount Purgatory

Apartment is delighted to present ‘Mount Purgatory’, a show by Maeve Rendle. The work is a culmination of a twelve month residency with Apartment and made during a week in residence at Apartment. Mount Purgatory looks at ways in which art works come into being and take on life through the process of being created.

The work is concerned with the nature of artistic practice, and of the domestic artist run space. It looks at how the artist run space and the art on display act with and against each other to produce a rich and varied dialogue.

The image above a detail of the photographs in the space which reveal the entire contents of Apartment placed in the living room.

The artist gives herself the challenge of completing a task. The process of under taking this task creates a fresh environment in which to think. It is in this thinking environment that the work begins to emerge to the artist. It is as though the work has its own intrinsic life and it becomes the artist’s job to uncover that life, to reveal that work of art, rather than to enable a pre conceived idea to be made real. In this respect the artist responds directly to her immediate physical environment using the materials and tools with which it provides her.

The first step was to remove every object, shelf, utensil, item of furniture etc from its original position within Apartment and place it in the living room. Taking the living room to be the main space of the ‘Gallery’, all the contents of Apartment were placed together to create a new surface with which the artist could work. The artist explores the thinking process and relationship that develops between the artist and the work, before during and after the work is made.

Above ; image of the emptied flat.

The final work presented for exhibition is a sequence of photographs taken over the period of time the artist was in residence. The photographs record the contents gathering in the living room; amidst the contents there is a growing pile of newspapers. The artist’s movements are traced through the viewfinder of the camera, and her presence is recorded only through a sentence repeatedly highlighted in every newspaper, ‘this morning there was no new idea’.

The process of finding the work from within the contents of Apartment correlates to finding words within existing newsprint accessible to all. Being able to find the same words each day in every newspaper, demonstrates that nothing is finite; similarly the work with the contents of Apartment will not come to an end but can be repeated with an ever-changing shape. Thus the present work of art is it’s demonstration of the potential for the work to change and morph into a new work, and that work into another work and so on.

The Installation of the photographs

special open weekend

Friday 9th March - Sunday 11th March

Opening times 11-4pm or by appointment; e-mail: apartmentmanchester@hotmail.co.uk

for further information and enquiries

Mount Purgatory - Preview

Here are some images of the preview from Maeve Rendle's show. Thanks to all those that attended; It may be a our busiest night yet. Above: Paul Needham arrives! Below left to right:Maeve Rendle, Dave Macintosh and Hilary Jack. Centre the busy living room with many familiar faces. Right Paul Harfleet and Dave Macintosh (again!). Bottom; earlier in the evening!

News!

Apartment is mentioned in an article written by Lucinda Adam on the 24 hour museum website, it's been up for ages we've only just noticed, follow this link to see the article exploring the new artist led spaces across the country.

There is also a review of the current show on the AN website in the reviews unetided section, follow this link to see more. It's always great to get some critical input to the space!

Willy Mason / House Concert Tour

Above Willy Mason

Apartment was delighted to host a special acoustic gig by Willy Mason as part of his House Concert Tour. What a lovely evening it was, a huge thank you to all of the people that were able to come; you were a wonderful audience and a massive thanks to Willy Mason. What a joy he was! This was the second gig we've hosted at Apartment; LoneLady played last year; that too was great. There is something quite magical about these intimate small scale gigs, we might do another soon so keep an eye on the blog for information.

Below an image of the gig which better captures the atmosphere

Martine Myrup / Domestic Disturbances

Martine Myrup's Domestic Disturbances is the current show and will be open til early March, to view the exhibition e-mail or call to arrange an appointment; contact details below.

Above - milk spill in the shape of Antarctica in the kitchen - Untitled

Apartment is delighted to present Martine Myrup’s Domestic Disturbances; Martine Myrup was selected from over eighty international artists that applied for a one person exhibition at Apartment during our recent call for submissions. Martine Myrup is a Danish artist who graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 2002. Her recent shows include In Ruins in Melbourne, Sidekick in Nottingham and Maid of Corinth in Market Gallery, Glasgow. Peculiar Flight; her first artist book was published in April; she is currently working on an animation for the Centre for Contemporary Art in Glasgow. For more information on this artist please visit www.myrup.co.uk

Martine Myrup’s work strives to reflect her interest in the fleeting moment, and in the idea that in order to build, something must be destroyed.

Myrup’s focus is on natural history and literature concerned with polar explorations. In her search for geographical metaphors, she reveals the moments between the scientific and the personal descriptions of mans’ often futile attempt to fill the void. Her starting point is often a wish to react to a specific location; the white walls of a gallery transformed into a vast snowy background, the interior of an old mansion house becomes the site for an unfolding hidden narrative. While striving to incorporate what is already present; small signs of decay, flaws and traces of other events, she adds another layer which hints at an alternative narrative.

Domestic Disturbances utilizes Apartment as a backdrop for small interventions. Rather than adding more “stuff” to the world, Myrup merely re-works what is already there. By using everyday, non precious materials, she appropriates what is to hand in an attempt to bring the void closer and domesticate it, by doing so her discreet interventions turn the mundane into
the epic.

Below a closer view.

Martine Myrup

The image above is the untitled collection of books on exploration positioned on the top of the book shelves in the bedroom. The books are specifically placed to create an image of a mountain range out of the mountains featured on the spine of each book.

Martine Myrup Press

The pictured article featured in The Metro on Friday 26th January; click on image to read the article. Martine Myrup and Paul Harfleet also appeared BBC Manchester's 'Studio 6' radio show on Thursday, we will post the piece on the site soon.