Decided to do a tour of Manchester today. Even I like to take a break from Liverpool occasionally and there's some fine exhibitions on just an hours train ride away.
Hadn't been to the Whitworth Gallery before, the walk from Oxford Rd station is a lot further than it looks on the map. I went past Manchester Museum on the way, must look in there sometime but not today. There's a show of sculptures and drawings called 'Truce' by Shirley Diamond. The most striking work is this delicate structure 'Trespass'made from doweling with tiny white paper houses suspended from the cross-bars. Its great to look at from different angles. (Finishes April 10th).
Another special exhibition here is 'Ship Ahoy'. Guess what its about. As well as the usual dramatic paintings of stormy seas, there's examples of the use of ships in interior design, including Captain Pugwash Wallpaper, cool! They also have a good collection of the standard gallery fare.

Next, I went to the Cornerhouse which is right next door to Oxford Rd station. If you don't know Cornerhouse, its very similar to Liverpool's FACT (except its an old ramshackle building) with Picturehouse cinema screens and 3 galleries showing new media works. The first gallery is showing 'Bodyscan' by Eva Wohlgemuth. In 1997 she underwent a full body scan that recorded the coordinates of 285,000 points on her body. So there's enough information to recreate exact versions of her body in different media and sizes. There's acrylic figures, videos and 3D drawings. Take a look at her webpage www.evawohlgemuth.com/BODYSCAN
In Gallery 2 is 'Living Rooms' by Charles Sandison. This is a dark room with the words male, female, mother, father, child, food, old, threat, virus and dead floating all around the walls, floor and ceiling like word-shaped starts. Nice. www.charlessandison.com
Gallery 3 has George Legrady's 'Pockets Full of Memories', an interactive installation and online project. You are invited to choose something you are carrying and scan it into the computer then type in your details and anything you want to say about the object. The pictures of the objects are displayed on a large screen and you can also see them on the website www.pocketsfullofmemories.com

Next, I went to the Manchester Art Gallery to see Don McPhee's exhibition. McPhee is the Manchester-based Guardian photographer. There's some great images of many famous people as well as scenes of the North West though they're a bit 'grim oop north'.
I really wanted to see Will Alsop's 'Supercity' project at Urbis but time was running out and they're charging £5 so I'll save that for another day.