The Rogue Artists’ Studios are no misnomer. The industrial block in sooty Victorian brick crouches furtively behind a car park and service road, not wanting to be found. All that marks the ateliers inside is spray-painted scrawl. Pull back the curtains, however, and they’re buzzing. In the main gallery, a crew is banging up sculpture and stacking beer cases for an exhibition launching that evening. From other workshops come the zip of saws and whiff of spray paint. Down the corridor, Mark Kennard juggles his phone, cup of tea and a tube of yellow oil paint.
The conceptual artist is sharing the news of a mega-mural soon to be unveiled on the side of a slick new science building near the University of Manchester. The artist, Mary Griffiths, is represented by Kennard’s art gallery, Bureau, and the 13-metre commission, done entirely in graphite, is her largest to date.
Kennard, his hair arranged in a thick rock-dad mop top, is one of the foremost independent gallerists in the city. This year he’s celebrating the 20th anniversary of Rogue, which he helped kick off in this converted cotton mill and where he still paints in a top-floor space – the bohemian version of a corner office. In 2006 he started Bureau Gallery with artist Sophia Crilly in a former mill across the River Irwell, but they relocated last year to a soaring glass building designed by Foster & Partners on one of the busiest squares in town. They now represent 10 artists and, on the even of Griffiths’s big reveal, seem poised for international exposure.
This is par for the course in Manchester, a city on the brink of a renaissance, artistically and otherwise, where each month brings news of new development, new openings and new funding for creative ideas. Even for an outsider casing the compact Victorian centre, it’s impossible to miss. Hoarding around Exchange Square announces plans for pedestrianized streets and Dutch-style cycle lanes. Cranes over Angel Square signal an eight-hectare, $1.5-billion mix of retail and public art, launching this fall. Next month, Home, a new glass-and-steel contemporary-art centre, opens opposite the fabled Hacienda nightclub, now a block of luxury apartments.You can’t flip through the Sunday papers for talk of Manchester’s cultural capital, so finally I’ve come to see it up close. After sausage, eggs and Bury black pudding at Hotel Gotham, the month-old boutique hotel set in the Edwin Lutyens-designed Midland Bank, I’m on my way. That morning, I visit the domed Central Library, with its $100-million glass atrium and newly scrubbed classical rotunda, then the cinematically gothic John Rylands Library, where I climb the staircase up a towering glass void to the spectacular stained-glass reading room. The Manchester Art Gallery, with its collection of Lowrys and new terrace garden, seals the hat trick. I find them all on the route of the MetroShuttle, the free bus service that loops through downtown.
I should be walking off that breakfast, so I carry on by foot to the University of Manchester campus, a quieter, grittier part of town where turreted halls face ramshackle pubs serving $4 beers. Crossing through tranquil Whitworth Park, I approach the majestic red-brick Whitworth Gallery just as staff are hoisting a banner announcing its nomination for Art Fund’s prestigious Museum of the Year prize. Ordering a cappuccino at a glass-fronted café cantilevered over a small group of trees, I can see why. The building rises and dips, leading me through new powerful collections of metallic sculptures by Cornelia Parker, intimate photographs by Johnnie Shand Kydd and a luminous playhouse etched with dialogue by Mary Kelly. Who is the curator for modern art here? None other than Mary Griffiths.
Small world, Manchester – relative, at least, to the behemoth London two hours south. And yet at this moment the chatter seems to be travelling down the railway lines in one direction. Before the Whitworth reopened in February, it was the artist Joana Vasconcelos, who Londoners “discovered” after the Manchester Art Gallery hosted her first major exhibition.
According to Kennard, who moved up from London as an art student, “The disadvantages of being here have their advantages. We don’t have London’s access to capital, but we have affordable studios and it’s quieter, which is good for the development of an artist. If you’re desperate to make something happen, Manchester is a great city.”
Weaving through the Northern Quarter at dusk, quiet is the last thing I perceive. But the appeal is clear. Boutiques still light up the post-industrial shopfronts and a vendor at the Craft & Design Centre, occupying the former fish market, lets me through before closing up for the day. The cafés – more than might be deemed necessary – are switching over from slow-pour coffee to wine. The biggest crowds gather round the new “hyphenate” tenants: gallery-bar; boutique hotel-bistro-barber. Rounding Thomas Street to enjoy tapas at Evuna, I can just see the Northern Quarter Light Tower, a coloured neon beacon atop the Church Street car park, rewired last month after years of outages.
The headlines have been screaming for years about graduates priced out of London, and now I finally see where they’ve ended up, rosy of cheek, skinny of jean, twisty of moustache. Manchester is growing – some say it’ll gain 50,000 more residents over the next few years. The more adventurous are targeting the former slums of Ancoats – over a dismal boulevard from the Northern Quarter – where developers are sprucing up tidy Victorian rowhouses and outfitting warehouse flats. Most recently the decaying St. Peter’s church was renovated and the Hallé symphony moved in, bringing some much needed northern soul to the area.
The path between the two quarters is becoming well worn indeed. Particularly since Blackout Gallery commissioned a mural for an empty brick wall on the corner of Blossom Street. They flew in Brazilian street artist Mateus Bailon to work his brushes over a 12-metre tropical bird shaking an explosion of rainbow tail feathers. The Guardian of Ancoats is a brilliant fusion of the two cultures. And if it’s a sign of things to come, the future’s looking bright.
IF YOU GO
Where to stay
Dead centre in town, the 60-room Hotel Gotham is named for the New York look of its Lutyens-designed building, and the Park Avenue decor plays along. Guests get access to the in-house private members’ club, Brass. Doubles from $361. hotelgotham.co.uk
The tiny 15-room Abel Heywood has hipster pretentions and critical mass in the lively Northern Quarter, if the ground-floor pub and restaurant are anything to go by. Doubles from $130. abelheywood.co.uk
Where to eat
Not as impossibly twee as it sounds,Teacup Kitchen is a lunchtime tonic, good for a cuppa, all-day breakfast and fresh, local salads and breads. teacupandcakes.com
Unchanged for 150 years, Mr. Thomas’s Chop House will suck you in out of the drizzle and keep you there for local pork belly, traditional fish ’n’ chips and dimpled mugs of lager. Warm and lively in winter, with a summer terrace overlooking a historic church in the city centre.tomschophouse.com
Where to drink
The ultimate hyphenate in a neighbourhood full of them:Common is a café-restaurant-music hall-gallery in the Northern Quarter with a focus on drinking throughout.aplacecalledcommon.co.uk
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