Oldham Art Gallery

After travelling by tram and taking a short cut through Spindle’s Shopping Centre we squeezed into a packed Wetherspoons pub – “The Up Steps Inn”. There we enjoyed lunch before making our way to the Oldham Art Gallery.

Tony Husband, a multi-award winning cartoonist, was giving a talk In Gallery 3 about his current exhibition. His work has appeared in numerous publications in this country and abroad including The Times, The Spectator and Private Eye for whom he has contributed to every issue for the last 37 years, maybe more!

He also has published over 60 books. Tony loves music, nature, fine wines and, er, Man United.

This exhibition brings together a range of Tony Husband’s best-known work. Expect to laugh out loud.

See more photos here.

Out In The City Art Showcase

Out In The City launched the Creative Writing Art Exhibition on Wednesday, 22 February at the LGBT Foundation.

Artworks were shown by members of Out In The City (Bill, David, Mindy, Norman, Norman, Pauline and Tony) produced with the help and advice of Somerset and Simon from Manchester Street Poem. There were also artworks by Vicky on display together with paintings by Jim.

We also had the opportunity to look around the LGBT Foundation premises as about ten of us had never been to the building before.

Legacy of ‘67

Jez Dolan’s solo show – Legacy of ’67 – is on display in the Reading Room on the first floor of Manchester Central Library.

The show is part of a larger project, supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, that explores the changes in the law that have affected LGBT+ people since the Sexual Offences Act in 1967 that partially decriminalised homosexual acts between men in private.  

For the last twelve months Initiative Arts has been capturing the stories of people who have grown up between the ‘60s and the ‘80s to find out how these changes have affected them. They have recorded their testimony, which can be found in Archives+ at the Central Library and have conducted original research of contemporaneous source material to explore the changing attitudes towards LGBT+ people in general society.

Initiative Arts commissioned visual artist Jez Dolan to respond to this project and he has produced a series of eight original works that are on display in the Reading Room, together with an exhibition of original material from the archive.

Jez Dolan is an artist living and working in Manchester. His practice underlines the intersections between queerness, sexuality, identity, and memory. He works across multiple platforms including drawing, performance, printmaking and most recently painting.

The next stage of the project is “Great Indecencies” – a darkly comic play with music, that explores LGBTQIA+ memory, and the beginnings of homosexuality’s decriminalisation. It is the culmination of Legacy of ’67: Initiative Art’s year-long project that captures the real-life accounts of LGBT+ people during the last 50 years, charting the effect of a major change in the law in 1967 and its aftermath.  

The play is on Thursday, 30 March to Saturday 1 April 2023 at 7.30pm at The Edge Theatre and Arts Centre, Manchester Road, Chorlton, Manchester M21 9JG. Tickets are £15 / £13.

Book here.