Caleb White

★ ★ ★ ☆  ☆   I am, once again, in the Whitworth, finding it a midpoint on my commute home – the perfect opportunity to check out their new exhibition after work. Replacing the Shirley Craven exhibition – a personal favourite of mine – we now have the chance to see a handful of works by Malgorzata Mirga-Tas. Though the exhibition makes some peculiar choices, it reinforces the Whitworths position as a key venue for the presentation and preservation of textile art. Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, a Romani-Polish artist, presents a selection of their body of work. The exhibition is curated by Tate St Ives Director Anne Barlow, alongside The Whitworth’s Modern Contemporary curator Valentin Diakonov and Textiles Assistant Curator Victoria Hartley. Together, they have hung an oddly discontinuous exhibition which nevertheless uses the space well, allowing for a partially successful destigmatising, personalising and reclamatory show. Certain artworks by Mirga-Tas take often negative depic...

 As part of 20/20 project, Manchester Art Gallery is displaying Holly Graham's artwork/exhibition 'The Warp/ The Weft/ The Wake' until March 2026. It explores the legacy of colonialism and labour exploitation in the cotton industry, central to Manchester, and to the founding of The Royal Manchester Institute - which would later become the Manchester Art Gallery itself. Both Graham's final product, and the surrounding contextual archival material, are a resounding success - a shining example of explaining an artpiece in a way that doesn't reduce, but deepens the experience.  It a Tuesday. This is the third attempt at taking notes on this exhibition. On the opening day, I had just finished a shift at my new coffee shop, and - seeing the room packed with visitors - decided against taking photos and notes, blocking the view of others. Yesterday, also after a shift, I tried again, forgetting the 'closed-on-monday' sector wide rule. But today I am back. After cloc...

I’ve recently started yet another in a long string of barista jobs. This one, located in central Manchester, makes it easy for me to pop in and visit an exhibition after a shift. So, taking the opportunity to escape out of the cold, I thought I’d give the Central Library a bit of an explore. Now, I’ve been here before, mostly as a warm space to get some work done but hadn’t yet ventured much further than the café. So, noticing a sign for an exhibition hall upstairs, I ascended the steps and to find ‘Portraits of a Workforce’. The exhibition space takes up around an eighth of the circumference of the Central Library. A grand, sweeping corridor which takes you from the central staircase through the Henry Watson Music Library, circling the Wolfson reading room. From the stairs in the Shakespeare Hall, take a left, and it the exhibition is right in front of you. Grand names for grand architecture. Composed of several spoke-like walls, the exhibition space is split into library esque ...