Recently opened and on for a while, I was here first thing Saturday morning – here are the details of Colour is Mine.
Althea McNish was the first Caribbean designer to achieve international recognition and one of the most influential and innovative textile designers in the UK. Drawing on extensive new research, this exhibition explores McNish’s extraordinary career and her transformative impact on mid-century design, along with her enduring influence today. Highlights include items from McNish’s recently uncovered personal archive – much of which has never been seen before. Also on display will be examples of McNish’s original designs alongside her most celebrated textile and wallpapers.
Althea McNish: Colour is Mine is a touring exhibition from the William Morris Gallery, London, and has been curated by Rowan Bain, Principal Curator at the William Morris Gallery and Rose Sinclair, Lecturer in Design Education at Goldsmiths, University of London. Althea McNish: Colour Is Mine is part of a three-year research, exhibition and archiving project generously supported by the Society of Antiquaries through its Janet Arnold Award.
Her work collided with new technologies in printing and fabrics, along with developments in design which were very much of their time: a freer more expressive approach to drawing and colour – using observational drawing from natural forms and geometric pattern
Typically employing the techniques of wax resist and a wandering Indian ink line.
Her work for the leading manufacturing and retail companies extended across fabric and dress design, wallpaper and accessories.
I urge you to go and see it – several times, the show is so wide ranging and joyous, a fitting testament to a creative life well-lived.
Whilst Oxford Road echoes to the sound of Freshers fleet of foot.
UMIST is only home to fallen leaves and a palpable air of melancholia.
The last of the students have left and a crew of hi-vis workers are busy stripping the remains of days long gone.
We have all walked on by before and will again – though with heavier heart, into an all too uncertain future – for only the Holloway Wall is listed.
Now a grand redevelopment project has been unveiled to tend to that. According to the developer’s website, the plan promises to accelerate growth, partnership and collaboration.
Christened ID Manchester, the plans could see the area hacked into a glass maze of ultra-modern offices, apartments and hotels.
Tony Holloway’s work also illuminates the windows of Manchester Cathedral.
As well as the panels of the Faraday Tower, just the other side of UMIST.
The wall is listed, fenced and obscured by the gradual incursion of assorted greenery.
It’s beginning to attract moss, amongst other things – just not like a rolling stone.
Like nearly everything else, it looks different each time you pass by, more or less light, new tags and signs – so here it is as of Saturday 13th June 2020.
We have of course been here before visiting Mitzi Cunliffe and her work – Cosmos
Mitzi Solomon Cunliffe January 1st 1918 December 30th 2006
This time we are taking a peek around the back.
Having passed by on the top deck deck of the 42 on my way home to Stockport, I espied an extension of the sculpture to the rear of the tower.
I vowed to return!
Fighting through extraction units, wheelie bins, hoppers, plus a disused and disabused vacuum cleaner, I found myself in the narrow service area, where I did my best to get back from the wall, hard against the chain link fence.
The things you do.
For some much needed light relief, air and open space I revisited the front face of the tower.
I have even ventured as far afield as Huyton in search of other exemplars.
This is work of the highest order and importance.
It sits by a busy London Road, behind an intrusive green steel fence, slowly acquiring a green patina – as moss and lichen attach themselves to the well weathered concrete.
Receiving occasional visits from the errant urban tagger.
It deserves much better – a lush grassed apron, discrete public seating, regular tree maintenance – respect.
We do not suffer from a surfeit of significant mid-century public art – its guardians should straighten up and fly right.
This Building Design Partnership scheme pre-dates Wilson Womersley’s appointment as master planners for the Education Precinct but exists harmoniously with the later series of buildings. This is most likely due to the method of development before any ‘grand concept’. The incremental expansion of the University, following WWII, was largely dictated by the progress of compulsory purchase orders; this group was no exception. At the planning stages, the lack of a masterplan led to organising the wings of the buildings in an open, orthogonal arrangement. This would allow expansion in a number of directions, according to the next available site in ‘the dynamic situation’. The result was the creation of a small courtyard flanked by two five-storey blocks and a two-storey structure. All three buildings use the same pink-grey concrete. The plastic qualities of concrete were explored in both cladding and structural panels and the textural qualities exposed in the bush hammered columns, to reveal the Derbyshire gravel aggregate. The sculpted and moulded panels on the two-storey block and on the gable ends of the larger blocks were designed in collaboration with William Mitchell. The only other materials in the external envelope were the windows of variously clear and tinted glass. The window modules were set out against a basic geometry in three standard patterns and applied across the façade. This resulted in a clever interplay of vertical and horizontal expression.
EllenWilkinson was born into a poor though ambitious Manchester family and she embraced socialism at an early age. After graduating from the University of Manchester, she worked for a women’s suffrage organisation and later as a trade union officer. Inspired by the Russian Revolution of 1917, Wilkinson joined the British Communist Party, and preached revolutionary socialism while seeking constitutional routes to political power through the Labour Party. She was elected Labour MP for Middlesbrough East in 1924, and supported the 1926 General Strike. In the 1929–31 Labour government, she served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the junior Health Minister. She made a connection with a young female member and activist Jennie Lee. Following her defeat at Middlesbrough in 1931, Wilkinson became a prolific journalist and writer, before returning to parliament as Jarrow’s MP in 1935. She was a strong advocate for the Republican government in the Spanish Civil War, and made several visits to the battle zones.
During the Second World War, Wilkinson served in Churchill’s wartimecoalition as a junior minister, mainly at the Ministry of Home Security where she worked under Herbert Morrison. She supported Morrison’s attempts to replace Clement Attlee as the Labour Party’s leader; nevertheless, when he formed his postwar government, Attlee appointed Wilkinson as Minister of Education. By this time, her health was poor, a legacy of years of overwork. She saw her main task in office as the implementation of the wartime coalition’s 1944 Education Act, rather than the more radical introduction of comprehensive schools favoured by many in the Labour Party. Much of her energy was applied to organising the raising of the school-leaving age from 14 to 15. During the exceptionally cold weather of early 1947, she succumbed to a bronchial disease, and died after an overdose of medication, which the coroner at her inquest declared was accidental.
So here we are now – a significant building, named for a significant figure.
I wandered around, pale painted rectangular reliefs abutting darker rectangular reliefs. Strict window grids at a variety of heights. Warmer rounder rounded reliefs to the east, contrasting with their orthogonal cousins. A surprising courtyard contains a diminutive but charming concrete sculpture and an almost hidden exterior spiral stairway.
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