A MODEST SHOW BAS9 PROGRAMME (May-Nov 2022)

A depiction of Leslie's personal heroes and influential figures during his youth from Mr T to Burt Reynolds. Here Leslie makes his drawings into a series of editioned, collectible characters; for sale in this shop style installation.

An extension of their ongoing work regarding grief and language, which addresses the cultural lack of vocabulary to describe this universal experience. Six invited guests were brought together to share stories of grief through recipes which remind them of a lost loved-one, while the evening's conversation and food informed this zine artwork.

A series of outdoor public art work that act as functioning nesting boxes for bird and insect populations negatively impacted by the fast pace of regeneration in the city; and as a signifier for core BAS9 and A Modest Show venues.

Josephine Flynn re-evaluates and develops one of her renowned multi-disciplinary satirical works for A Modest Show, to examine how the viewer can ‘activate’ the work. Here the artist presents ‘art as fayre’ as part of two private view event food and beverage offers, with printed napkins ‘Mine Not Yours’ and an Abigail’s Party style cocktail cheese offering with a phallic twist.

A sculptural intervention bringing together the works of two artists in a fictional art installation and general odd job company. A dual perspective of artist and art technician, a position where lines are often blurred between production and creation.

A satirical dramatisation of the struggles faced by artists as they balance life and work and social media as they vie for a ‘seat at the table'. Puppets and theatre backdrops echo the themes of the film and performance as Richard performs to audiences who in turn become part of the work and inform his choices as he manipulates himself with illustrated simulacra and online engagement.

Claire Dorsett invites 8 artists to exhibit on her studio table, interrogating this piece of furniture, to challenge what an exhibition spaces artists can use to show their work. The exhibition acts like a buffet table at a family function: acknowledging the often awkwardness of Open Studio events for artists & the strength that can be found in numbers.

Join Proforma and their European guests, Pase Platform and Begehhungen Festival at Longsight Artspace for food, conversation and an opportunity to learn about Proforma's plans for international residency programmes. Food served by Taste of the Carib - a blend of Caribbean and Mancunian fare.

A group show which explores the realms between the drawn and performed mark and each gesture through a variety of provocations and modes of practice. Artists in this exhibition utilise a number of active and traced drawing processes throughout their practices, from the animated to the bodily.

Two artists eat their way through the UK to each Tate Gallery cafe and members' lounge. They examine the relation between modern art institutions, public spaces and hospitality by eating their way through major galleries to produce this publication.

Fayre Share Fayre is the main course, a group show and central hub for A Modest Show, generously hosted in the South Gallery at the Whitworth. The exhibition brings together over 40 artists with a connection to Greater Manchester. A Modest show with flesh, skin and bone, and an invitation to ‘Eat Manchester Artists.’ Artists include Ryan Gander, Chester Tenneson, Andrea Booker, Richard Dean Hughes.

An exhibition of 10 undergrad students curated in an exceptional, roving gallery. The space is temporarily taken over in a project delivered by MMU students, challenging them to consider curation outside the gallery; with artworks curated under A Modest Show’s narratives on food.

A 30 year anniversary celebration looking back at the history of Bankley, and highlighting the importance that artist-led activity, studios and galleries continue to have for our artists and communities. The exhibition will feature artists past and present, archival material and a new film exploring the legacy of Bankley.

This collection is the culmination of a lockdown exploration of the history of black comic book superheroes. Leslie’s drawings are a reinterpretation of these characters researched, made using his ‘memory and imagination’.

A tempting three-tier art event stuffed to the brim with contemporary visual artists, exhibition previews, studio tours, performance & launches under one roof with, this celebratory evening is a chance to meet and see the work of artists and curators living and working in the cities of Salford and Manchester today. Their birthday party & new studio unit launch hosts a bar, DJ and street food with three exhibition openings taking place in the building at one event.

Abstract Kab is a new mobile gallery and performance space. Here the gallery is taken over by a fictional art installation and general odd job company. Superposition Remove & Deliver Co, under the helm of two sculptural artists, Luke Routledge and Robin Broadley.

Small scale sculptures respond to the notion of the consumption of ideas and discarding ideas as a central theme of the work. Exaggerating the dimensions of the ordinary through the associative power of objects, their pareidolia-like readings are an analysis of the unexpected.

A duo exploring new ways of being. Through participatory performances, they experiment with the actions necessary to life; questioning how we live and how we feel alive. A participatory performance, ‘Snooker Mowf’ explores the overwhelming disjuncture between meaning and taste.

Dominic Allan. 'To the South There is a Great Land' Curated by Andrew Hunt. The artist and curator consider community support in relation to contemporary art, football, and specifically Luton Town Football Club by repositioning specific local culture in the south within the context of Salford, Greater Manchester. Based on growing up in Luton (Allan and Hunt were both born in Luton and Dunstable Hospital and grew up in the area,) this new work considers personal geography as an underdog. This is a full-frontal archaic art installation as an intellectualised, extended ‘away day’. With the honest ‘village voice’ repurposed within Salford.

Intersections is a group exhibition featuring artists who, in their own way, all make work relating to their sense of self, reflecting on their own identity. Presented together though, we create something that transcends the individual. It becomes both a celebration of the things that make us different from one another, and a way to recognise the things that we share.

An experimental participatory experience as Detox to Digest writer Steve Hanson collaborates with artist Jane Lawson, to bring to the public, a two-stage process of detoxification to digestion.

Ten participants are invited to bring anything on paper, card or cardboard that they want to detoxify. This can be relics from a love affair gone bad to racist bile from social media – anything they would like to psychically purge. They then incorporate the toxic texts into oyster mushroom kits to take home and grow.

We all make tracks - navigating our lives via trails and desire-lines, creating familiar routes as counter to life’s uncertainties. Artists Mads Floor Andersen and Cara Davies are hosted by PINK in a week-long residency, unpicking the complex meshwork created by our daily comings and goings, travel, memory, and the ghosts of the past.

Fertile Grounds by Nikita Gill, uses documentation to explore cultural links between Longsight and Moss Side, celebrating Caribbean History in the City. Alongside the exhibition a street party celebrates 50 years of Carnival in the city .

FEAST presents two creative lunch events, set in a secret garden community space with two artists whose practices explore questions of environmental responsibility, approaches to growing and climate awareness.

Lunch One - Community Sound. An afternoon of recorded and composed sound from the garden. The culmination of a project facilitated by Ryan Woods, one half of The Manchester Ear.

Lunch Two - EATING | THINGS. Join artist Sneha Solanki and her two daughters, Rasa and Sona as foragers to explore edible 'things' found growing wild at the edges of a community garden space.

A gastronomic exploration of cultural identity and the in-between spaces between cultures in which we meet through food. An installation and publication are used to tell the story and express the artist's personal experiences through her mixed heritage.

A village full of chocolate houses. Exploring the idea for a better society and giving consideration to prioritising human flourishing and environmental sustainability through this chocolate installation.

A newly commissioned set of twin ultra-short films by Sarah Boulter, with a sound piece by Manchester based Musician Merida Richards. Video works that centre on gorging for escapism, consumerism and the escapism that has sprouted from pandemic obsession and limitations, as we pour ourselves into repetitive entertainment.

‘Deviant Diners’ is a newly commissioned video work that sets the table for bad manners, caters to the neuroqueer gaze, and serves an insight into autistic experiences of food. This work addresses the stigma autistic people face at the dinner table. This stigma, combined with sensory processing issues, can lead autistic people into withdrawing from social situations involving food and even develop avoidant, restrictive or disordered relationships with food.

A collective Genesis project of digital works by Brass Art, John Carney, Jo Clements, Pat Flynn, Dave Griffiths, Mishka Henner, Andrew McDonald, Robin Megannity who all share a long relationship with digital media; photography, 3D modelling and film, exhibiting amongst the tropical foliage found in Kampus gardens.

This exhibition of work presents printmakers who not only challenge their own practice, but also the nature and perception of printmaking. Featuring 80 artists with an accompanying programme of workshops, talks and demonstrations.

Chewing The Fat is a series of discussions unpacking diverse curatorial perspectives from across the North-West. These discussions will form a short series of podcasts which will be supported by Castlefield Gallery and released on their platforms throughout July.

Inspired by the ‘Dinner in the Iguanodon Model’ (1853) dining event, initiated by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins at Crystal Palace. Hawkins invited 21 leading academics to sit inside one of his dinosaur sculptures to dine and debate. In 2022, Foreign investment reconfigures the concept to interrogate the morality of genetics with invited guests inside ‘a giant pigs heart’ and audiences to peer into the debate at the dining table.

A Queer performance night to SOUP, of emerging queer/live performance artists followed by a club night in collaboration with Bollox. A night of celebration and inclusive entertainment for art, music and performance lovers.

One of a five-part series of group exhibitions curated by Division of Labour exploring cooperation and mutualism as we live through a period of capitalist realism. In this episode of the series they look at housing and homes through the representation of the Brick.

Suite Studio artists present a creative meal. A dinner table set with artworks made in paper, fabric and ceramic by Fiona Donald, Lisa Remers and Daksha Patel. Dinner is served by SuppHER chef/sommelier duo: chef Anna Sogaard and sommelier Kim McBride.

Lydia McCaig is a working-class artist from Blackburn, her work interrogates the complexities of female sexuality, seduction and erotica through installation, sound, video, poetry, and photography. McCaig’s work explores the relationship between love and sex and creates work where conceptual gestures are employed to engage complex and often contradictory dialogues.

McCaig will be creating an entirely new body of work, which coincides with the theme of A Modest Show.

Elliott Flanagan invites you to eat yourself to death. It is the night before tough new laws from the Convention for Climate Protection and Environmental Recovery come into force. In the morning, the start of meat rationing. Responsible consumption and production will be introduced. The mixed grill will be outlawed, an illegal Sunday roast will carry a fixed penalty fine and a SWAT Team will descend on any BBQ without a permit. In this gastronomic climax, Flanagan studies how in the shadow of an impending climate and nature emergency, what we eat has become a moral question. Our public and private habits, traditions and rituals towards food and drink are intensified during this one last party of overflowing plates, spilt glasses, swollen bellies and crumbs in your lap.

Andee explores the history of ‘Making of the Sausage’, allowing the public to view, through livestream, the process of creating his work whilst he explores the links between art and cookery, using self-built CNC machines to create mechanised, analogue drawings and paintings.

Part IV in Division of Labour’s Looking at series examining new sculpture from artists who are heavily involved in artists communities in London, Birmingham, Worcester and Manchester. This episode displays the poetic, and dryly funny sculpture from Kieran Leach.

This group of early career painters, focus on elevating the status of writing within painting with an exhibition devised in response to Gertrude Stein’s chapter ‘Food’ in the Modernist prose collection ‘Tender Buttons.’ Artists responded to commands set out in this text around themes of food.

PAPER Gallery, in collaboration with Independent record label No Such Thing, present an evening of music, food, drink and art from artist & musicians Ruby Tingle and Left Winter, whilst welcoming Berlin gallery, Axel Obiger to Manchester, as they prepare for their exhibition as part of A Modest Show at PAPER.

Taking inspiration from the popular daytime TV cookery show, STOCK Gallery brings together multidisciplinary artists, each representing a different region of Greater Manchester, who have been asked to make a piece of work that responds to the theme of ‘Utopia’. After creating a piece, the artists switch work with an artist from a neighbouring or opposing region and respond, adding to, or adjusting the work given to them.

Four artists, Claire Dorsett, Jenny Eden, Brian Mountford and Joe O’Rourke present artworks that appear as a vivid, playful show on the surface, but the exhibition dives deep and examines the place of consumption and preparation – licking, slurping and interacting, particularly accenting the problematic and synthetic relationship with food and its manufacture.

A one off participatory performance, simulating a fine dining experience invites you to feast upon a banquet and be a part of a video artwork. This performative piece ‘Food of the Gods’ plays with the discrepancy between the mundane act of eating and the grotesque nature of watching someone eat. Come and watch, come and dine, come and become a part of a video artwork.

Exploring the complex and rich story of migration, a 5-course dinner takes its guests through feudal China, the ancient gardens of Afghanistan, over French Orchards and into the British Landscape.

Focusing on the simplicity of a pear, Xhi Ndubisi invites us to enjoy the story of a single, common fruit. The narratives may reveal something about the history of migration. Can we tell these stories without an ideology? What can the story of the pear tell us about who we are and how we have come to be?

Join Maisie Pritchard to participate in building a ‘cardboard dinnerware set’ as a new collaborative sculptural work using her own formula as a sculptural pulping medium, followed by a public exhibition. The project will explore the design and making process by giving low value materials, such as paper and cardboard, a new lease of life by transforming them into sculptural design objects as abstract and playful pieces of ‘dinnerware’.