errata 404

I am currently well into the idea of guerilla writing and I'm working it into a pitch I'm putting forward for a project. You know the concept of guerilla gardening, right? A bunch of greenies go round and plant stuff in urban areas that are unloved and uncared for. I remember sunflowers near Blackfriars, opposite the pub where I used to go to for my Friday lunchtime pie and a pint treat with my Scouse art director; Northerners in exile together. The other day, I spotted some tomatoes growing by the multi-storey near the Arndale. So think about guerilla writing as something a bit along those lines: basically leaving short stories or poems in places you wouldn't expect, like library books or magazines in dentists' waiting rooms or phone books in bars or under car windscreen wipers.


So I'm proper liking my mate David Gaffney's new literature project Errata, which is running until January in Cornerhouse Bookshop as part of Micro Commissions.

David - author of flash fiction collections Sawn-off Tales, Aromabingo and The Half-life Of Songs plus novel Never Never, and whose sound installation Boy You Turn Me is on at Birmingham Book Festival until 16 October (see my review on Creative Times here) - gave me the skinny on the project, which explores ideas around truth and authenticity.

Says David: "Errata slips are inserted into magazines and books to correct errors or typographical mistakes, but I'm using the format in a different way – to disseminate lies and tell stories. Each of my slips relates to a page of content in different periodicals in Cornerhouse Bookshop, adding a fictional dimension to the publication, disrupting the reader’s engagement with the text and throwing into doubt the veracity of what they are reading. As the slips are put in only certain magazines, and secretly, you won't know whether you will find one or not."

Hahaha, subversive. And they're funny too; I've been getting my kicks out of proofreading them. Scan the QR code for more or, if you're so last century, click here.

Diva-lution

Ten days remain for you to hotfoot it over to Salford Quays to check out The Lowry's Warhol & The Diva show. I recommend that you do. It's really nicely curated, starting with Polaroids of each of the famous faces Andy Warhol persuaded to sit for him. Next, you move onto those famous huge bright screenprints. There's a fantastic Liza Minnelli, all black spiky fringe and shiny red mouth. There's a wonderful Debbie Harry, again red lipstick a-gogo, hung on an animal-print background which sets the picture off beautifully. There's Liz Taylor, there's Jane Fonda, there's Mick Jagger, and, of course, most famous of all, there's Marilyn Monroe - in fact, there are a few Marilyn Monroes.


The works have been borrowed from The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, specially selected by curator Kate Farrell. Kate has cleverly juxtaposed the portraits with photographs of Warhol wearing a wig and make-up, himself the diva to Christopher Makos's lens, and with a really interesting video of the artist undergoing his makeover, seemingly very vulnerable and nervous. There's also a corridor-type room displaying copies of Interview magazine, which used Warhol's diva images on the cover, and this provides the context of Pop Art and serves to give the exhibition extra depth.

It's a well-rounded show, and worth the trip to the windswept wastes. And it's free. No excuse.

More words please

This morning I was disappointed to learn that my Ask Ben & Clare co-writer Benjamin Judge's latest fledging project We Hate Words had been shelved due to pressures on his time. I was disappointed as I think it's a great site with good ideas offering a sanctuary for writers to vent their anger about rubbish words. I was also disappointed because I had submitted a piece about a word that I hate, and it hadn't yet been published.

It will be published on Wednesday. I have taken possession of the website's log-in details and that for the accompanying Twitter account. I urge you to check out the site and send in wonderful words about not-so-wonderful words. I have changed the submission rules slightly, so you don't have to write as much. I've also introduced a spelling mistake and poor punctuation section, so you can name and shame horrors of the grammar variety. Show and tell. I'm relying on you. Don't let me down...

Ambitious ideas

Yesterday, I popped by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, aka my current second home (just after my real home and slightly before The Castle), for an evening of poetry and prose hosted by Ambit Magazine. This literary quarterly has been going since 1959 and lists among its contributors a certain Mr William Seward Burroughs, which I'd say is a good thing.

Jim Burns introduced proceedings, and first up was Edmund Prestwich with various poems inspired by Africa, in particular South Africa where he was brought up. You can read some of them on his website, including Egrets and Moshoeshoe And The Cannibals.

Next at the lecturn was Nicholas Royle, who explained he's been submitting to Ambit since he started writing in the 80s. He'd half-written, especially for the reading, a short story called The Head; he swore to me and Adrian that he'll finish it at some point, so we'll have to hold him to that. He then read The Lancashire Fusilier, his Station Stories contribution. That's my third listen, and it's still incredibly moving.

After a break, Jim was back, with some of his very funny poems. Dirty Old Blues was great, and I was pleased to be transported to Shakespeare & Co in Paris through La Vie de Boheme.

David Gaffney followed, telling us that Ambit was the first place his short Sawn-off Tales stuff was published. He'd already let slip to me that he wasn't going to read any proper stories, instead giving us 2,000 words or so made up of as yet unused material from his ideas folder. "Call it Ideas That Never Happened, if you like", he said. I had been characteristically sceptical; the result, in fact, was hilarious.

The final slot was Joan Poulson, another poet. I enjoyed No Teetering, about shoes and her imaginary dog named after Frida Kahlo, and containing the lovely line "out to the licorice-dark garden".

Fame and fortune

This last fortnight or so has been nothing if not exciting. Many extraordinary and unusual happenings have been explored; many interesting people and places have been experienced. So to speak.

Anyway, one of the truly amazing heady highpoints was opening the new issue of Blankpages, which hit the interwebs on Tuesday (and which you can download here), to find this very blog featured in the Blankpicks section, written this month by 330 Words editor, #beatoff collaborateur and my friend Tom Mason. I had known that Words & Fixtures was going to be mentioned, and that the blogging baton would be passed on to me to give my choice in issue 33. What I didn't know was quite how many lovely adjectives and descriptions Tom was going to employ!

Surely nothing, ever, could beat: "She’s a bit like the local Lauren Laverne of literature". Goodness me. Perhaps my work here is done.

A moment of fiction #11

Ahoy there, writing and reading chums. Here's the latest update of reading and writing stuff around and about the merry town of Manchester.

Firstly upcoming events...

It's been promised for a while, and I finally have confirmation that UNSUNG will be holding the launch event for issue 6 on Monday 14 March at 8pm in the Thirsty Scholar. It's two quid on the door, you get a copy of the mag and there are more details on Facebook here.

If your stomping ground is south of the city, there's a new 10-week creative writing course (with an accredited teacher, no less) starting up soon at trendy-old-record-shop-cum-cafe ON THE CORNER on Beech Road in Chorlton. Sessions cost £6 each and take place 6-8pm from Thursday 24 March. Booking is advised: call 0161 881 4841 or drop in to On The Corner (formally Kiss My Feet) to book.

Next up, the BLANK MEDIA COLLECTIVE are running In_Tuition, weekly discussions and workshops open to all creative types based in the North West, at the newly opened BlankSpace in town. The second Tuesday of the month (so I'm guessing it starts on Tuesday 8 March), 6.30-8.30pm, is dedicated to literature and creative writing. "Informal and relaxed discussions of technique in poetry, prose, scripts [...] will mix with debate around contemporary and classic stylings from particular authors and publications of interest. The sessions will incorporate a constructive criticism session of original work from participants within the group." Recommended donation is £1.50 and rumour has it tea and cake will be served. Full details are on the website here or in the latest issue of Blank Pages, a copy of which you can download online here.

Now submissions news...

The aforementioned BLANK PAGES are currently looking for submissions. If you are a writer of poetry (up to 60 lines per poem) or short fiction (1,500-2,500 words), send your work to editor@blankmediacollective.org. Any themes are considered; full submission guidelines are here.

Matthew Hull of Blank Pages fame (you may remember him from such Manchester-based publications as Creative Tourist and Bewilderbliss) has yet another new venture feather in his cap, as the editor of IT'S GETTING WORSE. It’s Getting Worse is, and I quote, "a new home for creative cultural commentary". If you’ve got an idea for a feature and you’d like to become a contributor, email editor.itsgettingworse@gmail.com. Benjamin Judge (you may remember him from such fabulous creations as Ask Ben & Clare and Roy Keane's Lucky Scarf) did.

NEW WRITING DUNDEE, an internationally focused anthology, is inviting submissions for its sixth issue (stories 2,000 words max; poems 25 lines max): the deadline is 2 April. All the ins and outs of what you need to send are on the Literary Dundee website here.

Finally, fun things...

YET TO BE BOOKS is an "online group to read and chat about unpublished but finished books", co-run by local lass Sian Cummins, a well-deserved gong-winner in the most recent Oxfam Short Story Competition. If you leave a comment on the Yet To Be Books blog before 10 March, you will a) be privy to some great new writing and b) be in the running to win the US version of Chris Killen's fantastic debut novel, The Bird Room. Read more here.

COMMONWORD have a Best of Blog Competition 2011 on the go for writers living or working in the North of England. The first round runs until 30 June and will be judged by Shamshad Khan (the second round runs 1 July to 31 December 2011), with winnings of £100 first prize, £50 second and £25 third up for grabs. You need to sign up to the Commonword Blog, which is a "blogspace for placing your creative writing and inviting feedback on it", leave at least five useful comments on other writers’ work and, obviously, post some of your own stuff. "Posts can be of short fiction, flash fiction, poetry, autobiography, excerpts from a novel, a traditional blog post – in fact any kind of writing that works on the blog." Check the conditions here.

An other world

Wow. I'm so totally beside myself with excitement that I can barely type. To prove it to you, let me put up the smallest possible logo I can find to illustrate this post. Let me also inform you that, as well as some terrible spelling which I've been trying to keep on top of as I go along, I'm also afflicted by an ongoing accidental pressing of the delete button. Idiot.

Anyway, what I'm excited about is this: some of my witterings have today been published on Other, which is a fabulous online magazine I (and many others) have been very much enjoying since back in, ooh, April. Contributors chalked up from the start included Chris Killen, Tom Fletcher, Jenn Ashworth, Nick Royle, Joe Stretch and Lee Rourke.

I showed an interest in submitting when it was still a cheeky glint in its creators' eyes and was very much encouraged by editor Socrates Adams-Florou. It took me a while, but I finally rustled up a concept last week. (It coincided with a Tweet in which I revealed I was "practically puking ideas", if you were watching closely.)

Here is a chunk of my email. I reproduce it here as it kind of explains my idea:

Basically, I collect lists. Discarded shopping lists, to be more precise. They are sometimes quite dull, but largely they are immensely interesting and often even amusing. People even use special paper to write their lists upon, and sometimes they reuse sheets which have fascinating tales of their own to tell on the reverse. For a while, I have been wondering quite what to do creatively with my lists, and I suddenly realised they might offer me an opening into the wonderful world of Other.

You can read THE TAXONOMY INSPECTOR #1 by Sarah-Clare Conlon here.

Yes, that #1 means it's going to be serialised! And yes, I am sharing a section with Nicholas Royle. NICHOLAS ROYLE!

A moment of fiction #6

This edition of A Moment Of Fiction sees a few new issues of zines we've talked about before hit the shelves, plus there are some submissions deadlines looming I thought I'd better mention.

To celebrate its first birthday, The Shrieking Violet is gorging itself with a epicurial special and issue 10 (no, I didn't get it either) features all sorts of food-related articles and recipes, including a review of the infamous Manchester Egg by poet, photographer and my neighbour Hayley Flynn, a cake map of Manchester by the Loiterers Resistance Movement's Morag Rose and a guide to foraging the very best berries by Alan Smith (also of the Loiterers Resistance Movement). Nom. The cover is by David Bailey of Good Grief! in Afflecks Palace, where you can pick up copies of the zine (also try Oklahoma, Cornerhouse, Manchester Craft Centre, An Outlet, Koffee Pot, Nexus Art Cafe and Piccadilly Records while the Salford Zine Library is outta town on vacation in Durham).

Thursday, meanwhile, sees the launch of issue 4 of Bewilderbliss, complete with a party and readings and everything in the NQ's Cord from 7pm. The outgoing team (as in they will shortly be handing over the reins, not as in they are a bunch of extreme extroverts, though they may well be that too) includes none other than Bristol Prize-winning writer Valerie O’Riordan, and the latest issue includes a story by my blogging friend and not-so-secret project collaborateur Benjamin Judge.

Following a successful launch a couple of weeks back, copies of the fragrant 3030 magazine ran out due to popular demand! I've been assured Common and Piccadilly Records have been restocked, and the issue is now up on the website too.

Pantheon magazine are looking for submissions for their second issue. The closing date is 4 September and full details are here.

The Bad Language creative writing posse are also inviting you to send in work for consideration for their second anthology, this time by 6 September. All information is here.

If you'd prefer to express yourself through visual rather than written means, I can think of worse projects with which to get involved than Papergirl MCR. Head girl Janice Stainton (@PapergirlMCR on that Twitter) is looking for artists and designers to submit up to 10 pieces of individual works or prints of up to 20 copies (doodles, photography, screenprinting, painting...) as well as cyclists willing to get involved in delivery. Submissions close on 1 September; to submit, send an email with your name and a link to your website to papergirlmanchester@gmail.com then hand in your work at Nexus Art Cafe, Dale Street, Manchester, M1 1JW, or post your work to Papergirl Manchester, 7 Ophthalmic Works, 2 Naples Street, Manchester, M4 4DB. (What a great address, by the way.)

ARCHIVE: Here are all the most recent posts of this ilk, if you need to look back over the various creative writing groups already mentioned and publications open to submissions: A Moment Of Fiction #1, #2, #3, #4 and #5, plus the Mini Moments Of Fiction: #1 and #2.

And don't forget to let me know if you want anything mentioning on this humble blog!

Cutting a dash

Why don't we just face up to it: as a nation, we're just not all that awesome at sport. For proof, look no further than the recent disappointing performance by the England footballers at the World Cup, sharply followed by Scot tennis ace Andy Murray's semi-final showdown at Wimbledon. So who's looking forward to the 2012 Olympics, other than Boris? Ho-hum.


But does it matter, now we hear that Stella McCartney will be designing the official Team GB kits in collaboration with Adidas, with whom she already works (see photo). Gold medal to whoever came up with that idea.

I met Stella at an Elle Style Awards Party, some years ago when I was a proper full-blown media maven. I was in charge of the guest list; a kind of bouncer in a ballgown, if you will. Once my duties were over and the hideous glass paperweights had been handed out, I went for a wander around the bits of the Natural History Museum we were allowed to venture into, and bumped into Ms Mc wandering the other way. I greeted her with an enthusiastic, "Oh hi, Stella!", and she looked at me like I was an idiot. Which I was, really. Obviously she didn't know me from Adam.

A moment of fiction #5

It's time for another bringing together of news about creative writing workshops, new zines on the scene and various other interesting project shennigans going on.

Tomorrow sees the launch of new magazine 3030, at Common on Edge Street from 7pm. The 3030 folk have a website and a Twitter account to follow, and you can contact them with your amazing ideas and wotnot via editorial@3030magazine.co.uk.

If you like photography, the first issue of Field Trip Magazine is available from Cafe Royal Books. Editor in chief Craig Atkinson had left his card on the special shelf in Common and his blog is quite interesting too. I'm liking the pictures from the camera he found in a charity store.

Now, Paper Planes have adorned these pages in the past, and one of their regulars has just started up their own creative writing workshop. I'm afraid you've missed the inaugural meeting, but they take place on every last Sunday of the month, so with the next on 25 July, you don't have long to wait! Sarah L Dixon runs the sessions in Chorlton Library from 1-3pm, and they're £5 (or £4 concs). See www.myspace.com/sarahldixon or email hectorandwanaka@yahoo.co.uk for more.

Don't forget: A Moment Of Fiction is a regular fixture so post a comment, email me or let me know via Twitter if you have anything you'd like mentioning. Here are all the most recent posts: A Moment Of Fiction #1, #2, #3 and #4

Waltzing Tilda

Last week, I went to the flicks to see Italian offering I Am Love, starring Tilda Swinton. I noticed in the bookshop while I was waiting for the screening to start that she was gracing the front of various May magazines, including two separate (and very disparate) covers for Dazed & Confused. And I can't recommend the film highly enough, with its glamorous Milan setting, 1950s/60s-style panning shots, and obsessive almost to the point of hilarious sexual focus on food and nature. It did, however, have a fine ability to make me sob uncontrollably while trying to cycle home, and, despite the low probability of being spotted in a state of disarray (it was fairly early on a Sunday), I was unfortunate enough to find myself bumbling past a colleague and then bumping into a friend. Oh well.


I like Tilda Swinton; she seems to pick some great movies to be in. The last thing I saw was Jim Jarmusch's weird but wonderful The Limits Of Control, and she's great in The Beach (on telly this week, I believe), Thumbsucker and as the ice queen White Witch in The Chronicles Of Narnia. I'm a wee bit behind and have only just got Burn After Reading on DVD, so don't go spoiling it for me now.


Tilda also has to be commended for her brilliant schemes at bringing first-class film to rural remote Scotland, where she lives. In 2008, she collaborated with director Mark Cousins on The Ballerina Ballroom Cinema Of Dreams, a cheap-seats cinema brought back to life for a couple of weeks. In 2009, the pair hauled a mobile movie house, the Screen Machine, around the Highlands for A Pilgrimage film festival. Gives "road movie" a new slant, eh?

"It [is] a genuine experiment," said Swinton, in The Guardian. "I thought – you know what, we don't know what we're doing. We mightn't be able to move this an inch, and when we did, I couldn't be more amazed. What's it going to be next year? Airborne or in freefall?"

Cannae wait!

A moment of fiction

Manchester really is a hotbed of literary musings at the moment, so I thought I'd do a quick round-up of what I have gleaned lately on the zine/chapbook/workshop front. This is by no means comprehensive, just a little wee listy I've been keeping for the very purpose of sharing it with you good people, whether you want to try and get in print yourselves or just fancy something to read on the bus. If you are privy to any other groups and publications encouraging the advancement of putting pen to paper, do let me know and I can do an update in weeks to come.

First off, The Knives Forks And Spoons Press (sans punctuation, which I'll allow as I can only assume that they're being ironic or referencing iambic pentameters or some such) are tomorrow gathering at the Crescent pub in Salford from 7pm for a book launch and readings by the likes of Matt Dalby and Alec Newman. Recent imprints include Michael Blackburn's Big On The Hawkesbury, Ryan Ormonde's Y Chromosomes and my blogging pal Adrian Slatcher's Extracts From Levona. You can also follow the poetry publishers on Facebook, which makes them quite modern.

Adrian Slatcher also pops up as the current contributor to the fabulous Rainy City Stories, which, via the magic of Google Maps, sticks a virtual pin in a place and links to a poem or story set there. Adrian's work is called The Ikea In Ashton Can Be Seen From Space; I have a piece on there called Hawthorn Lane. Rainy City Stories is affiliated with the annual Manchester Literature Festival and, as the brainchild of local social media maestro Kate "Manchizzle" Feld, not surprisingly it will keep you up to date with new postings via Facebook and Twitter (@rainycity).

Very timely for this Manchester literature compilation is the appearance last week of issue 8 - a public transport special - of lit zine The Shrieking Violet. As well as publishing a paper version (which you can pick up in Good Grief! - worth a trip anyway for all your comic and graphic needs - plus Cornerhouse, Nexus Art Cafe, Piccadilly Records, Oklahoma and the Craft & Design Centre), the Violets can be found beavering away at their blog and on Facebook.

If you fancy practising your black arts as part of a group, writing, reading and chatting about your work, Bad Language are a friendly-sounding bunch organised by Dan Carpenter (dan@badlanguagemcr.co.uk) and meeting the third Tuesday of the month at Nexus Art Cafe on Dale Street. While you wait for the flash new website to get properly up and running, keep up to speed with what's going on via the blog or Twitter (@BadLanguageMcr). Submissions for their first anthology closed last week, so expect a fab new pamphlet (with the Northern Quarter as its theme) soon; but for future reference email prose of 200 words max and poems of 40 lines max to submissions@badlanguagemcr.co.uk

Another imminent publication is the new Puppywolf collection of "the best of the Manchester poetry scene", which is due out in June. Keep up to date with various spoken word events around town via their website diary and Facebook page.

Quarterly poetry and prose publication Bewilderbliss (available in Cornerhouse and Blackwells on Oxford Road) is currently accepting submissions on the theme of revolution for issue 4. The deadline for stories of up to 2,500 words or up to three poems is 21 May - email bewilderbliss@hotmail.com, or follow them on Facebook and Twitter (@Bewilderbliss).

The Blank Media Collective (whose Neck Of The Woods show just finished at Nexus) produce a monthly online magazine called blankpages and are looking for contributors. Stories should be between 1,500 and 2,500 words, flash fiction or short shorts 100-500 words and poems 60 lines or less - check out the website for full submission guidelines and uploading possibilities or email editor@blankmediacollective.org, addressing it to either Phil Craggs, Fiction Editor, or Baiba Auria, Poetry Editor. They're also on Facebook and Twitter (@BlankMedia).

Their blog hasn't been updated for a while, but I hear that Unsung are still squirrelling away at their free Manchester-based monthly literature magazine that promotes "unsung, underrated, underground, unheard voices... prose, poetry, essays, pretty much anything", so email them via unsung.manchester@gmail.com or get in touch through their Facebook page to see what's going down.

More lit zines desirous of readers and writers in the rainy city are Geeek (also on Facebook and Twitter @geeekmagazine), Transmission and Belle Vue. This latter has no online presence at all from what I can tell, but there were copies on sale in Cornerhouse bookshop when I popped in last week. I hear it's also available in Piccadilly Records and The Britons Protection.

Britons has also been known to hold Succour Salons, a reading event by the journal of new fiction, poetry and art. According to their website, Succour has been described by Time Out as “a Granta for the Facebook generation”. Lucky they're also on Facebook, then. Issue 11, the Spring/Summer 2010 edition will be available to buy at Cornerhouse next month for the princely sum of £5.95 or thereabouts, and will be entitled February 6th, 2010 as all content was created on that day. As you may have guessed, the deadline for that particular issue has been and gone, but email Max Dunbar, the Regional Editor Manchester, with your begging letters in future: maxdunbar@succour.org.

Not really Manchester based, but run by a group of individuals scattered up and down this island nation, Open Wide Magazine is currently seeking submissions of fiction, poetry and also reviews for issue 23 - the deadline is 1 June, so email connect@openwidemagazine.co.uk or lay in a search for Open Wide Magazine on Facebook.

Last but not least is The Manchester Review, which publishes new and unpublished fiction, although their inclusions do seem to be signed writers largely linked to the Centre For New Writing at Manchester Uni (where the team is based), and have in past issues included the likes of Martin Amis, MJ Hyland, Chris Killen, Jenn Ashworth and Nicholas Royle. Still, if you think you're in with a chance, the next issue is out in October so email simon.richardson@manchester.ac.uk pronto. If, like me, you'd prefer to just sit quietly and watch, follow the account @mancreview on Twitter.

It's all geek to me

The Guardian today reports (via The New York Times's Media Decoder blog) how one Hearst magazine over the pond is looking to make a bit on the side in these credit-crunching times.
Popular Mechanics (that's quite a name to live up to) has apparently teamed up with Gap to flog T-shirts bearing pictures from past issues. This one's just perfect for all you speed demons out there.

I'm the one and only aggregator

Last night, we had the second meeting of minds in the great Manchester Aggregator project. There were some of the original gang missing (they gave their apologies), and a few new faces instead. Well, perhaps not necessarily "new" on the social meeja scene, but new to the #managg round-table discussion. The table, it has to be said, wasn't so stable. If anyone has any furniture they'd like to donate to Mad Lab, BTW, speak to the Edge Street boys ('n' gal).

So the meeting, fuelled by a jolly nice banana-stroke-rum cake, kind of went one step back - but it also went two steps forward, and anyone in their right mind would say that's progress. We decided on a name, for starters, and it's cute and snappy and nothing at all to do with Christian Scientists, we promise. I mean, don't get me wrong, we're as diverse as hell, plus we love a good bit of science, but... One day we might even tell you what it is, the name, but in the meantime, let it be noted, for the record, that I said the word "lizard" first, but I'm too quiet and meek (he-he), and the one who shouts loudest shall the glory take.

We have lots of ideas. LOTS. There's a bunch of us get together, on average once a month, and some know pretty much all there is to know about platforms and coding and other bundles of joy. That's not me. I just nod sometimes. Me, I know about printing and blogging and writing and editing, but even then I'm not claiming to be some kind of expert, because things are changing all the time and it's dangerous, y'know?

Anyway, the basic concept is to have some kind of place where we bring together the best of the blogs in the rainy city - perhaps online, perhaps print, perhaps online and print. But definitely online. We're toying with the whys and the wherefores, but the whatnots are getting there. We have some homework to do (there's talk of a URL and a logo, and we're going to be doing some testing out of theories on Google Groups), then a third meeting to arrange, and then perhaps we'll be somewhere nearer to know what the hell it is we're trying to achieve. Then, and only then, we might be able to share...

(In the meantime, don't forget that furniture need. Oh, and if you fancy giving us some funding, we'd obviously be very grateful. Failing that, I suppose cake will do.)


*UPDATE* You can also check out my report (hah!) on last night's Manchester Aggregator meeting on the Social Media Manchester Ning: http://ning.it/77U16g
Please use the hashtag #managg in any Twitter correspondence.

Looking at art from all angels

Angels Of Anarchy: Women Artists And Surrealism was free at the weekend, for one day only, so I took advantage and ploughed my trusty steed through driving blizzards towards Manchester Art Gallery. You'll have to wait until after the festive break to enjoy the exhibition yourself, and pay up to £6 for the privilege, but it reopens on Sunday 27 December (then shuts again, briefly, on 31 December and 1 January) and runs until 10 January.

There are plenty of works and all media represented, by a number of women including Frida Kahlo and Claude Cahun, Dora Maat and Dorothea Tanning. There's a lot of phallic symbolism, melons of various shapes and sizes, and a whole lot of nudity. I don't quite know why naked bodies equal surrealism, but someone's obviously decided they do. There are dream sequences and fantastical scenes, queer landscapes and weird portraits, and Exquisite Corpse works (where an artist or writer draws or writes on a piece of paper, folds it over and passes it around a group so the finished item is a composite of everyone's crazy ideas - my friends and I used to play this on cold boozy evenings when we didn't have enough money to go out).

Somehow the show doesn't quite gel as a whole, and I do question this whole "women" thing. However, it does have its moments, and I very much enjoyed seeing the many photos by Lee Miller, including Portrait Of Space (1937), which was pictured above but which has been removed for copyright reasons. Intrigued, I've been looking her up, and have learnt that she she was discovered in 1926 in Manhattan by the founder of Vogue magazine, Condé Nast, who transformed her into a modelling sensation. In 1929, she went to Paris and hooked up with modernist photographer Man Ray, hanging out with him, Pablo Picasso, Paul Éluard and Jean Cocteau until 1932 when she returned to NYC and set up as a photographer herself. See the similarities between Miller's Nude Bent Forward from around 1930 and Man Ray's Violin d'Ingres of 1924 by checking them out in Google images as I can't publish them here any more thanks to my contravening copyright laws if I should.

Gosh, well isn't that a fucking dull blog post without images?