Heads up

Following on from my last post, which, admittedly was a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away (sorry about that - I've been looking at art all around the country and even beyond, so I haven't had time to actually write about it!), today I found out that one of the three inaugural artists in this year's mentoring scheme from Mark Devereux Projects has an interesting commission coming up. 

Nicola Ellis is one of two artists going Head To Head in this year's Castlefield Gallery exhibition of the very same name. The show promises to be great - Ellis's amazing piece Osseous (pictured) took centre stage at Mark Devereux Projects' first-ever gallery foray, Means Of Feedback, last month - while her contender is Aura Satz, whose work has appeared in the Tate Modern Tanks, dontchaknow. Head To Head starts on 6 September (preview 5 September, 6-8pm) and runs until 20 October, with an artist talk with Ellis on 3 October, 6.30-8pm, and a special late-night opening until 9pm on Thursday 10 October as part of The Manchester Weekender, produced by cultural website Creative Tourist, where you can read more about the artistic dust-up...

Meanwhile, Mark Devereux Projects are inviting submissions from visual artists working across all mediums for a group exhibition relating to "innovative and engaging approaches to notions of space, form and function", which sounds very interesting and of the moment. Beyond Merely Assembling will take place 6-16 November at Projects: Manchester, a new pop-up gallery space (how de rigueur!) in central Manchester - full details on how to submit can be found on the Mark Devereux Projects website, but I can tell you that work needs to have been completed in the last 18 months and artists must be in the Mark Devereux Projects Associate Membership scheme. You should register by 23 September with submissions due 29 September - get cracking!

Special projects

OK, so Manchester International Festival might have taken over somewhat, with spoiler alerts on Twitter and Willem Defoe sightings in the street, but the thing I'm most looking forward to right here right now is Means Of Feedback, which gets underway at CUBE Gallery a week today. The exhibition showcases new and recent works by three emerging visual artists, Nicola Dale, David Ogle and Nicola Ellis, all represented by the brand-new Mark Devereux Projects team. Next Thursday sees the show's preview and also the official launch of MDP, described on the website as: "a new artist production-development organisation established to help increase the national and international profile of early-career visual artists".

It's a really interesting initiative, giving support and direction to help three new artists per year get their work out there, seen by the right people and marketed to the optimum. And it's not alone on the Manchester scene: off the top of my head, I can think of Creative Industries Trafford (aka CIT), which offers professional development opportunities to artists and creatives in the form of networking events, portfolio surgeries, scratch performances and writing workshops and conferences; Redeye, The Photography Network, which runs masterclasses, network events and an annual symposium, and gives members access to directory listings, bursaries, jobs and competitions; and Blank Media Collective, which takes us full circle, as Mark Devereux founded Blank Media in 2006 and directed it until a year ago. All these organisations are Rainy City based, but all have a much wider reach. As Mark says of MDP: "Already since making my idea public in January, artists from not just the North West but from around the UK have contacted me and we’ve met to talk about their work.”

The two Nicolas and David are the three inaugural artists on MDP's books, and already have impressive shows behind them. Nicola Dale showed as part of The First Cut at Manchester Art Gallery last year and starting today (and running until 21 July) as part of Durham Brass Festival is Intone, her collaboration with composer and writer Ailis Ni Riain - who, coincidentally, is behind the second theatre production co-commissioned by CIT, mentioned above, and Waterside Arts Centre. (The last post on this blog, by the way, was a review of the first of these to the stage commissions, The Man Who Woke Up Dead, which is off on tour as a result of its successful three-night run in Sale; so fingers crossed for Ailis' A Shadow On Summer this October.)

You might remember Nicola Ellis's piece Paregro which was part of the FOUR exhibition at Cornerhouse earlier this year - a creature made out of flinty pebbles, which, thanks to Arts Council insider information received by Words & Fixtures, was apparently taken upstairs to the Cornerhouse galleries using a special robot - how exciting!

I recently saw a David Ogle piece as part of the Catlin Art Prize in hipster Shoreditch in that there London - a great geometric sculptural light installation (very now, given the Hayward's recent Light Show). For Means Of Feedback, he has apparently developed a new site-specific work - can't wait; we all know about my obsession with site-specific stuff (more on that next week!).

Means Of Feedback runs 12-17 July at CUBE on Portland Street (Mon-Fri 12-5.30pm; Sat 12-5pm; Sun closed). Free entry. Preview 11 July, 6-9pm.

Dead good

I've managed to miss a load of interesting theatre productions lately, but last night I did make it to the premiere of The Man Who Woke Up Dead, the first commission by Waterside Arts Centre and sister organisation Creative Industries Trafford in their special to the stage programme, and supported by Arts Council England.

OK, so I'll confess I am biased, working on the marketing for Waterside at the mo as I am; however, I did genuinely enjoy the dystopian thriller with its interesting shadowplay and innovative stairwell scenes (depicted through movement and a change in sound, courtesy Owen Rafferty, and lighting, by Joel Clements). The set is pretty pared down, but the props that are used are done so effectively; the same with the costumes, which appear to place us in or around the Second World War, though the story could transfer into any era, past, present or future. The cast, too, is minimal - it's a three-hander, with Phil Minns playing a psychiatrist with a secret (who you wouldn't want to say, "Trust me, I'm a doctor"), and Square Peg Theatre founders Katie Robinson as Nurse Evelyn (and producer) and Michael White as the man in question (he's also the play's writer and director). Yet for something so seemingly stripped back and running to only an hour, The Man Who Woke Up Dead is full of interest, intrigue and impact, as the action unfolds and the line between truth and lies is crossed and recrossed.

The Man Who Woke Up Dead is on tonight and tomorrow at 8pm at Waterside Arts Centre in Sale town centre. It's £8 (£6 concessions); call 0161 912 5616, book via watersideartscentre.co.uk and just rock up and pay on the door (no booking fee that way!).

Short but sweet

Well, I don't wish to depress anyone, but tomorrow is May. How the devil did that happen? Ho hum, let's think less about how closer we are to pureed food and non-stop TV and rather focus on the fact that the days are getting longer and the nights shorter... as is our fiction, apparently. The Huffington Post today features a piece on International Short Story Month, which kicks off in the morning; the UK's very own National Flash-Fiction Day, meanwhile, is chalked up for 22 June, kind of but not quite the longest day (and therefore shortest night - geddit?).

So I thought I'd take the opportunity to do some blatant self-promotion, cos what would be the point of running a blog if you couldn't say what the hell you wanted on it? First off, the FlashTag writing collective spent yesterday evening eating pizza and drinking lager and, because I'm a lady, white wine, and arguing about the 70 entries we received for our latest competition. The shortlist will be announced very soon then the winners will be revealed live at the Nook & Cranny on Wednesday 22 May, 7pm, as part of Chorlton Arts Festival. The shortlisted writers will all read their pieces, the FlashTag gang will read some of their own stuff, and we'll have a special guest appearance from "grandmaster of flash" David Gaffney. In June, FlashTag will be holding an event as part of Didsbury Arts Festival, on Friday 28 at 8pm in the Albert Club.

Also for DAF, myself and David will be reading (sans keyboard!) and chatting about the micro fiction form. That will be at Pizza Express on Lapwing Lane, on Tuesday 25 June at 7.30pm. Mmm, pizza. Next Wedneday evening (7.30pm), David and I will be performing as Les Malheureux at the Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool as part of the Writing On The Wall festival, which runs throughout May (see the second issue of the north west edition of The Skinny, out tomorrow, for my feature on the literary shindig, and Creative Tourist later this week for a piece on the In Other Words festival and reopening of Liverpool's Central Library). Then on Thursday, it's the pre-launch of David's latest collection of short-short stories, More Sawn-Off Tales, when he'll be reading at The Bakerie Tasting Store alongside Rodge Glass and Anneliese Mackintosh. The book is out on Salt Publishing on Wednesday 15 May, and the official launch takes place on Thursday 13 June at Takk cafe in the Northern Quarter (doors 6pm), also featuring Gregory Norminton and his new book Thumbnails; a unique spoken word DJ set from the Simms-Luddingtons of Monkeys In Love, and me doing the intros. All these events are free, so you'd be a fool not to join us at something! David is doing stacks more readings over the next couple of months - see his website for all the dates.

Cast aspersions

On the bus this morning, two young lasses were talking about acting and their inability to do method. I should have told them about this event on Sunday, when a number of workshop and audition sessions will be taking place at RNCM to recruit company members to join the next site-specific production by Library Theatre. It'll be their third site-specific show and, following the successes of 2011's Hard Times and last year's Manchester Lines, it promises to be pretty exciting.

Manchester Sound: The Massacre is going to take place at a secret venue (how MIF!) between Saturday 8 June and Saturday 6 July and, written by Polly Wiseman and directed by Paul Jepson, it draws on very varied, yet significant aspects of the city's history: the Peterloo Massacre in 1819 and the explosion of rave culture in 1989.

The Library Theatre Company is looking for volunteers aged 16 and over with energy and commitment to work alongside the professional cast and crew from Tuesday 7 May, when rehearsals start, so book onto Sunday's event by calling Cornerhouse box office on 0161 200 1500 quick sharp.