From the Ground Up is an exhibition of sound, sculpture, painting, drawing, text and installation in the Castlefield Gallery’s New Art Space Wigan (former Marks and Spencer windows) on Standishgate and in the Grand Arcade, from September 12th-October 16th2021, by local artists Jane Fairhurst and Tina Finch, with Greater Manchester artists Chris Rainham, Ian Vines, Sarah Feinmann, Claire Hignett, Maya Chowdhry, Sabrina Fuller and Paddy O’Donnell.
From the Ground Up is an exhibition inspired by its very particular site: the windows of the former Wigan Marks and Spencer, now a Castlefield Gallery New Art Space, which it will occupy from September 12th-October 16th. The nine Greater Manchester artists came together in 2019 through Castlefield Gallery’s bOlder artist development programme.
Standish-based artist Jane Fairhurst explores the delicate ecology of a threatened woodland between Wigan and Leigh and the implications of its loss for non-humans and humans alike.
Jane Fairhurst HS24U
She shares a Standishgate window with Chris Rainham, whose botanical drawings celebrate the unremarkable plants and flowers he has found encroaching on the Wigan’s urban environment, accompanied by texts investigating ideas of socialists and socialism sparked by George Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier.
For Ian Vines, the Pier has inspired an installation of blurred photos, objects and everyday materials which play with ideas of reality and representation.
Ian Vines, The Pier Appears
He shares an Arcade-facing window with Sarah Feinmann who picks up concerns about the environment – as well as the demise of well-loved high-street stores. She has used packaging from on-line purchases, printing with plastic bags on panels from cardboard boxes.
Sarah Feinmann You Don’t Need to Sign for It
Back at Standishgate, Tina Finch, originally from Hindley, continues the critique of consumerism and advocates for sustainability. She has constructed a shop-window mannequin from recycled paper and paint, harking back to the time not so very long ago, before fast fashion, when clothes were repaired, darned and patched, handed down, refashioned or repurposed.
Claire Hignett shares the window, her tailor’s dummy wears a cloak focussed, conversely, on what we keep, raising questions of how Wigan’s past is shaping its present and future.
Claire Hignett The Weight of Coal
Maya Chowdhry and Sabrina Fuller celebrate this past, present and future through a sound-walk exploring the time-line of Wigan’s rich music scene up to the contemporary. QR codes in six sites through the town centre take the listener to stories, voices and tunes of venues, gigs, festivals and bands.
Sabrina Fuller and Maya Chowdhry Those Who Were There
The walk starts and finishes at the Arcade, where Paddy O’Donnell interprets From the Ground Up almost literally in a sculptural eruption referencing the energy, resource, originality and humour evidenced in Wigan’s continued self- reinvention.