On the cusp of leaving a city forever, an artist surveys her surroundings. Natalie Curtis, in possession of an extensive Manchester archive, sought to produce one final set of images in the place she has lived the longest. An antidote to an overwhelming body of work, this exit project is intended as a separate and self-contained piece.
Now widely considered the UK's second city, as Manchester's profile grows - a Prime Minister's office, a G20 Summit and so on - the physical town grows upwards. It is the experience of the glazed concrete forest with which Curtis concerns herself. But rather than the controversy of the contemporary high-rise, her interest lies in the every day domestic. To document what is, compared to the more familiar world of converted flats in Victorian houses, a very different type of accommodation.
In this project we find the otherworldly strangeness of living so high up. A routine more akin to a faraway outpost, the logging of the weather and conditions. Indeed, there is a feeling of science fiction, that mix of the shiny new and old, the photographs having been shot on 35mm. Isolated from the street, we see that amidst the noise and hedonism, there is a silence and solitude. The situation presented for the viewer to decide.
Galerie Arnaud Lefebvre
Founded in 1986, the Galerie Arnaud Lefebvre was initially rooted in Minimal and Conceptual art (Carl Andre, Rosemarie Castoro, Robert Huot), staging numerous multidisciplinary exhibitions spanning poetry, performance, and music. Its archives up to 2010 are held at the Bibliothèque Kandinsky.
Since 2010, the gallery has placed women artists at the forefront. It notably championed Caribbean artist Hessie (exhibited at Les Abattoirs in Toulouse and at the São Paulo Biennial) and paid tribute to feminist art critic and historian Aline Dallier in 2022. It represents around twenty international artists.