Savoy, Lord Horror and Corridor8

Like a BookCrossing novel sharing scheme, The Exhibition Centre for the Life and Use of Books is migrating from its previous exhibition at Islington Mill. When its covers are next opened, it will be positioned in the downstairs exhibition space at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation venue on Cambridge Street.

The Exhibition Centre is collaborating with the science fiction author Michael Butterworth to produce a short run of events and a display of work. Butterworth co-founded the Savoy Books independent publishing house in 1976 with fellow author David Britton.

The setting of the IABF is a fitting choice given Savoy’s brushes with controversy for, in the words of Judge Gerrard Humphries, its ‘glorification of racism and violence’, for example in 1989’s Lord Horror, which was soon seized by Greater Manchester Police’s Obscene Publications Squad just as many of its other output had been across a series of raids. Such sentiment was familiar to Burgess’s most famous novel, A Clockwork Orange, albeit mostly following the release of Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation in 1971 and not with the same force. Overall, Butterworth’s Savoy has flown far further below the radar and into the crosshairs of the law than Burgess’s writing.

But the Savoy exhibition hasn’t been compiled as a form contrast to Burgess in any case. Instead, it intends to display text, art work and graphic novel panels from its publications – including the recent Reverbstorm series – in the exhibition area at the Burgess Foundation venue, as well as staging screening events featuring short films by local artists relating to Butterworth’s Corridor series of zines.

Words: Ian Pennington
Image: Courtesy of IABF

The exhibition previews on Thursday 14 August, then remains viewable until Friday 5 September from 10am to 4pm on weekdays and in evenings on event days. You can find out more about the film screenings via the Life and Use of Books or IABF websites.

Art exhibition launch: Richard Combes @ 2022NQ, 07.06.13

The mid-evening sun is beaming down outside, a glowing tangerine full of zest. Inside 2022NQ, a back room exhibition space offers cool respite from the rays. The stained tiles retained from its past as a textiles mill maintain a fittingly sombre temperature for Manchester-born oil painter Richard Combes's work that hangs from girders and walls.



That day's MEN previewed the exhibition and included curator Heather Gilberthorpe's opinion that, "There was something about the soul of 2022NQ that resonated with Richard’s work."



Indeed, the choice of location proved appropriate as 2022NQ's sparse, whitewashed walls and deep-set roof window alcoves seamlessly merge with the larger canvasses covering scenes of washrooms and latrines, giving a detailed intensity to settings often dismissed as mundane and all too everyday. The true intricacy of Combes's brushes breathes an unexpected life into these simple scenes displayed in an equally simple and uncluttered venue. As a result, the carefully selected paintings stand out and draw eyes towards them whilst also blending into the exhibition room, never out of place.



Notably, 'Bathroom Mirror' (P46 in issue 5 of Now Then Manchester magazine) shines in a new light with a beguiling focus being afforded to its mid-canvas loo roll when viewed in paint rather than the printed page.



Elsewhere, there are other isolated objects depicted - from boxes to bottles, boots to brushes - and paintwork framing images of often desolate and distressed urban landscapes, with road markings, alleys and discoloured streetside brick walls among Combes's collection on display.



In the main room, The Slow Club have found space for their amplifiers afore the backdrop of the venue's After Work Social Twitter feed (#AWSNQ), which later provides its share of giggles as audience members air their anonymous thoughts between the emotively delivered folk-pop love songs and laments.



Words and photography*: Ian Pennington.
*Apart from photo #4 by Heather Gilberthorpe.

The exhibition continues until 14th June at 2022NQ.