What does it mean to live in a post-industrial northern city in this time, where perhaps, through the stream of social media, we are psychologically more informed than ever before… but, are we more aware?
What is our relationship to our living and working environment?
Are we merely observers or participants? The alienation that Karl Marx spoke of when relating to the modernization of working life, is this behind us? Could it be said that we are living in a post-alienated sense?
Two groups of artists from artist-run spaces, from Greater Manchester (UK) and Stockholm (SE), have over the past 14 months been engaged in various forms of dialogue, collaboration, and parallel directions in research. Considering how as artists and European citizens, we interact with our physical environment and the effect this has on the larger world, physically and metaphysically, especially after this past tumultuous year in politics.
Corduroy, a project in two parts, will reveal how artists from both countries attempt to grapple with these ideas employing a diverse range of processes, techniques, and materials. Considering our past, present, and future through historic art practices such as oil painting, drawing, printmaking, and embroidery to modern-day video, digital photography, spoken word poetry, and found art objects. The first exhibition in Stockholm will showcase artworks, works in progress, products of this ongoing dialogue, alongside sketchbooks and digital documentation as the project continues to develop into a final group show in Manchester, in September 2018.