Lights, Late Nights and Life through a Lens: This Month in Northwest Art

Finally, summer seems to be approaching. Shorts have been seen on the streets of Manchester and beer gardens are emerging from their winter wastelands. The end of April/May is also a busy time for art in the Northwest with a plethora of new exhibitions, events and festivals lined up for the coming month.

First off, with the closure of Federation House now imminent, Friday 17 April is the night to head to PRISM at Toast. A line-up of art, music and performance will be curated and hosted by The Art Bar and starts at 8pm (£3 entry). The International 3 gallery in Salford also opens its doors for a new group exhibition, The Whole Wide World, which runs until 29 May (open Wed-Fri 12pm-5pm or by appointment). The preview is open between 6-8pm so you can easily go to both events.

A major event in the Manchester calendar over the next few weeks will be Manchester After Hours on 14 May. Most galleries and museums will be running special events, performances and music from 6-9pm. You can read about this in detail in our LightNight/After Hours mega feature in the May issue of The Skinny, out 28 April. Hopping over to Preston, the new exhibition at The Harris of Lucy Beech’s film work (opening on 2 May) will be well worth a look-in.

• Joe Fletcher Orr, showing at the Grundy in Blackpool this month

A definite exhibition highlight takes place over at The Grundy, Blackpool. Modern History Vol. 1 (25 April-13 June) is a group show that features lots of familiar faces from around the region, including Manchester’s The Exhibition Centre for the Life and Use of Books (Rob Carter, Dan Fogarty, Lauren Velvick) and Cactus Liverpool’s Joe Fletcher Orr, to name just a few. The Grundy will be holding a talks programme (starting 11am) on 25 April, or you could head to the preview the night before (5-8pm). Details of the talks should be released on The Grundy's website soon.

A major event in Liverpool this month will be the annual LOOK/15 photo festival, which takes over pretty much all of the city from 15 to 31 May. Although several of the larger gallery shows are not to be missed, be sure to check out smaller spaces such as Constellations on Greenland Street (with an exhibition from Michael James O’Brien). Also take the opportunity to visit Liverpool’s new A Small Cinema, which will be screening a short film by Jona Frank on 19 May.

In other news, it’s all change at The Royal Standard, who are advertising for new directors to join the current team from 2015-2017. You only have a few days left to apply for this opportunity (closes midnight on 26 April), which is a great way to get involved with art in the city – past directors have gone on to open their own spaces and do generally super things.

Finally, coming up at the end of the month is Inprint Liverpool, held at Camp and Furnace on 31 May. Inprint is a platform for designers and illustrators to sell, exhibit and be social – and this is their largest event to date. You can still apply to be involved (head to their Facebook for more details), or just show up on the day to see a range of talent from all over the Northwest.

• Karl Blossfeldt, Adiantum pedatum, 1928

Over in Runcorn, a new exhibition of photography from Karl Blossfeldt opens at The Brindley on 25 April and runs until 31 May. Art forms in Nature is a Hayward Touring show and will exhibit a portfolio of 40 photogravures made in 1932 by the well-respected German photographer. His images were made using a homemade camera that magnified his flora and fauna subjects up to 30 times, rendering them surreal, magical and otherworldly. For those who missed the major 2013 exhibition of Blossfeldt’s work at The Whitechapel Gallery, London, this exhibition is well worth the trip and will be accompanied by a smaller display of work from local artist Niki Carlin, part of Runcorn’s Black Glass Studios.

Last but not least, as The Skinny begins to look more often to Yorkshire, there are plenty of new exhibitions opening worth a visit. Opening on 16 May at The Hepworth Wakefield is a major new exhibition of the work of Barbara Hepworth herself (until 6 September), which will run alongside the current retrospective of Lynda Benglis.

Sunday 3 May is a good day to head down as major new cycle race, the Tour de Yorkshire, will be taking a route past the gallery, which will be organising family and non-family activities and tours all day both in and around the building. This is quite an odd event which includes some sculpture, some cycling and something called a Snailympics. Bring a picnic. Pray for sunshine.