Bankley’s first artist residency exhibition for 2015 has drawn to a close and artists Martin Olsson and Gary Andrew Clarke celebrated its ending by hosting a fabulous wrap party.
The selling show was a great success and we are proud to share the news that Martin Olsson enjoyed his stint at Bankley so much that he decided to join us permanently and become a member.
We’ll be seeing much more of both Martin and Gary around the gallery I’m sure.
Thirty Paintings About Nothing – PRESS RELEASE
Bankley Artist Residency : Q&A : Martin Olsson
LH: Your painting Linkage III was shortlisted for the 2014 Bankley Open Exhibition by our judging panel for it’s strong composition and striking use of colour. Could you tell us about what inspired this work?
A Christmas Pop-Up
Friday 28th November, 4-8pm
Saturday 29th November, 12-4pm
The Pop-Up offers visitors the perfect opportunity to buy unique gifts and affordable artwork directly from our resident artists. Join us for a mulled wine or something cold from the bar, and see the exciting diversity of work produced at Bankley Studios across our exhibition space and stalls, including prints, paintings, sculpture, jewellery and much more!
SAMs Art will be also be running a drop-in workshop suitable for all ages where you can make your own Festive Decoration on Friday 28th, from 4-7.30pm.
Munkispanner Clothing // Paul Dodgson // Lucy Harvey // Hannah Brown // Raul Gutierrez
Jane Dzisiewski // Clair Graubner // Ian Massey // Jessica Browning // Linda Spiteri // David Jarrett
Martha Jean Lineham // Stewart Kelly // Eric Morris // Stacey Coughlin
Why not make a night of it with Levy Night Market running over the road from 4-9pm on Friday 28th November? The Levenshulme Market hosts some of the best street food Manchester has to offer, independent traders selling fresh produce and unique gifts alongside live music and a full bar.
RSVP to our Facebook Events Page.
- Raul Gutierrez
- Paul Dodgson
- Linda Spiteri
- Ian Massey
- Eric Morris
- Elsie Owl Jewellery
- David Jarrett
- Clair Graubner
- Caroline Dionne Clothing &Munkispanner
Open Call Wrap Party + Artists Talking + First Artist in Residence Announced
Thanks to our artists for a fantastic and thought provoking Wrap Party to close the Bankley Open Call 2014. We heard from Holly Rowan Hesson about her winning installation Spark and her plans for her solo show in 2015, second prize winner Matt Davies about his pieces The Great Imposter and Office Times, Andy Broadey who discussed the ideas behind the Levenshulme Contemporary Art Centre and the documentation of the project within Bankley’s new Project Space, and from abstract painter Martin Olsson who has been awarded our first Artist Residency based within the Project Space.
Martin begins his residency in December and will be creating new work within the Project Space until March 2015 culminating in a solo exhibition, it is the first in what is hoped with be an ongoing residency program.
http://www.martinolsson.co.uk/
Q&A : Holly Rowan Hesson, Bankley Open Call Winner 2014
Holly Rowan Hesson is an artist based in Manchester and Leeds. Since completing a practice-based MA in Contemporary Fine Art with Distinction in 2013, she has been initiating her own site specific projects and exhibitions as well as exhibiting across the North. She was selected by our Open Call 2014 panel as first prize winner for her photographic installation Spark.
Holly’s work explores process-led image-making that creates dialogues with material, sites and residual memories. Her work most often starts with a camera and ends in installation. Responding intuitively to her surroundings, she is compelled to alter what she sees, transforming solidity and the real into something more abstract, transient and ephemeral.
Lucy Harvey: I wondered if you could tell us some more about your winning piece, Spark, and the processes behind the work?
Holly Rowan Hesson: Spark was originally made for a group show exploring abstraction held this summer (Society of Island Universes – http://hollyrowanhesson.co.uk/society-u-installation) and represents a departure from the work I was making in the year preceding that. I’d been working in an intense way, giving myself short timeframes, typically just a week, to make, produce, curate and show work in a site specific way, where all the work was made in and of the site where it was to be shown.
With Spark I wanted to challenge myself to make something that worked with the site it was shown in and with the other artist’s work, but actually could have a life beyond that particular exhibition as a work in its own right. I allowed myself to go back to thinking about abstraction in a purer way, in terms of colour and form, going through my catalogue of abstract photographs and experimenting further with materials I’ve been working with for a while for their particular properties that tie in with my core concerns, acetate and glass.
LH: What drew you first to photography as a medium and how has your relationship with it changed since undertaking your MA in 2013?
HRH: I was given a DSLR camera as a birthday gift in 2010 when I was in the middle of my year long foundation course and as soon as I started experimenting with making abstract images I was hooked. I’m really not a classic photographer though – my technical expertise if you’d like your photograph in focus and lit well is highly limited! Throughout my MA abstract photographs were my main outputs but my solo MA final show completely changed that overnight. At the end of April 2013 I gave myself ten days on site in a huge concrete shell of a building to start from scratch with no work and make an exhibition and it was a revelation – what I produced developed my work in an entirely new direction.
Now increasingly I use abstract image making with my camera as the first step in responding intuitively to my surroundings to start dialogues with material, sites and residual memories. I’m interested in transforming solidity and the real into something more abstract, transient and ephemeral and the images I produce with a camera often undergo multiple physical processes using different materials and more often than not end up as installations of sculptural objects.
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LH: We know you’ve already got some ideas for your solo exhibition with us next year but we wondered if you could give us an insight into what you plan to develop for the show?
HRH: With an amazing six months to plan and make work in the studio for the solo exhibition as oppose to my now standard seven to ten days on site, anything could happen! I’m always keen to experiment and my first thoughts are that I’d like to use my prize money to investigate working with materials and with scale that I just haven’t had the funds to explore before. So I’m planning exciting trips to builder’s merchants and specialist fabricators. Beyond that you’ll just have to watch this space I guess!
WRAP PARTY – Sunday 26th October
It’s your last chance to catch the Open Call this Saturday and Sunday, 12-4pm. Holly and second prize winner Matt Davies will be joining us to discuss their work this Sunday at our Wrap Party in the gallery from 2-4pm, see our Facebook events page for more information.
We will also be launching out first ever Bankley Residency in our new Project Space on the third floor and our bar will be open, with kind sponsorship from the Levenshulme Pub Company. The Wrap Party + Bankley Residency launch is part of Levenshulme Festival 2014.
Bankley Open Studios + Open Call 2014 Winners Announced

Chris Bloor – &Model Gallery, Leeds; Peter Seal – overall winner of the 2013 Bankley Open Call; Matt Davies – Second Prize 2014; Holly Rowan Hesson – First Prize 2014; Kwong Lee – Castlefield Gallery
Congratulations to Holly Rowan Hesson who was selected by our judging panel as the overall winner of the Bankley Open Call 2014 for her abstract photographic installation, Spark. Holly received our first prize of £500 and will be returning for her solo exhibition at Bankley Gallery in 2015.
Our second prize went to Matt Davies who received £150 vouchers from our sponsors Fred Aldous for his pieces The Great Imposter and Office Times. This year’s shortlist and winners were selected by Chris Bloor, Co-Director of & Model Gallery, Leeds; Kate Jesson, Curator at Manchester City Art Gallery; Kwong Lee, Director of Castlefield Gallery, Manchester and Peter Seal, artist and overall winner of Bankley Open Call 2013.
Catch the last weekend of the Open Call exhibition this Saturday and Sunday from 12-4pm, and why not join us for our special Wrap Party event this Sunday from 2-4pm? Join our Facebook events page here.

Open Studios 2014
Thank you to all our visitors who made it to our Open Studios this year, we had a fantastic weekend and plans are already afoot for a Members Show in the foreseeable.
- Clair Graubner
- Clair Graubner
- Raul Guiterrez
- Lisa Peasey + Mike Slater
- Eric Morris
- Paul Reid
- Vanessa Denvir
- Munkispanner’s beautiful studio
- Munkispanner/Caroline Baldry
- Hannah Brown
- Second Prize winner – Matt Davies
- Valerie Clarke
- New sign joy
- Clair Graubner
- First Prize winner – Holly Rowan Hesson
- Clair Tindale
- Phillip Kennedy
- Stacey Coughlin

The Levenshulme Contemporary Art Centre project by local collective The Kitchen Table Theory with Bankley resident Andy Broadey
Photos courtesy of our wonderful friends and members Martin Olson, Caroline Baldry, Linda Spiteri, Stacey Coughlin & Clair Graubner.