Barry White at Stockport Art Gallery

A couple of Saturdays ago I went to a private view of Barry White's paintings at Stockport Art Gallery. Barry's paintings are abstract, and that's as far as I'll go to say anything about them, apart from the fact that I like them a lot, since Barry is also famously averse to talking about his paintings, believing that they are their own communication, not requiring the medium of words for appreciation. It's a bit hard for me to keep schtum, purveyor of words as I am -  at one point I said to someone at the preview that I loved the half-hidden grids in the paintings, and she replied, having read Barry's written declaration as above, that she didn't regard them as grids, just as shapes, so I buttoned my mouth.

Another thing I will say, though, is that the huge paintings are set off to great advantage in the gallery boardroom. Barry is also known for his dark paintings in which he uses a lot of black and grey highlighted with red, as displayed in a show of smaller paintings last year in Didsbury's Art of Tea, and people were surprised by the use of bright oranges and yellows of some of the paintings at Stockport. I had seen them before, however, at a private view at Barry's studio in North Manchester last summer (below), and had loved them then.

The show is on until the end of May, and I thoroughly recommend it.

Indigo at the Whitworth Gallery

An invitation from Ann French, textile conservator at the Whitworth Gallery (aka Ann of the reading group) to the opening last Friday of the show she has been working round the clock to prepare: Indigo. It's a fantastic array of historical and contemporary indigo-dyed fabrics and garments from around the world, from ancient ceremonial garments to modern workwear and designer denims. The exhibition thus traces the history of indigo dyeing which has become almost obsolete but which in some parts of the world is now being revived.

The place was packed, and there was a huge buzz, and it was impossible to study everything properly, which I'm looking forward to doing another time. Ann suggested that I went upstairs where it was quieter and look at the connected installations by two Japanese artists, and sure enough I was blown away. The installation pictured above is by Hiroyuki Shindo and 'references the ceremonial banners seen in picture scrolls of the Japanese Heian period'. The banners are indigo-dyed by the 'Shiboni' method, the fabric pleated around two tensioned cylinders. The balls scattered on the ground beneath the banners, which the artist doesn't mind being knocked around as people walk through the installation, are covered in indigo-dyed fabric.

The reading group were there in force, getting too drunk as usual to look properly at the show, and Clare took the picture. Needless to say, afterwards there was a reading group dinner in the curry mile just down the road.

Indigo will continue at the Whitworth until 15th April, after which it will tour to Plymouth and Brighton.

Sundar Kanta Walker - exhibition of paintings

Yesterday I went to the opening of an exhibition of paintings by Sundar Kanta Walker, 'This Precious Place', at the new Waterside Arts Centre in Sale in South Manchester. Kanta's paintings are vibrant with pure colour, as can be seen above, brimming with a seething yet patterned life, and also often with humour. That's Kanta above, standing next to one of my favourite paintings in the show: 'Ethnic Chick'. If you can't afford one of the oils, there are limited prints available, and I persuaded John to buy me one for Cristmas!

Kanta is of course also a writer, which was how I met her, when she and I once did a reading together, along with novelist Jane Rogers. So it was no suprise that there was another writer at the show, and to my delight Kanta introduced me to her: poet Judy Kendall, who has two books due out, a collection of poems from Cinnamon Press, and the edited letters of Edward Thomas from Carcanet.

I haven't been to Sale for a long time and was amazed to find how gentrified it's become. The Waterside Arts Centre is in a splendid new complex looking out over a paved and lamplit area next to the canal. There were other things going on in the centre besides the opening, and towards the end a group of people drifted past the gallery entrance, coming downstairs from a North-West Playwrights training day. And who from among them should come rushing in to the gallery but my actress friend Mary-Ann Coburn. You could see the pub across the canal through the glass wall of the gallery, so no prizes for guessing where we ended up then...

Kanta's exhibition runs until the 20th January.