Timperley? What A View!

“Tony Wilson is Really Fantastic”, according to the striking new composition from Frank Sidebottom, getting its World premiere this afternoon at TWE. Also this afternoon, modern art superstar on the Manchester scene Liam Spencer talked about what he found inspiring about painting Manchester urban landscapes.

Frank’s insights into how he and Tony wrote songs together in Frank’s bedroom (in green felt tip) added a surrealism to events. I particularly liked the image of each morning the pair of them going to the bottom of Frank’s garden in Timperley, peeping over the hedge, and from there being able to “observe the whole of the Manchester Music scene”. Perhaps using binoculars I think, because Timperley is quite a far way away. However as my diagram below shows, the field of observation is quite broad – I think they would have been able to see quite a lot.

Before Frank we had a session with Phil Griffin and Liam Spencer talking about the urban landscape. Phil has written about the architecture in Manchester for well over a dozen years, and Liam’s work covering the city and its landmark buildings has had considerable commercial success.
Whilst Manchester for Liam represents a scene of incredible excitement – he pointed out this might be because he had previously spent his entire life in Burnley – he also pointed out that his work needs universal appeal, something which perhaps we should feel all creative output from the city needs to have in order to become known outside of the M60.
One audience member queried whether Manchester was the right place for art to get that appeal. Wouldn’t London be easier or better for a broader range of work? Liam’s answer was that his work is quite accessible, and that has a major impact on how easy it is to get “into” the Manchester art scene. He points out that the industry is much broader and stronger than it was when he was starting out, but it still had some way to go – he is surprised by the lack of commercial galleries in the city for example.
Maybe he’s just looking at it wrongly. If he observed the Manchester art scene from the bottom of a garden in Timperley, I’m sure he’d see something special.