The Art has Left the Building

When Urbis was designed and built, following the 1996 IRA bomb which ripped the heart out of the city, it was as part of a new visioning of that part of the city. Public space was transformed, with that part of the city, ravaged by sixties town planners and soulless shopping centres, opened out again so that the great buildings of Chethams, the Corn Exchange and the Cathedral became integrated back into the heart of the city. Urbis, an ultra-modern design, became a key part of that transformation, refusing the easy lure of heritage, in favour of something that in shape and style could be an architectural icon for Manchester. Alongside the Hilton, the Lowry and Imperial War Museum North, it added a highly recognisable piece of architecture to the city.

The planners and the city leaders who led on this, were rightly lauded for their vision - after that 1996 disaster. Good architecture in a city context is not an easy thing to do, and their are plenty of examples around UK that prove that. Lottery and other funding made this easier, of course, but it is the "vision" that was important. Yet, inside Urbis, there was none of that same vision. A half-baked collection of unconsidered interactive exhibits; a pristine, and soulless corporate vision of a city, less ambitious and engaging than a 3D Ladybird book of the city would have been. Those same visionaries, had no vision for the space, or what it should be. I went round (paid a fiver, as it was in those days), with my friend from Liverpool, and said "this is stupid, it's not about urban life at all, it should be an art gallery..." I'd been to a wonderfully bustling exhibition about Hong Kong city life at the Hayward a year before, and seen how it could and should be done.

Amazingly, over the last few years, Urbis has looked outward, and through a series of temporary exhibitions that reflected and contributed to the urban experience that is everywhere around in Manchester, a vision emerged - one that was not so dissimilar to what I'd seen at the Hayward a bit earlier, the idea of an art gallery as a dynamic, fast-paced experience. The excitement of the iconic building, reflected in a throbbing, exciting interior.

There was no vision at the beginning for what Urbis was all about, other than a piece of a regneration jigsaw, a plastic square on a Mancunian Monopoly board. Job done, the planners moved on, and presumably, the city pretty much forgot about Urbis, and, clearly, let artists and curators get on with the job of making it a key component of Manchester's official city vision, original and modern.

The art has not quite left the building, but is about to. The decision to move the National Football Museum from Preston to Manchester makes sense only in the sense of "numbers" - yes, it will get more people through the door in Manchester than Preston, but see what has been lost? The art, and with it, any vision of Manchester as taking cultural seriously. For though we have our high culture citadels (the Bridgwater, the Lowry, the Royal Exchange, Manchester Art Gallery), and our low culture ones (M.E.N, Eastlands, Old Trafford), neither are really creations of our age. I didn't and don't expect our current bureaucracies to have the power and vision of the Victorians, but I do expect them to create a space where those who might have a vision could make it happen. In retrospect, Urbis's empty interior was something that nobody thought about until the cost of running it, year in, year out, became clear. A museum, worse, a museum of football, is nostalgia run riot. No more chances for Mancunians to laugh at Liverpool's Beatles obsession, when we choose the past ahead of the future. Buildings are often no more than Rachel Whiteread's concrete filled interior spaces imply they are, "holders" without particular meaning. Churches become pubs and old mills become apartment blocks.

For art, it won't make much difference, for the art can still happen outside of the agreed spaces, unofficially, like the now-venerated Tony Wilson once did with Factory Records and the Hacienda. But imagine what might have been. If the city had set up Urbis with a Charter or a vision, to be a new kind of "institute of contemporary arts" for the 21st century. Take your children to that, make it a place for vibrant thought, discussion, and creativity. Let the mediated experience become the unmediated future.

So, in a political climate where the money for both football museum and art gallery comes from a department that manages to mix "culture, media and sport" in a single acronym, I only wonder what's next for the city? We talk about echoing the Victorians, by wanting the Palace to become an Opera House. Well it's only an echo. This too is nostalgia, high brow thought it might be. Then again, Charlotte House opposite the Central Library is now empty, the Odeon remains closed; the BBC building will have to find a new usage. If we're willing to give Urbis away to the most prosaic idea that comes to town, then let's forget about vision. Turn all of these into shopping centres; northern Trocadero's; outposts of Arndales; or, let's make them into a museum is applicable to the age, welcome to the Oxford Road Museum of Reality Television, welcome to the Truman Show.

Art & Commerce

There's not much in the Bloomberg New Contemporaries exhibition at the Cornerhouse that you'd feel comfortable with on your dining room wall, and, equally, there's little at the Urbis Buy Art Fair that I really want to see in a gallery. An observation, that's all, that when we talk about "art" we mean different things in different places, just as when we talk about "books" or "novels" we may not always be using the same measuring device. I admire any artist, from Vettriano down who manages to make money from their art, but the work that most surprised me at New Contemporaries - which showcases the best of the degree shows - is not aiming to be above anyone's mantlepiece any time soon.

I've always tried to go along to the New Contemporaries show, but realise it might have been a couple of years. What does it say of the state of the art? (Or the state of art?) I think there are threads of narrative, rather than a grand design. The conceptual appears to have played itself out, and in many ways I would say the binding thread for this years exhibition was one of "representation", which is one of the oldest of artistic aims. A representative art speaks of a generation that is perhaps re-learning how to look, which in itself offers a new intellectual challenge. Not all of this is successful, and some of the painters, illustrators (yes, drawing, that lowest-tech) and sculptors seem to have an affinity with the less flashy side of seventies art; a low key expressionism, a slightly affected minimalism. My three favourite pieces were all video works. Richard Healy's two video pieces were astonishing; playful, warm, confident, and easy with their postmodernist self-awareness. Brasher was Rachel Mclean's reinvention of Scottish mythos in her day-glo video montage, "Tae Think Again". So easily done badly, the sheer bravado of the piece was a clear highlight of the exhibition. And though I'm not sure whether it's much more than a very good joke, Susanne Ludwig's video installation left my smiling long after I'd left the gallery.

The gallery wasn't very busy, early on a Sunday afternoon, but I'd recommend a visit to what is a diverse, considered show.

"Buy Art Fair", in comparison is a commercial bazaar, with hundreds pushing through the space. You know the kind of thing, by now, commercial galleries, touting living room accessories. Artists must pay the bills, and a friend met us later, very happy that a couple of his paintings of the crane-scape of Media City's evolution had been sold.

In the distance between the exhibitions at Cornerhouse and Urbis you can find something of the gap between art and commerce. (It's worth adding, that the Manchester Contemporary, a side exhibition at Buy Art Fair, was a laudable attempt to narrow the gap, with providing space for some of Manchester's more contemporary galleries.)

Writing about Manchester

Oxygen Books has a series of successful books about various cities, with their City Lit London the latest. It is London, Edinburgh, Dublin, Cambridge and Oxford that come to mind when you think about English Literature's love of the city, not Bristol, Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool or Manchester. Perhaps the helter-skelter growth of the 19th century Victorian cities saw too fast a rise, and the 20th century, too fast a decline. Ra Page's "City Life Book of Manchester Stories", a decade ago, attempted to get writers associated with the city to write a story about it; and there's been a fair share of poems, novels, and yes, stories that have taken place in contemporary Manchester in the year's since - I'm thinking of Joe Stretch's "Friction", Gwendoline Riley's "Cold Water" and "Sick Notes," and Neil Campbell's "Broken Doll" amongst others. Yet the city hasn't yet seen it's "Augie March." Then there's Dave Haslam's non-fiction history of the city's music, "Manchester, England." I think all of these would find a place in a City-Lit Book of Manchester, if it ever came to pass.

Manchester is written about all the time of course, either in the newspapers (football pages particularly), or through its music or filmic location. Surely, our mythical anthology would have to find room for a Coronation Street script, something from the first series of "Cracker", maybe a few words from "Shameless" and "Cold Feet" (preferably across the page from each other, as glorious contrasts.) Older writers would be well-served of course; I'm not sure how much de Quincey dwelled on his city, but we'd have room for Frederick Engels, and much Mrs. Gaskell, never mind some considerable chunks of Anthony Burgess's 2-volume biography, the only books of his to dwell at length in the city. The classic non-fiction work might find a place, "The Salford Slum," perhaps with David Constantine's poem about the groups of young men from Salford Streets who perished in the First World War.

As "Procession" showed last week, any anthology of Manchester would have to include the words of Mark E. Smith, the Buzzcocks, Joy Division, Morrissey and Shaun Ryder amongst its gems.

There's always a difficulty, of course - is it writing "about" the city or writing "from" the city? An anthologist would surely find room for "Love will tear us apart" even if it doesn't mention a location, as surely as emigres such as Engels and W.G. Sebald. I'm yet to read it, (or listen to it - since that's the version available at the moment), but am looking forward to another visitor to the city's words of wisdom. Writing for the new arts and culture magazine Corridor8, Iain Sinclair is at Urbis next week, reading a piece of psychogeography from walking round the city.