{"id":21077,"date":"2025-09-14T01:54:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-14T01:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/21077\/"},"modified":"2025-09-14T01:54:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-14T01:54:13","slug":"the-ardwick-art-school-putting-manchester-back-in-the-picture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/21077\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ardwick art school putting Manchester back in the picture"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I\u2019m early for my meeting with Ian and Louise, so I get off the bus one stop sooner than necessary \u2014 at Apollo bus stop in Ardwick, which seems fitting as I\u2019m on my way to the HQ of Apollo Painting School. Later, when I ask Ian why the school is called that, he\u2019ll tell me it\u2019s because Apollo was the God of the arts \u2014 and because the bus stop after is just called \u2018Bus Depot\u2019. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t call ourselves that. That\u2019s rubbish,\u201d Ian says.<\/p>\n

Ian Hartshorne is the sort of man who can pull off a name like Ian Hartshorne: grey beard, grey hair slicked back, thick glasses. Until two years ago, he had the sort of job you\u2019d expect an Ian Hartshorne to have too: Head of Painting at Manchester School of Art. Then he left to start his own school.<\/p>\n

Ian\u2019s view is this: formal art education focuses too much on the bigger picture, rather than the actual picture. \u201cWe want them to think hard about what kind of colour they\u2019re using,\u201d he explains, \u201crather than an ideological position.\u201d In response, he set up Apollo Painting School, an intensive alternative to formal education, alongside gallerist Alice Amati, and the world-renowned artist Louise Giovanelli, who greets me at the studio as I walk in. Both she and Ian are painters first and foremost, she tells me, which explains why they\u2019re both covered in paint.<\/p>\n

\"\"Ian Hartshorne with the paintings of Tommy Harrison. Photo: Ophira Gottlieb\/The mill<\/p>\n

Ian, Louise and I have met at their studios in Ardwick, a nameless block of workshops set under the arches of what was once an Edwardian Tram Depot, but is now the premises of Maple Industrial Estate. We\u2019re here to talk about Manchester. Specifically, the art scene in Manchester. Louise, 32, grew up in South Wales but moved our way at the age of 18, studying an art foundation course and then a BA at Manchester School of Art. Ian, 57, is from Leeds, but taught at Manchester School of Art for over 20 years. Their presence in Manchester, and the school\u2019s base in Manchester, means that the city inevitably runs through their work and the work of their students. \u201cIt\u2019s where we are. It\u2019s what we navigate and what we think about,\u201d Ian says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are several artists now using the space. Their gathering in the cold depot recently earned them the title of the Ardwick Realists \u2014 though Ian tells me he prefers the term fantasist, \u201cbecause you need a bit of imagination to try and do what we\u2019re doing.\u201d In the summer, the studios become the classrooms of the school, a three month long course funded by \u201cold school patrons\u201d as Louise terms it (a catch-all term for art enthusiasts, local philanthropists and herself). No one earning under \u00a340,000 annually has to pay for the classes, materials, or for the month spent studying in Latina, a city not far from Rome. The school aims to return students to the fundamentals of painting, and crucially, to expand Manchester\u2019s place in the world of art.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is a big point for Ian. \u201cFor a city of this size and potential,\u201d he says \u201cit\u2019s probably underperformed.\u201d Louise in particular has had a number of negative experiences with London based galleries, who have initially shown an interest in her work, but then refused to travel to Manchester to visit her studio. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of snobbery,\u201d she says, explaining that multiple artists and gallerists told her that she\u2019d never make it as an artist without moving to the capital.<\/p>\n

\"\"Louise Giovanelli in front of her work. Photo: Ophira Gottlieb\/The Mill<\/p>\n

This creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. Many art students in Manchester, after graduating, choose not to stick around. A lack of artists leads to a lack of artist spaces and, crucially, commercial galleries: private galleries through which artists are able to display and ultimately sell their work. \u201cThe circumstances for artists to come up and establish themselves and stay in the city after studying hasn\u2019t been right\u201d says Louise. This is part of why they started their Ardwick studios. \u201cYou need artists before you have galleries,\u201d she explains. \u201cSo we\u2019ve tried to take it back to the source.\u201d<\/p>\n

But in many ways the Manchester art scene is thriving more than ever before. Apart from the Ardwick Studios and Apollo Art School, there are a number of other spaces: Paradise Works, Rogue Studios, Oceans Apart, and Heaven 11, to name a few. Many have their own exhibition spaces, and artists across the city frequently put on their own DIY shows. In the past 30 years, the sculptor Ryan Gander, and Louise, have come through the city and gone on to achieve international recognition.<\/p>\n

And perhaps there is more success to come. Ally Fallon, 27, is tall and blond, and moves about his studio in a self-conscious manner. A member of Apollo\u2019s maiden cohort of five students, he became the youngest artist ever to win the prestigious John Moores Painting Prize last week: a highly prestigious UK-wide award that, crucially, is based in Liverpool not London. He tells me that since then he\u2019s been dropped into a world of journalists and photographers \u2014 the BBC came by this studio last week too, a small room in Oceans Apart, the artists-led painting gallery in Salford.<\/p>\n

Ally won the prize for his painting \u2018If You Were Certain, What Would You Do Then?\u2019 whose title is taken from a letter penned by Van Gogh, addressed to his brother. Most of Ally\u2019s latest work begins with a tiled floor, borrowed from a real location \u2014 looking around the small gallery in Oceans Apart, he points out Salford Town Hall\u2019s floor design, and the famous green tiles of Pevril of the Peak. \u201cIt\u2019s a way into the painting,\u201d he explains. \u201cI construct these spaces, and then anything can enter into them. This isn\u2019t somewhere you can go in our world, but it\u2019s also not a completely imaginary space. It\u2019s a space for paint.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Ally Fallon with his painting, in Oceans Apart. Photo: Ophira Gottlieb\/The Mill<\/p>\n

Ally moved to Manchester from Bristol in 2017 to study English Literature, and only began painting during lockdown \u2014 after which he went on to do an MA in painting at Manchester School of Art, where he met Ian, his tutor. On the first day of his MA, Ian came to view one of his paintings. \u201cHe pointed at this one bit in the top corner, this red scratchy background, and said \u2018This bit is interesting. The rest is completely boring\u2019,\u201d Ally says. \u201cI remember thinking, at least this guy cares enough to criticise me. The first thing he taught me was that it\u2019s not what you paint that\u2019s important, it\u2019s how you paint it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ally would go on to be taught by Ian again shortly after completing his MA, when he joined Apollo last year. The two experiences were incomparable, he tells me, with the alternative art school having hugely smaller classes, and far more materials to work with and space in which to work. Most importantly, Apollo prepared him for a career in the art world, particularly with the benefit of having renowned gallerist Alice Amati on board, teaching them how to find galleries to represent them, and get their work into exhibitions. \u201cI left art school without that very basic knowledge,\u201d Ally says.<\/p>\n

Ian explains that the school was established in response to \u201can incremental, cynical diminishment of specialist courses\u201d throughout the UK, with university courses tending towards broader \u2018Fine Art\u2019 BAs that fail to teach the technicalities of painting. Most art schools, he tells me, including the world-leading Royal College of Art, don\u2019t even have a painting technician. \u201cThe recent attitude is towards collaboration and interdisciplinarity,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019ve nothing against that, but to be interdisciplinary you\u2019ve got to have a discipline. Otherwise things get mushy and messy.\u201d<\/p>\n

For this reason, Apollo Painting School emphasises the importance of getting into the weeds. Once a week they host a remote lecture, and once a week the lecture is in person, with the three founders and a series of guest lecturers teaching everything from the composition of materials \u2013 paints, solvents, oils \u2013 to composition itself, and light, and quality of surface. He claims that this sort of practical teaching is often forgoed by larger establishments in favour of teaching theory. \u201cIt\u2019s viewed by a lot of educators as unnecessary because there are bigger, more important things to deal with like the crisis in Yemen,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n

Like Ian and Louise, Ally explains that \u201cthe ethos behind Apollo is to keep what we\u2019re building in Manchester, and not follow the path of getting to the level of success where you can afford to live in London.\u201d What Manchester has going for it, he explains, is space \u2014 a large number of mills and warehouses that provide spaces that can be accessible and affordable, creating a thriving DIY and artist-led scene across the city. This, paired with the existence of institutions like Manchester Art Gallery and the Whitworth, the publicly-funded Castlefield Gallery, and the new emergence of Apollo Painting School, show that the foundations for a thriving art scene are here. \u201cI guess we wanted to plant a flag in Manchester and say that good things are going on here, if only someone would notice,\u201d Ian says. \u201cPeople are starting to notice. That\u2019s been edifying.<\/p>\n

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