To celebrate the campaign in Manchester, the stores will be exploring the power of art in unexpected places.
Selfridges Exchange Square have partnered with Manchester School of Art, the city’s renowned design school to continue its support of emerging talents in the arts by exhibiting selected artworks by some of the school’s most exciting upcoming talent.
Bex Isley, Rebecca Halliwell-Sutton and Omid Ehmirahmadi will all feature work in the windows, entrance and across sites in the menswear floors of the Exchange Square store.
Selfridges Trafford are showcasing the works of the city’s best up-and-coming artists, artists Emilie Alstrup, Clare Calve- ley, Sophie Russell and Kay Shah whose installations and sculptures will be presented throughout all levels of the store. State of The Arts at Selfridges Exchange Square and Selfridges Trafford.
A full list of the works are as follows:
Selfridges Exchange Square
‘Use Your Muscle, Carve It Out, Work It, Hustle’, 2017
By Liam Fallon
Exploring queer culture through materials and processes often associated with labour, factories and concepts of the North, Manchester School of Arts graduate Liam Fallon brings a sense of playful drama to his sculptures. Fallon’s work takes materials and processes often associated with labour, factories and concepts of the north – steel, jesmonite, MDF, welding, casting and sewing – and through colour, form and writings by Jean Genet and Henri Lefebvre, he explores queer culture.
‘Ideas Decompose Into Stones of Unknowing’, 2018
By Rebecca Halliwell- Sutton
Manchester School of Art graduate and student of the Royal Academy of Arts Rebecca was a member of School of The Damned in 2018, curator of the Beacons programme at Caustic Coastal in Salford and the 2016-17 recipient of the Woon Foundation Fellowship. Rebecca Halliwell-Sutton creates sculptural forms and documents that trace emotional responses to our lived experiences.
‘Lost’, 2017
By Omid Asadi
Omid Asadi, a former engineer and champion boxer from Iran who graduated with an MA in Fine Art in 2017. He has since exhibited in Manchester, London and Milan, and was awarded the Leonard Little Prize and the Air Open Award in 2017. He uses different disciplines to investigate complex issues concerning identity, and his works deal with the tangled emotions of self-alienation, loss and frustration as a result of immigration, conflict and childhood memories. His recent works are inspired by Michel Foucault and study the different aspects of control and human identity through different disciplines.
Selfridges Trafford
‘Performance’, 2018
by Sophie Russell
Inspired by the Manchester-based artist’s passion for aerial performance, ‘Performance’ features forms created in blown glass balanced on metal hoops, delicately held in a tension of movement and balance. Each piece embodies its own character which is accentuated through the process of cutting and polishing, exposing voids that enable the viewer to see both the internal and external space.
‘It’s Cold Outside’, 2018, & ‘The Highest Order’, 2019
by Kay Shah
Portraying an idea of an abstract utopian/dystopian geometric environment, Kay Shah’s installations attempt to invoke a sense of escape, a place where the viewer can get lost, away from the mundane. The contrasting light and dark spaces are set to represent the idea of utopia vs dystopia – one being light and inviting, a place of tranquillity; the other being harsh, rigid and cold with a hopeful yearning for light at the edge of darkness.
‘Hybrid Array’, 2018
by Emilie Alstrup
London-based Danish artist and Royal College of Art graduate Emilie Alstrup uses tactile materials to construct clashing elements to stimulate a world desensitised by technology. ‘Hybrid Array’ is an exploration of physically manipulated materials which manifests itself as a textural landscape.
‘The Unfolded Journey of TRANScoffinATION Part 2’, 2018
by Clare Calveley Creative
Clare Calveley Creative is an Art Director, Graphic Artist and Concept Developer based in Manchester and Anglesey. This piece of work is an extension from her previous MA research project, ‘The Unfolded Journey of TRANScoffinATION Part 1’, which focused on the relationship between people and space. Part 2 explores the harsh reality a family experiences after the loss of a loved one through manipulating materials such as cement, plaster, metal and expanding foam. The characteristics of each material have been carefully selected in relation to the various stages of grief: shock, denial, anger, depression and acceptance.
