Factory International presents a riotous three-week programme showcasing the Manchester-based artist’s prolific body of work created over four decades.
Part retrospective, part residency Please Feel Free to Ignore My Work (10–28 April), celebrates the internationally acclaimed cabaret star, actor, and accomplished visual artist David Hoyle.
For this three-week programme at Aviva Studios, rarely seen paintings, slogan works and new commissions, as well as screenings of his iconic television appearances and films, are brought together for the very first time. Hoyle will also host talks, live painting and a radically alternative pub quiz.
A brand-new ‘end-of-the pier’ variety show David Hoyle: Still Got It? on Saturday 27 April merging the best of seaside culture and the avant-garde will bring the three-week residency at Aviva Studios to a climax. Hoyle will be joined on stage by an array of performers from the worlds of burlesque, music, drag, film, circus and cabaret.
Hailing from 1960s Blackpool, Hoyle’s infamous alter-ego ‘The Divine David’ transported him from radical alternative settings to the studios of Channel 4. Hoyle cemented his artistic name in the queer nightlife of Manchester – including performances at Paradise Factory, Contact, and Queer Up North – before conquering the international cabaret circuit, creating work that is hilarious, tragic, moving, and confrontational. His cabaret turns at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern are in particular the stuff of legend.
Hoyle has worked extensively as an actor (Velvet Goldmine, Nathan Barley, Uncle David, Set The Thames On Fire), while his work as a visual artist has been shown in The Hayward Gallery, and in art spaces from Paris to Liverpool to Copenhagen.
Please Feel Free to Ignore My Work brings together key themes that run through Hoyle’s back-catalogue: gender, mental health, AIDS, revolution, decadence and the effects of capitalism. Tracing his career from the ’80s to the present day, this body of work asks how and why we value our art and artists.
David Hoyle said: “In a way this show at Aviva Studios is like a long-awaited light that’s being shed on my life’s work. It feels like a great sense of recognition as an artist, coming out of the darkness into light, from marginalisation to validation. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity, for which I shall be eternally grateful.”
Please Feel Free to Ignore My Work event listings:
13 April, 12pm: An Artist at Work
Live painting performance from David Hoyle in the undercroft space at Aviva Studios.
17 April, 6:30pm: No Ordinary Pub Quiz (RSVP essential)
David Hoyle goes back to his roots with a radically alternative pub quiz.
20 April, 6:30pm: On Screen and In Conversation
David Hoyle looks back at his long film and TV career through on screen highlights and a live Q&A
27 April, 7:30pm: David Hoyle: Still Got It..!? (RSVP essential)
The artist’s biggest, most ambitious Manchester gig ever – a Saturday night variety show like no other.
