Castlefield Gallery will reopen on Wednesday 16 September 2020 with the exhibition Soft Bodies, which was due to launch when Covid-19 lockdown restrictions were put in place.
The gallery has been part of Manchester’s contemporary visual art landscape for over 35 years and welcomes diverse audiences from local residential areas as well as artists and gallery visitors from further afield. Alongside other newly re-opened city art venues, visitors to and from the city will finally be able to get a much-needed cultural fix.
Guided by the latest official advice, Castlefield Gallery will ensure the cleanliness of the space and actively manage numbers of visitors, in order to create a safe and enjoyable visitor experience. After careful thought, the gallery will not require booked time slots other than for occasional events. Being able to have a personal and welcoming experience when visiting Castlefield Gallery has always been part of its distinctiveness, and part of the joy of engaging with its programme. On occasion, this might lead to very short waiting periods to enter. It will open with the same regular days and hours it held before lockdown.
Castlefield Gallery continued to nurture contemporary visual artists during the lockdown period, taking its exhibitions online, generating paid work for artists in a time of great uncertainty, contributing to non-digital activity to reach out to vulnerable communities in the region as well as focusing on intergenerational artists’ projects. It will maintain this blended approach, offering content and work to those who are still not able to visit gallery spaces. This approach has also opened up more international opportunities for Castlefield Gallery, with plans emerging for connecting artists within the North West region and Greater Manchester with artists in Denmark and Hong Kong.
Castlefield Gallery programme 2020-2021
16 September – 1 November 2020
Closed to the public Saturday 26 September
