'It is dark, and a pair of silky pink kitten heels catch my eye. The body they adorn is slumped, ruffled and mysterious under the spotlight.' Mollie Balshaw explores Gabriel Kidd's first major solo show, I found the giant and he was dead, at HOME, Manchester ⋆˙⟡

‘“I wish I could talk about the things poets talk about – small sensations of meaning,” Verity says. This is, I think, exactly what she has succeeded in doing.’ Chloe Elliott reviews ‘Charlotte Verity: The Season Following’, on at Harewood House Trust until 7 June. corridor8.co.uk/article/char...

'With its dramatic play with colour and metaphors, Simpson seems to build her own mythology of womanhood.' Natalie Russett reviews LION by Jayne Simpson at Grundy Art Gallery, part of the Turning Point programme. Last couple of days to catch the show before it closes! 🦁

'What makes life bearable in the hardest moments is the capacity of those around us to look beyond the lens of ‘otherness’: to recognise a shared humanity beneath visible differences.' Anna Li reflects on 'A Decade of Exhibitions' at Attenborough Arts Centre.

Our Northwest Editor Jazz Linklater reviewed Un-Fair-Ground by Delaine Le Bas’ at @thewhitworth.bsky.social ‘Le Bas has literally ripped through the racist surface of political life as presented by Murdoch’s billionaire media’ corridor8.co.uk/article/dela...

Jessica Piette explores Bloc Project's new artist development programme ‘Pathways’, speaking to the first cohort of artists – Mia Colman, Jim Ever, Jack Mackness and Ava Ord. The programme culminates in an exhibition, 5 - 28 March. Launch event, 5 March, 6-8pm. corridor8.co.uk/article/path...

‘What if the food you love doesn’t exist in 2050?’ Zara-Louise Stubbs reviews ‘Maya Chowdhry and Alison Clare: What’s Eating Our Reality’ at The Core at Corby Cube, supported by Fermynwoods Contemporary Art.

‘To step into the kitchen of this domestic setting is to find warm and friendly refuge’ Dr Kerry Harker reviews ‘Ethereal Matter’, a group exhibition by students of MA Fine Art at Leeds Beckett University held at BasementArtsProject, Leeds, on until Mon 23 Feb 2026. corridor8.co.uk/article/ethe...

'Heritage, here, is horticulture. The past is pruned. Inconvenient growth is removed. Beauty is arranged to flatter.' On Substack Peter Shukie thinks through The Nature of Gothic at Blackburn Museum to consider the working class voice and distinctions between heritage and community work.

'the artists explained that it was important that these lights are controlled by "low carbon" AI, being mindful of the 2026 reality of the environmental impact of massive AI data centres.' Andee Collard reviews The Guardians of Living Matter by John-Paul Brown and Sophy King at @thelowry.com

For the latest in our Women in Print series, Tessa Harris writes on Anna Júlía Friðbjörnsdottir's Artlab Contemporary Print Studios residency and the printmaking processes she explored there with drawing and intaglio.

‘In that instant, art had done what it does best – created a bridge between strangers, a shared recognition of beauty that required little explanation.’ Martin Scott, recipient the OUR TURN Emerging Writer Bursary, explores OUR TURN Festival in a personal essay. corridor8.co.uk/article/our-...

‘Guest curator Joanna Whittle, herself a painter, describes this show not as an addendum to Neve’s text but as “papers slipped between the pages”’ Hanna Dhaimish reviews Unquiet Landscapes at Persistence Works, Sheffield, on until 24 Jan, open Thurs to Sat, 12-5pm. corridor8.co.uk/article/unqu...

'I didn’t really know what to expect, whether works would actually sell, or if it was more of a networking experience. Art fairs are odd environments, overstimulating and inherently a really bad way of viewing art.' Will Marshall of texture diarises his time at The Manchester Contemporary 2025 🖼️

'It’s testament to the collaboration that such disparate works capture so coherent a sense of land unhooked from time.' Simon Sylvester reviews Artist Lab at Cooke's Studios in Barrow, which includes fourteen North West artists who have developed works over a two year development programme. 🗺️

'I want every able-bodied person in my life to watch it and really listen to what is being said' Amie Kirby reviews The Severed Wing by Corinne, a remote performance live streamed from the artist's bed to @thelowry.com on 14 November 2025. 🐦‍⬛

Silvia Hassouna provides a fascinating, critical and moving accompaniment to the works by Theo Panagopoulos and Henna Asikainen. Lintukoto and The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing were on show at The NewBridge Project in Newcastle from 1-29 November 2025.

‘I pass between the metal walls and catch sight of word-processed screenshots tacked on the other side. They are documents, letters and poems […] Each piece of writing is a precious meeting in the shadows.' Amrit Doll reviews Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme at Nottingham Contemporary.

‘The law is so often a space of theatre, of fictions... At times, it’s maybe more artful than art itself.’ Tessa Norton reviews ‘Radha D’Souza & Jonas Staal, Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes’, at Blenheim Walk Gallery, LAU, on until 31 Jan '26. corridor8.co.uk/article/radh...

'Having prepared for the opening with warm support from our landlord, the sudden arrival of the eviction notices came as a surprise that was difficult to digest.' Studio holder and committee member Ciara Leeming explains what's happened, what's at stake and how you can support Bankley Studios:

The third review in our NewBridge Project, Collective Studio mentoring collaboration is out! 🦄 Our Place in the Arts: Creativity, community and quiet resilience in Stockton-on-Tees by Harriet Mee.

Watery Commons: The Tweed River Festival, 2025. By Maria Howard. Curated by Connecting Threads, the inaugural edition of the Tweed River Festival took place in Peebles, in the Scottish Borders, from 31 October to 2 November.

Richard Barrett reviews How to Read a Book by Stephen Emmerson, showing at Manchester's Portico Library until 14 March 2026, with an evening of readings coming up next week from Steven, James Davies, Tom Jenks and our own Greater Manchester editor Jazmine Linklater. 📖

‘Cities are strange places. Not least because they seem to exist in a liminal state. Distinct, specific, and yet constantly in flux. They accelerate, transform, and beckon us back with a promise of change.' Alexander Mobbs-Iles reviews ‘Up Town Again’ at Two Queens, Leicester.

'I rarely see bodies like mine in art. By viewing it, I feel as though I have been given a precious gift, of reaching out to another place, finding others whose genders fall outside of Western and binary structures' Grey Marlow reviews Yuki Kihara: Darwin in Paradise Camp at The Whitworth🌈

'[William English & Sandra Cross'] unconventional working methods ensure that To Farse All Things turns out to be an appropriately curious title for a very curious kind of show.’ Wayne Burrows reviews To Farse All Things at Bonington Gallery.

The second review in our NewBridge Project, Collective Studio mentoring collaboration is out! 🕊 Esther Salamon: Woodland Bird Woman at Newcastle Contemporary Art by Mridula Sharma.

'I can imagine Starling earnestly pedalling downstream encountering severe pollution, fluctuating water levels through cities and farmland and forced to disassemble and reassemble his boat, a darkly humorous protest at environmental damage.' Caroline Bagenal reviews Simon Starling: Boat Works

'Klottrup’s paintings also delve into the landscape’s enduring presence, switching the crisp documentative approach for an expressive, semi-abstraction.' Kyle Nathan Brown reviews Juliet Klottrup's An Archive at Windermere Jetty Museum ⛵

'Once the incoming tide washed away these designs, their messages were delivered to the sea, swept into the coastal marine ecosystem.' Iona Glen reviews Anna Clough's Inter/Extra Terrestrial at Full of Noises last month, which came out of a residency there in September. 🌊

New Review! 🎀 Beth J Ross: Her Extraordinary Colours by Anna Mud. 'By ...turning symbols of power and division into emblems of solidarity and care... Ross reimagines the flag not as a boundary marker, but as a starting point for curiosity, conversation, and resilience'

‘Sometimes, it’s an artist’s willingness to share their trials and errors which can lead to the real creative breakthrough.’ Writer Orla Foster met with three of the artists that will be taking part in the Yorkshire Artspace Open Studios on November 15 & 16. corridor8.co.uk/article/exch...

⭐ Review! In All Possible Worlds: Middlesbrough Art Week 2025 by Kin #MAW25

'The expansive scope of textiles as a material of artistic, domestic and commercial function is clear to see in the Biennial’s vast programme.' Sally Button reviews this year's British Textiles Biennial, at various venues in Lancashire until 2nd November🧵

'What begins to emerge throughout the exhibition is the idea that digital spaces—game worlds, fantasy and dreamscapes—offer a kind of terrain where one can imagine differently.' Jessica El Mal reviews FALE SĀ / SACRED HOUSE by Fafswag at HOME this year as part of Manchester International Festival.

'The trio of dancers seemed to be suspended in time as they moved with an intricate balance of stillness and motion, their bodies extensions of one another.' Ella Otomewo reviews BLOOM at Hallé St Peters for Japan Week in Manchester last month.

‘Halliwell-Sutton’s metal structures are sullied artefacts that seek to revise [a] local heritage of extraction.’ Simal Rafique reviews ‘Rebecca Halliwell-Sutton: From skin to land, from walls to worlds’, at GLOAM, Sheffield, which ran from 22 Aug – 14 Sep 2025. corridor8.co.uk/article/rebe...

Paige Costinescu reviews '13 Beautiful Horses' at Leicester Gallery, De Montfort University. An exhibition featuring thirteen artists from the MA Contemporary Art Practice course at DMU.

'Vulnerability and ambition have equally been embraced by this cohort, giving the exhibition a sense of openness' Joanna Jowett reviews The Inside and Outside of Belonging – MA Fine Art Degree Show 2025 at the University of Leeds.

'The more I explore and read here, the more I am reminded that no "path" we take as humans is without consequence.' Joanna Jowett reviews ‘Acting in the Middle: A Glossary of Encounter — David Eckersley’ at Sovereign Design House, Huddersfield, 27 Jun — 19 Jul '25. corridor8.co.uk/article/acti...

‘I feel a certain sacred melancholy emanating from the gallery walls, one that reflects a global ecological anxiety around preservation and conservation.' Wingshan @wingshan.bsky.social reviews ‘FOREST’ at Nottingham Castle.

Catch our August-September newsletter via the link below - a roundup of all the great writing we've published as well as some exciting bookshop and book fair news!

'In this context, the criminal justice system of self-management, learned mainly through the judgements of peers and other authorities, is at fault.' We interrupt our regular programming to bring you this literary review by Kate Paul of Nell Osborne's debut novel Ghost Driver, published by Moist.

In this month's long read, Sally Button writes via the underground, the city and the landscape to reflect on moving from London to the northwest of the northwest, finding fragmented artistic community in and around Lancaster and Morecambe, exposing interiority and accessing space:

A Gathering: Newcastle University Post-Graduate Degree Show. Review by Uma Breakdown 'Rather than entrenching, the most exciting work in this show disperses itself, pulling pieces of futures and past, fact and fiction, affects and politics.' Read the rest of this stunning review by Uma Breakdown.

Our regional editor @jjhlinklater.bsky.social reviews Pippa Eaon's solo show, Four-fold Reverie, at PINK, which comes out of an @artscouncilengland.bsky.social DYCP-funded period of experimentation with ceramics, film and sound, and research into neurodivergence, selfhood, sensation and perception:

Continuing our independent commissioning thanks to your paid Substack subscriptions and donations, Laura Biddle reviews The Way In Is Not The Whole Way Through at texture, a new, temporary space in Manchester, including works by Haydn Albrow, Katrina Colwing, Conor Rogers and Fleur Yearsley 👻

‘Holmes transforms ancient terrors into endearing companions, questioning where folklore sits in sanitised modern times.’ Hanna Dhaimish reviews ‘Dale Holmes: Beenderman & Gytrash’ at South Square Centre, Thornton, on until 5 Oct 2025. corridor8.co.uk/article/dale...

'Its rationale was laid out: to amplify both individual and collective voices of resistance that emerge from oppression' REVIEW - Resounding Diasporic Sonic Worlds, The NewBridge Project , Newcastle upon Tyne by @cyhchristie.bsky.social