Harold Riley: A Photography Retrospective 1943 – 2007
The Lowry Centre, Salford until 20th April 2007

Perhaps because Salford-born Harold Riley is best known as a painter, this show begins self-effacingly with photographs by other people: Riley admires Walker Evans’ work for its “sense of shape”, and his friend André Kertész’s imagery for its “balance”. However from the very beginning, Riley’s own photographs, such as the mysterious Back Entry (made around age 11) reveal an ability to conjure atmosphere from seemingly banal situations. This develops with Sisters in Back Entry 1959 (a disconcertingly romantic image of a time of privation), and peaks in some of his later work (notably the fascinated faces captured in the dark in 1985’s Last Circus at Belle Vue). This tendency towards mood is also present in The Backyard, Pendleton 1969 (Atget-like with its ghostly figure in the window), but the same image also has the more documentary feel found in much of Riley’s photography. The “straightness” of these pictures often cloaks a subtle, down-to-earth charm, such as 1950’s Three Boys, all covered in dirt, twin rivers of snot flowing from the central figure’s nose. However it is Riley’s penchant for mood, often bleak, which features strongly in his urban landscapes, and his smog, grime and stray dogs somehow have little in common with his friend Lowry’s paintings, being more in tune with Ewan McColl’s Dirty Old Town. Some of his later work has a truly surrealist edge, especially his travel photographs, but most remarkably a bizarre shot involving the footballer Denis Law, a chair and a railway line. While Riley has made work all over the world, mid-20th Century Salford and Manchester feature so heavily that anyone with an interest in period or local history will find much of fascination in this sizeable retrospective, which is also testament to an impressive photographic talent.
by Simon Bowcock 2007

Into the Known… by Lee Donnelly
Manchester Airport Terminal 1 Departure Ramp
Until January 2008

These large images of single aircraft set against azure skies venerate air travel in a way probably unthinkable to those cramped inside these hurtling metal capsules. Introduced with words such as ‘purity’, ‘beauty’, ‘fragility’ and ‘vastness’, such a poetic representation of travel is perhaps that of the voyeur, starkly opposed to the more prosaic view which the voyagers themselves generally have of their own experience. All of the ‘planes seem to be travelling in different directions, but with the same sense of inevitable purpose. Sometimes the aeroplane is close-up, its nose almost on top of you. Later, the aircraft soar high in the sky, unfettered and free. These romantic, saturated colour images are perhaps the antithesis of the German artist Hans Peter Feldmann’s ‘12 Pictures’ - scratchy, matter-of-fact monochrome photographs of the very same subject. Yet Donnelly’s final image displays an unexpected pessimism, its aeroplane seemingly hurtling inexorably towards the ground. Displayed as they are in a very unlikely exhibition space, these pictures are seldom given a second glance by the constant throng of passers-by, who miss a chance to think about their own journey in perhaps an entirely different way.
by Simon Bowcock 2007