Vista: Tales of shrinking skies and life within the city grid 2021
A residency in one of Manchester’s empty shops became the satellite studio for a study of Manchester’s escalating skyline and new vistas along side streets and arterial routes. A site specific installation was produced in response over seven days for the window of the store in the Great Northern Warehouse building on Deansgate, Manchester.
Through her process of drawing and painting, Nan Collantine finds her own response to place, decoding subliminal cues in architecture and place that shape human experience.
Adopting the city’s colour palette, she built abstract compositions using blocks of recycled wood, suggest red brick buildings blushing under the blue-green gaze of glass towers, painterly atmospheres and transparent forms.
As part of her residency, which was generously supported by Great Northern Warehouse, Nan invited artist, Babs Smith, an artist based in Salford, to respond to the work and local architecture.
Smith, whose work explores our human visceral response to our environment in an online and offline process, is responding to the work and changing architectural landscape of Manchester, digitally. She uses an AI algorithm and Virtual Reality software to create an abstract interpretation of these changes and their effect on her perception of the location.
