More than 140 amateur and professional artists from Wigan and Leigh are taking part in this year’s Open exhibition at the Turnpike Gallery in Leigh.
The annual Open exhibition is a celebration of the diversity of current artistic practice in the borough.
Each year the Turnpike Gallery invites people living, or working, in the borough of Wigan to submit an artwork or hand-crafted object to be included in the show.
The exhibition was opened to the public on Saturday 22 September. One of the gallery’s most popular exhibitions with visitors and exhibitors alike, it attracts work in a variety of media from painting, sculpture, and photography, to ceramics, textiles and jewellery. It includes traditional and non-traditional, figurative and abstract works.
Running in conjunction with the Open is an exhibition called "Infusion" by Kuljit Chuhan (Kooj) in collaboration with Raphael Sheriff and Joe Mulenda from the Rafiki Youth Project (Wigan) and Kamosi Youth Project (Leigh). Kooj worked with young people in Wigan and Leigh from non-western backgrounds including Africa and Eastern Europe using cultural, media and performance methods.
The groups looked at expressing their identities and feelings about the world around them in a variety of ways and the result is an engaging installation of photography, video and text.
The Turnpike’s new exhibitions assistant, Amy Cham from Wigan Leisure and Culture Trust, said: “It’s great that my first job at the Turnpike is to help set up Infusion and the Open. Both exhibitions present such an exciting variety of art works. Together, they become a portrait of Leigh and Wigan and the diversity of people who live and work here.”
The exhibitions run until 27 October. For further information call the gallery on 01942 404 420.
