I’ve walked the expansive corridor to the Everyman Cinema several times, but it has never occurred to me that the space could and should be used creatively. Thankfully Joe Wilson, Director of the Smolensky Gallery, had that vision. And so I called in as the gallery opened on the Saturday morning, after the Friday evening launch. I was glad that I left my visit to the day after the launch, because, Joe told me, there were four hundred visitors the night before. Which is good, because a new gallery in Manchester city centre is great news. As Joe said to me, “There are maybe a thousand good galleries in London and only eight or nine in Manchester.”

 

But first the space. Maybe 30 metres long and 5 metres wide the ‘corridor’ is dramatic. Just as importantly the full glazed front of the ABC building on Quay Street ‘advertises’ the fact that inside is a gallery space. Clearly visible and inviting. And, of course, it is a corridor to the activities inside the building. Everybody entering the building, therefore, walks through the gallery. A ready made audience and unique to the Manchester art scene. Dominating the space from both the inside and the outside is a large corten steel sculpture by one of our favourite Manc creatives Liam Hopkins. True to (I think) the Hopkins sense of humour, the over-sized angular hand can be read with opposing messages depending on which side it is viewed from. From the entrance a quintessentially British V for Victory, from the inside looking out…well, work it out for yourself. Apparently the sculpture only just fit through the entrance doors and I would have loved to see Joe, Liam, Liam’s right hand man James and a couple of others man handling a big lump of steel from the van. Maybe it should have been filmed and used as an exhibit in the initial gallery show itself. 

 

Of course I chatted with Joe about how the Smolensky Gallery came about. Joe is gregarious, enthusiastic and more than willing to chat. He has no history of being an art practitioner, no art college training. Just a passion for collecting art of every kind since he was 12 – around 20 years ago. He puts this initial enthusiasm down to – at least in part – his grandad, who influenced him from that early age. Collecting what he described as ‘just various drawings, pictures and other artistic ‘ephemera.’ (My choice of word, not his!) During subsequent years the collection and so his contacts in the art world grew to the point where his walls at home were what, I am guessing, led to a nascent desire to be a gallery owner, with a collection that led to friends asking him to source work from artists on display. 

 

As with so much these days, the word lockdown came into play and Joe took the strange times we all experienced to develop the idea and his passion commercially. Smolensky exhibited first at the Manchester Art Fair last November. I missed that, in the hubbub of that particular show; but then, valuable as it is, that show is not a place where anybody is able to take everything in.  

 

But on to the work on show in this new gallery. Eclectic as you would expect, with a predominance of Manchester based artists, interspersed with international names. Most two dimensional wall pieces, but some beautiful ceramics and small, quirky sculptures. I was staggered by the extraordinary work by Perpsicere…thousands of threads criss-crossed to create the subtlest of images. Very worth checking out the videos on Insta – perpicereartist. Jasper Cheng’s ‘The way back home’ emulsion on canvas ethereal painting, Sebastiaan Knot’s Archival Pigment Print, vibrantly beautiful. Every piece at Smolensky is worth lingering over. But three pieces by Henry Woolway gripped me firmly in their aching simplicity…if simple is a word that could or should be used. 

 

Now I have to admit that the name Smolensky led me to expect a gallery owner of maybe Transylvanian heritage or similar. But Joe Wilson is – thankfully – a passionate art collector and now gallerist from Whalley Range. So the name? “As with so many families of Jewish heritage,” Joe explained, “my family changed their surname to sound as English as possible after the war.” Whilst I’m not being derogatory about the surname Wilson in any way, Smolensky sounds, maybe subliminally, like it should have the title ‘Count’ before it. 

 

I left after our chat; art, spaces, ambitions and plans for the future. But Smolensky Gallery is firmly on my map and that of the Manchester art world. And probably beyond.