COMING from Northamptonshire, if there is one thing bound to make me feel like a country bumpkin it is a day out at Salford Quays.
I never would have entertained the idea of going to Greater Manchester for a day, but my husband discovered a fast Virgin train from Milton Keynes which – impressively – took under two hours to reach its destination.
Once in Manchester, Salford Quays is just a quick tram ride away from the central Piccadilly Gardens stop.
And the sight that greets visitors is one of sheer modernity. Once an industrial heartland of Victorian England, the docks were renovated in a multi-million pound project .
The landscape is now dominated by ultra modern, yet beautifully designed bridges crossing a waterscape edged by striking 21st century buildings including the BBC’s Media City UK, the Imperial War Museum North and The Lowry arts and entertainment centre.
Our destination was The Lowry centre and, after a quick stop off for lunch at Cafe Rouge, one of the Quays’ many waterside restaurants, we headed to this jewel in the crown of the area’s architecture.
As well as a theatre venue, the centre houses a gallery which is home to the world’s largest collection of works by LS Lowry, with around 400 items including oil paintings, drawings, pastels and watercolours. Entry is free, although there is a recommended donation amount.
I have always been fond of seeing “matchstick men” works by Lowry, but never knew much about him. I found it useful that on entering the gallery visitors can sit and watch a short documentary about the man himself.
What I love about Lowry is that his work was a far cry from the desperate and pretentious kind of art which leads people to stare at splodges on canvas, in expensive galleries, searching for meaning.
He once said: “I am not an artist. I am a man who paints.” He also proclaimed there was no meaning in what he painted; he just painted what he saw and felt.
After looking after his bed ridden mother for seven years from the 1930s, until her eventual death, he never married and lived his life alone. Understanding his loneliness really brings an added poignancy to the crowd scenes which formed most of his work. After all, crowds can be lonely places too, is what he seems to be saying.
The collection includes his depictions of homeless people with whom he developed a fascination, his famous industrial crowd scenes and the sexually themed unpublished pictures which were only discovered after his death, depicting a heavily corseted young woman; the latter a little troubling in nature.
The display of varied works is wonderful in how it is presented, assuming no particular artistic knowledge from its visitors but concentrating on opening up the artists’ work so it is easy to learn more about his life and understand his motivations a little too.
Elsewhere in the gallery, we also visited the V & A’s touring exhibition The House of Annie Lennox, a free, temporary display which runs until June 17.
The space has been devoted to a huge mass of memorabilia and photos from the singer’s life including a sprawling wall of her gold and platinum selling discs, many of her colourful and outrageous outfits and even an entire room where people can watch her often bizarre music videos. I still think – as I said to my husband at the time – the addition of a dance floor would be the only improvement I would add.