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An exhibition by David Gledhill

June 14 – July 27 2025

Project Space

Rogue Artists’ Studios CIC

4 Barrass Street

Higher Openshaw

Manchester

M11 1PU

Private View Saturday June 14, 2-5pm

Closing event Saturday July 26, 2-5pm

Exhibition open Fridays and Saturdays 12-5pm and at other times by appointment.

According to the aphorism, ‘a picture paints a thousand words’*. However, one word with  contemporary resonance has multiple meanings and suggests unlimited visual manifestations. At a time when words and their usage are more fiercely debated than ever, this project explores some of the visual dimensions of one of the most compendious and controversial terms of all. From family celebrations to political associations, Parties evokes a range of phenomena that may have purely recreational, or alternatively, world changing significance.

Parties brings the domestic shindig, Christmas, wedding, fancy dress and work bashes together with political visual culture to explore the extraordinary range of images that language can evoke. Combining paintings based on amateur photographic source material with artefacts and objects drawn from the artist’s own collection of vintage propaganda material, Parties takes a historical perspective on the power of the word to shape our lives.

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*Attributed to Frederick R. Barnard. First appeared in Printer’s Ink in December 1921.