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A fresh look at Lowry's gems

Angela Kelly
13/ 2/2008

VISITORS to a new exhibition at The Lowry are being invited to give their own views on the north west’s favourite painter, LS Lowry – Big Brother-style in a special booth.

Exploding Paintings offers everyone the opportunity to take a fresh look at three of his most fascinating paintings.

The exhibition already incorporates the insights of three experts, plus Salford residents and children from three local schools. Local people were asked to give their opinions when the exhibition video booth visited Ordsall Festival in September and The Lowry’s Walkabout event in Little Hulton. Now, visitors’ opinions will also be included as the exhibition continues.

The three paintings are Portait of Ann, Pit Tragedy and Industrial Landscape. Portrait of Ann was a particular favourite of the late journalist Shelley Rohde, Lowry’s biographer, who collaborated on the new exhibition before her death in December.

It’s a painting that caused controversy when it was first exhibited, and Rohde looks at why Lowry painted the portrait and what the mystery woman could have meant to him.

Pit Tragedy portrays the aftermath of an industrial accident. Glen Atkinson looks at the working conditions in the pits in Lowry’s neighbourhood and wonders whether he may have been concerned about the grim figures he depicted.

Lowry himself commented: "Accidents attract me… I’ve a queer mind, you know. What fascinates me is the people they attract, the patterns those people form and the atmosphere of tension when something has happened."

Industrial Landscape focuses on the industrial scene familiar in so many of Lowry’s works. Art historian Michael Howard examines the real and unreal aspects of the painting, and asks what they can reveal about the artist.

Lowry lived in the leafy Manchester suburb of Victoria Park in his early years, but lack of money made his family move to Station Road in Pendlebury, where factory chimneys were a more familiar sight than trees.

Lowry would recall: "At first I detested it, and then, after years, I got pretty interested in it, then obsessed by it."

The subjects for his paintings were on his doorsteps.

In later life, he recalled this as a sort of vision: "One day I missed a train from Pendlebury – a place I had ignored for seven years – and as I left the station I saw the Acme Spinning Company’s mill.

"The huge black framework of rows of yellow-lit windows standing up against the sad, damp charged afternoon sky. The mill was turning out… I watched this scene – which I’d looked at many times without seeing – with rapture."

Exploding Paintings runs until March 9. For more information about the exhibition visit www.thelowry.com .