ANEW Way to Peel an Orange: Artist and Curator tour

Join exhibiting artist and designer Joe Hartley, as well as Matthew Pendergast (Head of Programmes, Castlefield Gallery) and Dominic Pillai (Curator of Social Engagement, Portraits of Recovery) for a tour of our exhibition ANEW Way to Peel an Orange.

ANEW Way to Peel an Orange is an ambitious exhibition of co-produced work developed during artist and designer Joe Hartley’s five-month residency with ANEW in Tameside (Greater Manchester, UK).

Hartley’s residency has combined the forces of ANEW’s experienced and creative approach to recovery from substance use, with Hartley’s diverse approach to making and the variety of talents possessed by members of the ANEW community. Rooted in collaboration and creative exchange, the residency has been an evolving journey of creating and reflecting through ceramics and furniture making, photographic experimentation, as well as outdoor and growing activities that include equine-assisted therapy and hatching RECOVERIST chickens as a nurturing metaphor for new life beginnings.

Castlefield Gallery also plays host to Hartley and ANEW’s pop-up shop, a space that imbues the warmth of a rustic farm shop. The shop houses teapots and ceramics enhanced with glazes produced from plants – those often viewed as invasive and not welcome, that when repurposed yield positive, unexpected results. Interventions also appear outside the gallery’s immediate public realm. Hartley and the ANEW community bring their collaboratively honed growing skills to the venue by developing a garden at the gallery’s entrance occupied by plants that include those used to produce the beautiful glazes to be found on the ceramics inside. The pop-up shop and garden create further space for pause and reflection.

ANEW Way to Peel an Orange is a Portraits of Recovery and Castlefield Gallery commission, developed and presented in partnership with ANEW, funded by Brian Mercer Trust, The Howarth Trust, supported by Arts Council England, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and Manchester City Council.