Bureau works internationally with represented and invited artists at varying career stages to provide a platform and context for dynamic and innovative contemporary visual practice. The gallery premieres and commissions new work across a variety of media and presentation formats, both on and off site.

Bureau’s exhibition programme is complemented by screenings, talks and performance events, alongside international collaborations, exchange and residency projects. The gallery further supports artists’ practice through publishing initiatives, and participation in art fairs.

Bureau presents Stinkhorn, Jacob Cartwright’s first solo show, and the inaugural exhibition in the gallery’s new Port Street space.
                                                                                                        
The exhibition features new and recent paintings that display a range of diverse and eclectic subject matter. Cartwright’s individual approach to imagery forces incongruous connections between things, conflating material drawn from a range of personal, historical and encyclopaedic sources.

Taking mankind’s confused relationship with the natural world as a starting point, the works in Stinkhorn exploit literature, popular culture and obscure personal references to present fictions and imaginary scenarios.

Cartwright paints on shaped boards, meticulously scaled up from small, casually drawn forms. The edges of the boards are irregular rather than ‘true’, thus creating the sensation of a shifting ground - undermining formal regularity in favour of ambiguity.

The materials he uses – gesso, Indian and sepia ink and watercolour – are suggestive of conservative attitudes in terms of manufacture and application. These ‘genuine’ artists’ materials are evocative of traditions and an almost epicurean preciousness – qualities that are both seductive and antagonistic. He wilfully plays with this duality.

Cartwright wants his work to mesh representational aspects with process (the facture or material story) - and to create a tension between the possibilities for literal reading and fluid interpretation.

Jacob Cartwright (b. 1969) lives and works in Manchester, and studied at Winchester School of Art, Academie St. Joost in The Netherlands, and Nottingham Trent University. He has exhibited extensively throughout the UK and Europe, and in the USA, and has previously exhibited with Bureau at The Manchester Contemporary, and Zoo Art Fair, London.
 
Cartwright’s work has featured in a number of high profile exhibitions including: The Animal Gaze, Unit 2 Gallery, London Metropolitan University, touring to Centre for Contemporary Art & Natural World, Exeter and Plymouth City Museum & Gallery; The Golden Record, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, and Lincoln Collection, curated by Mel Brimfield (2008- 09); Darwin’s Bicentennial: Art, Science, and the Origin of Species, Marion Kuhn Gallery, Ohio State University, USA; Oslo Screen Festival, Norwegian Film Institute, Oslo, Norway; Prize Drawing, Southwell Artspace, Nottingham; Art Futures, Contemporary Art Society at Bloomberg Space, London; MoNO (The Museum of Native Oaks), Manchester Museum (2008); Jerwood Drawing Prize 2007, touring throughout 2007-08 to Jerwood Space, London, Pittville Gallery in Cheltenham, Mackintosh Gallery in Glasgow, Royal West of England Academy in Bristol, and Hatton Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne; Birdwatching, De Vishal, Haarlem, Netherlands, curated by Tanya Rumpff; North & South, Reg Vardy Gallery, Sunderland; Rub-A-Dub-Dub, Ex-Ex, St. Gallen, Switzerland (2007); Drawing Space, Southwell Artspace, Nottingham (2006); and John Moores 22, The Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK.

Parallel to his individual practice, Cartwright works in collaboration with Nick Jordan. As a duo they have recently screened collaborative films at: Cannes Short Film Corner, France; 6th London Short Film Festival, ICA, London; Complex Financial Instruments, Salon 09, S1 Artspace, Sheffield; Night of the Owl, A Foundation, Liverpool; 3rd Beijing Independent Film Festival, Beijing, China; and Les Coraux de Darwin, l'Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art, Paris. They were commissioned by Book Works as part of their Chap Books Series to produce Alien Invaders – A Guide to Non-Native Species of The Britisher Isles (Volume 1), published in 2006. Subsequently, in 2007 they were awarded the 12-month Alchemy Fellowship 2007/08, from The Manchester Museum, alongside Jordan Baseman, Ilana Halperin, and Jamie Shovlin. Cartwright & Jordan have a forthcoming exhibition Cairo at Cornerhouse, Manchester, opening in January 2010, which features a new film installation inspired by the writings of 19th century artist, ornithologist and frontiersman John James Audubon renowned for his epic publication The Birds of America.

Exhibition continues 7th November 2009 – 30th January 2010
(The gallery will be closed for Christmas & New Year from 20th December 2009 to 12th January 2010. The exhibition re-opens on Wednesday 13th January 2010.)

Gallery open Wednesday to Friday 12 – 6pm, Saturday 12 – 5pm. And by appointment.

Please note the gallery's new address. We have moved from Islington Mill in Salford and are now based in Manchester's Northern Quarter.