Bury Art Gallery
Bury Art Gallery has a strong collection of 19th Century landscape paintings by artists such as John Constable, Edwin Henry Landseer and William Turner. The modern and contemporary collection includes work by Edward Burra, David Hockney, Victor Pasmore, Patrick Proctor and artists from the region such as Bury-born Celia Birtwell. In addition, Bury Art Gallery has also been working closely with Manchester based gallery International 3, purchasing contemporary works by critically engaged artists in the region, like Pat Flynn and Rachel Goodyear.
In 2005, Bury Art Gallery established the Text Festival, which explores a diversity of art forms that use language and text. Through the festival the gallery developed a significant capsule collection of text art works by artists such as Robert Grenier, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Maurizio Nannucci and Lawrence Weiner.
Pavel Büchler (b.1952) is an internationally recognised conceptual artist based in Manchester. His practice engages with the nature of language and quotation. Büchler’s large scale installation Studio Schwitters was featured in the 2011 Text Festival. Revolution of the 19th Century, a print referencing Karl Marx, is especially relevant to Bury Art Gallery’s capsule Text Art collection because of its connection to the history of labour struggle in the Industrial Revolution. Similarly, the print Essential Elements, quoting Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto, resonates specifically with Bury’s radical re-invention of language as a field for artistic debate and enquiry.