Confidence in a brighter world

Can art help dispel the gloom that descended on Oldham after the riots? Giles Worsley visits an optimistic new gallery.

From the walkway that runs along the top of the new Gallery Oldham you can look down on the site of the recent, much publicised rioting. Just beyond the ring road, not much more than a stone’s throw away, lie quiet terraces of Victorian houses that were at the centre of the disturbances. Seldom are art and the potential anarchy of troubled post-industrial towns placed in such close proximity.

To its curators, that proximity is a statement of hope that art has its part to play in creating a better world. It is hard to imagine a clearer expression of the current belief that art can make a difference.

Oldham boasts a remarkable collection of art left to the town by 19th-century philanthropists. This includes great Victorian paintings such as John William Waterhouse’s Circe offering the cup to Ulysses and Ernest Normand’s Vashti deposed, works by Rossetti, Sickert and Lowry, and a first-rate collection of Englisb watercolours left to the town by Charles Lees. The philanthropists believed that art could uplift and transform. A similar vision lies behind Gallery Oldham, which opened on Sunday.

The new gallery, which cost £9 million, half of which came from the European Regional Development Fund, sets out to give the collection the setting it deserves. There are proper, climate-controlled galleries that, for the first time, make it possible to bring major exhibitions to Oldham, and, equally importantly, good storage facilities. The result is a platform for the curators who, tailoring the exhibitions to give them a contemporary relevance, work closely with local inhabitants and see the gallery as somewhere that can bring the people of Oldham together.

Everything was designed and built at breakneck speed. The architects, Pringle Richards Sharratt, were appointed in August 1999. The building was completed at the end of 2001.

The result is long, tall and thin, three storeys high with the galleries on the top floor. The effect is remarkably light and airy, partly because the building is so thin, but also because the glazing of the entrance hall is taken up into the central gallery, one of three.

There is a confidence about Gallery Oldham that seems to have something in common with the attitudes of the Victorians who built the town. It is confidence that has been missing for too long in towns like Oldham. Perhaps this building is a sign that things are changing.

Link: Daily Telegraph 21st February 2002

© Daily Telegraph 2002