THE DANGER TREE IN MANCHESTER

 Review of The Danger Tree at Manchester Library by Steve Watson
(Eastern Correspondent)

BILL Drummond is a former art student, musician with the KLF, one of two blokes who burned a £million quid on the Isle of Jura in 1994, and has steadfastly refused to explain why ever since.  

Bill has an affinity with the North, and has a long relationship with Liverpool having worked at the Everyman Theatre in the 1980s!   In one of his recent books on the nature of art he states that 'all galleries should charge at the point of entry.  And they should be proud to do so.  Because they should be putting on works that people are willing to pay to see.'

Drummond was back in Liverpool last year and several hundred people had paid £100 to attend a few of his events, one involved ripping pages out of a book, the other dressing up in yellow capes, wandering round Toxteth and finishing up by the docks watching a stack of pallets being burnt. Art at its best?

For those that 

a) didn’t have £100 to spend 

and b) if they had would have spent it elsewhere in Liverpool then a random stroll may have taken them into one of them deplorable free exhibitions or installations as they call them these days down near the Pierhead!  

The Danger Tree, with its promotional leaflet saying 'Free to Enter' was making its second visit to the City!   And the exhibition following a stint in Birmingham is now in Manchester. 

 

The Danger Tree is described as an augmented reality art exhibition by impressionist landscape painter Scarlett Raven, and digital artist story teller Marc Marot and within seconds of entering through the front door visitors find themselves somewhere between a shelled out French farm building and the No Mans Land of The Somme.   Just over a hundred years ago in the real life fields of carnage thousands of French, English and Commonwealth troops faced a barrage of shells to the point where on 1st July 2016 some 57,000 were killed, seriously wounded or missing to the point where their remains would never be found.  

The one place of shelter if you can call it that was a large gnarled tree capable of providing both a point of refuge and an easy target for enemy fire.  Earning itself its 'Danger Tree' name it became the spot where many soldiers from Canada fighting for the Commonwealth would depart this world and at this conjuncture stories diverge.  Some sources say the dead tree still remains others that its spot sports a replacement and there may well have been many different Danger Trees across the jagged landscape but regardless it remains a point of thought and respect. 

 

A good hour session in the exhibit (which I will remind you is free Mr. Drummond) and you may or may not be aware that art can sometimes be powerfully challenging and dragging you out of your comfort zone.  Such exhibitions can be very subjective but rather than a line of static paintings or objects the trick with the Danger Tree is the use of electric wizardry to transform the illusion of the bombed out farmhouse in a war zone into a place where the sheer horror of the Somme literally surrounds you.  Using something called Blipper technology which is best appreciated than understood visitors are given an Ipod which when scanned across Raven’s stunning landscapes bursts into sound and movement with the war poems of Sassoon, Owen and Brooke as well as contemporary poets and voiced by Christopher Ecclestone, Sean Bean and Sophie Okonedo.  Individual soundtracks and moving images make the words augmented reality into one hell (in every sense) of an experience. 

 

This isn’t art to visit and feel warm.  This is art where you come out into the day light and feel slightly humbled shaken and subdued, this is the reality of the Accrington Pals and other local battalions marching off to France and returning as just names on cenotaphs.  This isn’t highbrow art, no its shock tactics of a part of history in the anniversary of its final end.  Our fathers, grandfathers and more brought back to life for a short period by a skeletal tree amongst a field of poppies.

Take shelter beneath The Danger Tree if you will at Manchester Central Library’s Exhibition Hall (First floor) daily except Sunday until March 31st. Mon -Thurs 10.00am 6.00pm, Fri & Sat 9.00am to 4.00pm. 

 

And its free Mr Drummond! 

****** 

Triple Vision at Number Ten Gallery

FOCHDALE artist Walter Kershaw opened the current Triple Vision exhibition at Number Ten Gallery in Baillie Street in the town centre on June 28^th.  The gallery was packed with local folk and supported by many of the great and the good.  Walter commended the work referring to the handling of colour and welcomed the event held to support Petrus a homeless charity to whom some of the proceeds will go.  The three artists who dedicated their work to this event were Colin Fielding, Colin Gilbert and Lorraine Dewhurst.  

Ms. Dewhurst, we learn, paints using most media but favour soft pastels often focusing on animal subjects.  But it was her Acrilic painting entitled 'Rock Nook Mill, Littleborough (former home of Fothergill & Harvey)' (£60) that caught mine and Walter's attention.

Colin Fielding, who Walter Kershaw knows best, was influenced we are told Walter by the famous Norwich School of Painters.  He is more experimental and finds some inspiration in abstract art:  his work here stretches from the traditional to the abstract using most mediums  - from an abstract watercolour rendering of Stravinski's 'Rite of Spring' (£60)  to his  watercolour of 'Bamburg Castle, Northumberland' (£50) and his 'Ulswater' (Cumbria) (£50).

Colin Gilbert's work is more impressionistic and mainly local in subject matter and he works mostly in watercolour such as 'The Dam, Rippenden' (£65), but the exhibition has some of his prints like 'Toll House, Blackstone Edge Old Road' (£40) from original watercolour another was 'Healey Dell Viaduct' (£40).

Walter Kershaw, who donated one of his own works to the event for raffling-off, described the pricing of these works as being very reasonable.   Rochdale folk and locals should go and support this event at Number Ten that runs until the 27^th, July 2013.

Norman Potter: Dissident Anarcho-Designer

ENGLISH folk reputably tend to over-cook their vegetables but somehow manage to end up with a politics that is nothing if not half-baked. This is particularly the case among the English anarchists where one always feels one is residing with the runt of the political litter, and recent research into English anarchism would bear this out since it appears that half of the so called English anarchist movement are employed as civil servants or teachers on a State stipend, or alternatively have been stuck on state benefits (see Martin Gilbert's interesting posting on this Blog: 'Washing dirty Anarchist linen in public' 4th, Oct. 2012). 

The Northern historian, David Goodway, has written:
'... anarchism - or left libertarianism ... is a long-established political position and ideology, associated with a substantial body of necessary, radical thought.  In other countries this is taken for granted and intellectual respect is paid to anarchism ... but it has never been in Britain and the other Anglo-Saxon nations.'

For this reason many lower-middle-class English anarchists live double lives with 'subterannean' identities and often use so many aliases they must forget the names they were christened with when they were born.  Herbert Read said:  'In calling [my] principles Anarchism I have forfeited any claim to be taken seriously as a politician, and have cut myself off from the main current of socialist activity in England.'

And yet, for the journalist, the designer or the artist in this country it may be positively an advantage to be labelled 'an anarchist'; in so far as one has no obvious party political bias to uphold or party-line to follow.  Herbert Read survived and prospered despite his anarchist connections and David Goodway hasn't done badly as an 'anarchist historian'.  It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, to read an article this week in the International Herald Tribune by its distinguished design critic, Alice Rawsthorn, on an exhibition in Bristol inspired by Norman Potter and assembled by Susanne Kriemann entitled 'Norman Potter, a heroic rogue'.

The Arnolfini Exhibition:

Susanne Kriemann: Modelling (Construction School)

Saturday 04 May 2013 to Sunday 07 July 2013, 11:00 to 18:00

Free →

Norman Potter was a designer and poet who set up the Construction School for experimental design in Bristol in the mid-1960s.  In his book 'Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow', the historian, David Goodway, referred to Potter in his chapter on the famous anarchist art critic Herbert Read wrote:
'Potter ... an anarchist from his teens who has been described as "the English Rietveld" - the reference is to the great Dutch furniture-maker and architect, Gerrit Rietveld - point[ed] out how much Read's work and example had meant to him, especially as a young man.'

As for the artist Susanne Kriemann, her works look at specific examples of documentary images, from early photo history to surveillance cameras, and how they shaped our understanding of reality. With playful and inventive moments, the artist suggests a reading of pictures that asks for their meaning in the present. 

For the exhibition at Arnolfini, Susanne Kriemann develops a new series of work that respond to the history of the Construction School in Bristol. The history of the Construction School has been extensively researched by designer James Langdon, who provided the original material for the exhibition. The Construction School existed from 1964 to 1979 as part of the West of England College of Art and Design (now UWE) and was an attempt to establish an experimental design school, similar to the Bauhaus and the HfG Ulm, in a local English context. The Construction School’s history is closely bound to the career and concerns of its founder Norman Potter, an anarchist and practitioner on the margins of mid-twentieth century English design culture. Potter resisted the increasing emphasis on specialisation in design education and worked to encourage practical collaboration between disciplines. Susanne Kriemann’s exhibition will look at materials from the Construction School archive and their legacy of protest and change for today. 

The exhibition by Susanne Kriemann is organised by Arnolfini in connection with a series of events about the Construction School, initiated by James Langdon in collaboration with Spike Island. At Spike Island, Langdon will present a performance of a play by Norman Potter, In:quest of Icarus, and a purpose-built space for the archive of the Construction School.

The exhibition is closed on Mondays (except Bank Holidays).

The graphic designer, James Langdon says:
'I think Potter's image is very heroic ... [h]is workshop at Corsham and his teaching in Bristol were defined by their being so unlikely, and requiring such conviction and energy to bring into existence.  It was very bold to attempt such a radical and uncompromising program in a provincial English context.'

That is the difference between the kind of artistic anarchism represented by Norman Potter as opposed to the typical English political hanger-on one might meet, the former is bold and committed, while the latter is often furtive and sly. 
_________________________________________________________

The current printed issue of NORTHERN VOICES No.14, is now available for sale with a review by Derek Pattison of Dave Goodway's book 'The Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow: from William Morris to Colin Ward', Northern Voices can be obtained as follows:
Postal subscription: £5 for the next two issues (post included). Cheques made payable to 'Northern Voices' should be sent c/o 52, Todmorden Road, Burnley, Lancashire BB10 4AH.

Tel.: 0161 793 5122.
email: northernvoices@hotmail.com

Pat King at Number Ten Gallery

EXHIBITION

23rd, November 2012-31st, January 2013.

Pat King  - Retrospective

Number Ten Gallery, 10, Bailey Street, Rochdale, OL16 1JG.

Open:  Mon. - Sat. 9am-5pm.  Tel.... 01706  354076.

This exhibition is to celebrate and remember the life and skills of one of our talented local artists.

Pat's students and friends will know of her enthusiasm for watercolours and many will still be using her advice and techniques in their work.

The work is priced so that students and friends are able to purchase a picture in her memory.

A percentage of sales will to Pat and Jack's favoutite charity - Smile Train.

Liam Spencer at Salford

Chip Shop Artist Or Lancashire Impressionist?

AS we sat in the Stalybridge Buffet Bar, holding a NV editorial meeting earlier this year, a couple of retired journalists on the next table were discussing northern art and artists and we happened to mentioned Liam Spencer, with a studio at Waterfoot near Bacup, who is interviewed in the current Northern Voices 12. 'Oh, he's very collectible', said one 'and he has a painting in the Manchester Art Gallery'. Later, in March, I spotted some of his work in the Revolve Gallery on Castle Street in Clitheroe and an assistant there said: 'He's very collectible but not very affordable'. At a starting price of £2,000 for his paintings at the current Salford Art Gallery exhibition on The Crescent, I know what she means. But when, last year, in an aside to the interview for Northern Voices, I discussed the relative rising prices of such artists as Lowry and Augustus John - Lowry now commands the higher price - he told me that he was not interested in such things as prices in the art market.

With his paintings of chip shops, car parks and garages, Liam is a reassuringly unpretentious northern artist who at one time used the same Manchester printer's shop as Northern Voices. When, at the time of the preview of his Rochdale exhibition at Touchstones, last December, I told him we'd entitled his interview in NV 'There's Nowt Worse than Bad Fish & Chips' he said: 'Oh, you've made me out to be a right Oik, have you?' Originally, I was going to entitle the interview with Liam 'The Lancashire Impressionist' but someone ridiculed this saying 'that's just what folk up here are wanting; a Lancashire impressionist' so I spotlighted his passion for fish and chips. But he does claim to be inspired by the French Impressionists and Adolphe Vallette, the early 20th Century Manchester Impressionist. A picture of his of the gothic style Rochdale Town Hall and the Esplanade is on the back cover of our current NV12.

Liam Spencer's exhibition at Salford Art Gallery - 'Paintings from Life: 20 years & counting' - opened on the 26th March at Peel Park on The Crescent, near Salford University and will run to the 3rd July 2011. Most of the paintings from the original Rochdale's Touchstones exhibition are on show plus some dedicated to the Salford area itself of Worsley, Eccles and Chapel Street. At Salford they are showing a DVD of a 30 min documentary about Liam Spencer's work, 'A Picture of Manchester' that was broadcast a couple of years ago on BBC North West.

Over the years Liam Spencer has shifted the focus of his art from the countryside to the town and from the rural to the urban landscape. When at University and living in Manchester, he took the train to Hebden Bridge and other spots in the West Yorkshire countryside to paint, but now based in the semi-rural time-warp of Waterfoot he will paint a car-wash or a burger bar as well as a Chip Shop at Hollinworth Lake in Littleborough. Perhaps it is the contrast that he strives to embrace. He now says that he prefers to paint the Lancashire landscape because: 'In Lancashire, its darker and the weather's more inconvenient but there's more interesting contrast.' Of his time in Southern Spain, he says 'I had the constant light but rather too much consistent brightness' and he concludes: 'Coming back up here from places like Spain, makes you appreciate this.'

26th March to 3rd July 2011
Salford Museum and Art Gallery
Peel Park, The Crescent, Salford M5 4WU
Monday to Friday 10am-4.45pm
Saturday and Sunday 1-5pm
tel: 0161 778 0800
email: salford.museum@salford.gov.uk
www.salford.gov.uk/salfordmuseum

Revolve Gallery,
30 Castle Street
Clitheroe, Lancashire BB7 2BX
07800 590 262

Open Tue-Sat 11am-5:30pm

The publication Northern Voices is on sale at both the Salford Art Gallery shop and the shop at Rochdale's Touchstones Gallery & Museum. Postal subscriptions may also be taken out by sending a cheque for £4.20 payable to 'Northern Voices' for two issues (post included)to 52, Todmorden Road, Burnley, Lancashire, BB10 4AH.

New Look, Old Look?

Trends in fashion and art

THIS APRIL saw both the opening of 'The Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900' show at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the 'Rochdale Artists Exhibition' at Number Ten Gallery on Baillie Street, Rochdale. The London show, open until the 17th July, demonstrates the romantic reaction to the what they - the aesthetes in the 19th Century - saw as the ugliness of the industrial revolution: Suzy Menkes, in the Global Edition of the New York Times, describes them as a movement committed to 'Art for Art's Sake': the romantic painters, such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, were often Bohemian. The 'Rochdale Artists' are very different, an eclectic mix of artists painting in different styles and from possibly lower middle-class or working-class backgrounds; one I met at the Castleton Community Centre (where they study and practice their art on Tuesday evenings), Brian Thomas, a former bus driver, was working in acrylics and his day job now is ground maintenance for nearby Bury Council.

The artists of the 19th Century 'Art for Art's Sake' school were into shaking up women and changing them from the tight corset-ridden creatures of the Victorian era into something more lush, wild and even dishevelled. The show at the V&A includes examples of how the new 19th Century style became commercialised, with a display of items from what was then the Liberty store and objects of interior decor that would have filled the pages of the house-&-home journal 'House Beautiful'. This kind of influence on magazines and interior decor seems to have continued well into the 20th Century. In 1946, George Orwell wrote of 'an American fashion magazine' whose '325 large quarto size pages, of which no fewer than 15 are given up to articles on world politics, literature, etc', of the rest Orwell writes: 'I do not know just how many drawings or photographs of women occur throughout the whole volume, but as there are 45 of them, all beautiful, in the first 50 pages, one can work it out roughly.'

Summing up the V&A exhibition, Suzy Menkes writes: 'Still, by the end of the show there is a feeling of fatigue and ennui, exemplified by the languid women who never look the painter in the eye and by interiors that become claustrophobic.' Similarly when he comes to comment on the kind of women in his nameless post-Second World War American mag. Orwell writes in 1946 : 'One striking thing when one looks at these pictures is the overbred, exhausted, even decadent style of beauty that now seems to be striven after' and 'a thin-boned, ancient-Egyptian type of face seems to predominate: narrow hips are general, and slender non-prehensile hands like those of a lizard are everywhere.' Thus, when Suzy Menkes writes now that the 'the gust of fresh air that came with the new 20th century must have felt heaven sent' it was clearly not to last long before we were back to a sort of sleek swan-like creature in art and fashion, at least in American publications after the Second World War.

These things seem to go in phases, Kate Middleton has a freshness with cheeky-chops type looks, compared to the unrelievedly beautiful glamour of Diana, the former Princess of Wales. That's why it is nice to go to a small local exhibition like that of the Rochdale Artists with its freshness and innocence, and view Veronica Swinden's 'Cheryl' portrait with the subject looking directly at the painter (see below).

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Rochdale Artists meet at Castleton Community Centre, Manchester Road, Castleton, Rochdale each Tuesday nights at 7.30.

On May 10th, there will be a watercolour demo and talk by Paul Talot Greaves.

On June 21st, there will be demonstration of how to do Lino Printing.

On August 2nd, Jeremy Taylor will give a talk and demonstration of watercolour.

NEW FAKES IN BOLTON EXHIBITION

FAKE WORKS created in the style of famous artists Banksy and Tracey Emin will feature in a prestigious exhibition at Bolton Museum. These previously unseen pieces will form part of the Fakes and Forgeries exhibition, which opened at the museum on Saturday, April 16 and will continue till July.

The exhibition, which was created by the Metropolitan Police Service’s Art and Antiques Unit, also includes the Amarna Princess statue crafted by convicted Bolton forger Shaun Greenhalgh. The Amarna will form the centrepiece of the exhibition, which was launched at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in January last year.

There will be a reconstruction of Shaun Greenhalgh’s garden shed – where he made his forgeries – and a collection of his other works, such as the Risley Park Lanx, Barbara Hepworth’s Goose, and Thomas Moran paintings. Other objects on display will include fake antiquities by John Andrews and forged silverware by Peter Ashley Russell, paintings by renowned forgers John Myatt and Robert Thwaites.

Robert Thwaites, a forger who made more than £120,000 from the sale of two fake paintings, was jailed for two years in September 2006. Thwaites tricked Antiques Roadshow art expert Rupert Maas into paying £20,000 for one of his copies. London gallery owner Maas sold on The Miser purported to be by John Anster Fitzgerald for a profit of 300%. Thwaites, from Leek, Staffs, made more than £100,000 from another Fitzgerald fake called 'Going To The Masked Ball'.

Since appearing at the V&A, the Art and Antiques Unit have introduced some Tracey Emin fakes by Jonathan Rayfern and added some different Banksy fakes. Jonathan Rayfern, a 32 year-old ex-art student from Manchester was sentenced to 16 months at the Manchester Crown Court last October. He had sold at least 11 fakes on Ebay including sketches on fabric and a pencil drawing and made about £26,000. Ten items had been sold to a Gallery owner in Warwick. In his defence he said that he had been trying to pay off loan sharks. Commenting on the Rayfern case at the time the 'artist' Tracy Emin said: 'My artwork is deeply personal and comes from my heart. It hurts and distresses me to see these fakes and forgeries that have no regard, respect or understanding of what I do.'

The free exhibition will appear at Bolton Museum until Saturday, July 2.

Estimating the chances of buying a forgery:

· Thomas Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, has estimated that up to 40% of the art market is comprised of some type of forged art.

· It has been suggested that only half of the 600 works supposedly painted by Rembrandt are genuine and as many as 10% of modern French paintings may be forgeries.

· The 20th century's most famous forger was Han van Meegeren, confessed in 1945 to having forged several Vermeers, including The Supper at Emmaus, which scholars had proclaimed a masterpiece.

· In the 1980s and 1990s, British forger John Myatt infiltrated the art market with fake Giacomettis, Ben Nicholsons and Graham Sutherlands.

· In the late 1980s, Eric Hebborn claimed he faked and sold more than 1,000 old-master drawings to institutions including the British Library.

Copies of Northern Voices 10 with our report on the Bolton forger Shaun Greenhalgh from Bromley Cross is still available. To obtain a copy send a cheque for £2.20 payable to 'Northern Voices' to: 52, Todmorden Road, Burnley, Lancashire BB10 4AH.

Expert Incompetence, Incompetent expertise

NORTHERNERS CROSS EXAMINE DETECTIVE LAWSON

DETECTIVE CONSTABLE Lawson, from the Metropolitan Police Arts & Antiquities Unit, stood his ground last night against a torrent of questions at a packed meeting of northerners at Bolton Museum & Art Gallery, dealing with the role of fakes and frauds in British art. Little old ladies from Bolton and beyond suddenly came to resemble Madame Defarge brandishing knitting needles as they pieced the smug, dissembling front of D.C. Lawson as he did his best to uphold the integrity of the London art establishment faced with the Greenhalgh trio's perpetuation of one of the most cheeky frauds in history. For 17 years the genius of Shaun and George Greenhalgh, from their Bromley Cross council house in Bolton, had undermined a pompous southern elite of 'experts' until in 2007, when they were convicted. Shaun Greenhalgh was sentenced to 4 years and 8 months, and his dad to a suspended sentence. Shaun was released from Preston Prison in March 2010 and returned to his dad's house on The Crescent in Bromley Cross, Bolton. Last night, one wag told me that he may now be in Amsterdam: presumably studying the Dutch School of Art.

Earlier at a preview of the exhibition, visitors who paid £5 apiece, had seen the case for the defence of the art expert represented on a notice thus: 'Features fraudulent artworks from real crime cases, this display shows how successful forgeries find a place in the art market, not because of the incompetence of the expert, but because of the changing strategies of the criminal.'

Above all, it seems, the London art market must be protected from the likes of Shaun Greenhalgh, and his Dad and Mum. Another notice declares that in Section 1 of the exhibition we must 'consider the nature of this crime on the London art market', and we learn that the other four Sections 'explore the extreme lengths fraudsters go in order to fool the (poor) experts'.

In a powerpoint presentation D.C. Lawson did his level best to side step and gloss over the embarrassment of the Art Capital's feeble handling of the Greenhalgh case; with a flourish he explained his part as a member of the Arts & Antiquities Unit saying: 'Our primary role is to protect the London art market' because fakes, like those of the Greenhalgh's, 'Do damage to the (art) institutions and experts who have been deceived.' The 'experts' and their 'expertise' must not be offended, particularly by northern folk working in their garden sheds. We must, said police officer Lawson, realise that with the credit crunch, declining property prices and uncertainty in the stock market, that pension funds (where the poor have their money as well as the rich) and other investors invest in the art market. Thus art becomes a defensive stock just like gold and commodities.

It was a fascinating presentation attended by big-wigs from down South as well as locals like us. D.C. Lawson had folk laughing from time to time and his talk brought up some serious issues. 'Who unmasked Shaun Greenhalgh?', asked one lady. 'It was the experts at the British Museum; they spotted a small spelling mistake in Shaun's work (on the Assyrian relief)', exclaimed D.C. Lawson. I interrupted: 'But this was not the case - it was not the British Museum who discovered the error - they repeatably authenticated Shaun's work; it was a specialist at Bonham's Art Auction House.' No doubt the British Museum and its director, Neil McGregor, had sent the Assyrian relief to Bonham's for a valuation so as to gloat over how good a bargain they had got out of stupid George Greenhalgh. D.C. Lawson never answered these questions preferring to assert: 'I don't support people who defraud other people.'

Another lady asked: 'Why don't you legitimise Shaun Greenhalgh, because I would be willing to pay money for his work?' Again no proper answer came back. Nor did the lady who asked if the London Metropolitan Police would be willing to donate the Amarna Princess statue to Bolton Museum. No joy again from D.C. Lawson!

Shaun Greenhalgh is undoubtedly a man of many talents and even the London Arts & Antiquities Unit admit that he is the most 'diverse forger' they have ever encountered: most forgers specialising in one artist, a narrow area or genre. But, as I pointed out he is the only one that is not making anything out of this work. The London Metropolitan Police are using it, as have the dramatists on TV who have made films of the 'Artful Codgers', the educationalists are using it to show how deceptions are committed on the art market but not Shaun Greenhalgh who produced it. It seems ironic that those propping up the art market and creating art as a commodity should benefit while the humble producer of the works is left to fend for himself. As I came away people snapped up Northern Voices 10 with our Greenhalgh editorial in it, one man said 'To me Greenhalgh is a hero!'

Bolton Forger's Masterpiece on Show next month up North

ART FORGER Shaun Greenhalgh's Amarna Princess will be displayed in an exhibition at Bolton Museum on April 15th, as part of what the staff have entitled 'Fakes & Forgeries'. A neighbour of Shaun Greenhalgh on The Crescent, Bromley Cross, Bolton said it should have been entitled 'How He Foxed them All'. Last November Councillor Elain Sherrington, Executive Member of Adult Services in Bolton told the Bolton News: 'We are delighted to be chosen as the first venue outside London to host this prestigious exhibition.'

Yesterday one of the Metropolitan Police's art & antique unit's former officers involved in the Greenhalgh case in 2007 featured on Radio 4's Midweek program. In it he appeared to claim that the British Museum experts had discovered the fake in the characters on the Assyrian relief by Shaun Greenhalgh, but this was not the case: those experts and many other London experts were fooled by most of the work including the fake Amarna Princess. When Shaun's father presented what were purportedly three Assyrian reliefs of soldier and horses, from the Palace of Sennacherib in 600 BC to the British Museum in 2005 the experts there concluded they were genuine and were interested in buying them as they seemed to match a drawing by L.H> Layard in its collection. It was only later when Bonhams auction house antiquities consultant, Richard Falkiner spied what to him was 'an obvious fake' and informed the British Museum that some odd aspects were noticed. After that it took the Arts & Antiquities Unit at Scotland Yard 18 months to get round to arresting the Greenhalgh family.

Now Councillor Sherrington is anxious not to condone the criminal activity and she says: 'This exhibition educates the public about forgers, explains the techniques they used and how they were caught by the authorities and, rather than glamorising crime, will hopefully show that even the most artful of forgers is eventually brought to justice.' Amen!

To Northern Voices, the Greenhalgh case shows up the pompous folly of all those Metropolitan experts who were foxed by the northern Greenhalgh family. The case offers a dire warning to all those who put their faith in experts and so-called authorities of all descriptions. The Amarna Princess was first put on display at Bolton Museum at an exhibition opened by the Queen, and Shaun's father George was there for media photos. At next month's exhibition Detective Constable Ian Lawson, from the Metropolitan Police's Art & Antiquities Unit, will be giving a forgery talk in the museum's lecture theatre:; Tickets are £5 and include a preview of the exhibition.

Ragged Trousered Philanthropists: Is it the Workers' Bible, a working-class Vanity Fair or just a bloated 750-page novel?

LAST month Northern Voices published Chris Draper's review of Howard Brenton's adaptation of 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists' that showed at the Liverpool Everyman last summer. In it he denounced the lack of interest of the current trade unions concluding: 'A 100 years after Tressell's death, on 3rd, February 1911, local trade union officials tell me that "there are no plans to mark the centenary as there are no funds"! Tressell must be turning in his pauper's grave.'

In last Saturday's Guardian Review Howard Benton himself wrote a tribute to Robert Tressell. In it he he payed tribute writing: 'It became known as "the Socialist Bible" and was even credited with winning the general election for the Labour party.' Is it the great working-class novel or 'Vanity Fair'?

Chris Draper in his Northern Voices review says the cut-down version by its first publisher was best because while 'at its best the novel uniquely captures aspects and idioms of working class life ... Tressell couldn't resist the temptation to over-egg the pudding.' He completed 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists' in 1910, but the original handwritten 1,600-page manuscript was rejected by three publishers.

Was it a 'Socialist Bible' or was it as Draper says too big and bloated? How does it measure against the Manchester/ Wakefield writer George Gissing's portrayal of a down at the heal journalist in 'New Grub Street' or Conrad's description of the peasant in 'Nostromo' or Henry James's insight into political activists in 'The Princess Casamasima'.

'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists' is seen as a rare British working-class novel, but what is meant by a 'working-class novel'? Is a novel written by a workingman (or woman) or is it a novel that depicts the working-classes? Howard Brenton describes Robert Tressell, whose real name was Robert Noonan, thus: 'Robert Noonan was born in Dublin in 1870, the illegitimate son of Mary Noonan and a police inspector.' He wrote that he and his daughter moved to Johannesburg where he made his way as a skilled artisan, a scenic painter and sign writter' and that he 'became known as a political activist: he was a member of the Johannesburg Trades & Labour Council...' Coming to England to live in Hastings (Mugsborough in the novel) in 1906 he became a member of the local Social Democratic Federation, which Brenton describes as 'a small leftwing party whose founding members included William Morris.' Morris later left this party regarding it as too dogmatic and narrow.

Howard Brenton describes Tressell's book as 'the working-class Vanity Fair' and he argues that: 'In the 1900s the two paths socialism could take were already mapped: revolutionary and parliamentary.' Tressell took the revolutionary road of the Social Democratic Federation, which ended in the 'disaster of the Soviet Union'. But he writes: 'the reformist path taken in Britain has led ... to the watering down and sluicing away of all socialist aspirations by New Labour.' Yet he concludes optimistically arguing: 'Tressell's wonderful book convinced me that it's time to begin the struggle for the co-operative commonwealth all over again.' Draper in NV 12 was more pessimistic entitling one subheading: 'The long march (downhill) of socialism'.

But it seems that Chris Draper was wrong in his conclusion in NV12 that 'there are no plans to mark the centenary (of Tressell's death)' by the trade unions, as Manchester Trade Union Council has helped to organise an exhibition at the Working Class Movement Library, at 51, The Crescent, Salford until 10th March between 1pm and 5pm Mondays to Fridays.