A new outdoor art project will take over Manchester billboards this July

Local artist Eve Stainton will take over a number of billboards and advertising spaces across Manchester this July.

All About Love is the first curatorial and artist commission from BUILDHOLLYWOOD, and takes place across five UK cities between now and September.

The project invites artists who are either born or live and work in these cities, with the commissions taking inspiration from a quote from All About Love, the groundbreaking book by cultural critic, feminist theorist and author, bell hooks.

The project is curated by Zarina Rossheart. You can take the _____ out of _____ (2023) by Eve Stainton, a new commission for All About Love, will be presented in more than twenty locations in prominent sites across the city including Princess Street, Fairfield Street Piccadilly, Shudehill and Great Marlborough Street amongst others.

For their All About Love commission, Eve Stainton is focussing on the saying ‘You can take the girl out of Manchester, but you can’t take Manchester out of the girl.’

Beginning with welding this sentence onto long flat steel bars, Eve has replaced the subject and the location in the phrase with an
*insert here* line; ‘You can take the _____ out of _____, but you can’t take _____ out of the ______’.

These welded words have then been placed onto a psychedelic collaged landscape made up of images of Eve’s performance work, their body and neoprene pieces. Interested in the phrase’s capacity for politically contradicting sentiments, the artist addresses questions of belonging, cultural identification, solidarity and empowerment, as well as themes of identity, class and gender – all issues that were prominently adressed by bell hooks in All About Love.

Eve’s work will be on display between Fri 7 – Sun 9 Jul. Head over to the programme website for more information.