Legendary artist David Hoyle takes over Aviva Studios with Please Feel Free to Ignore My Work this spring

Taking over Aviva Studios with his triumphantly chaotic cavalcade of artwork, events and installations and culminating in a breathtaking all-star variety show, Factory International presents Please Feel Free to Ignore My Work, an unmissable celebration of the life, art and work of hometown icon David Hoyle from Wed 10 – Sun 28 Apr.

Billed as ‘part retrospective, part residency’, the incomparable visual artist and cabaret maestro infiltrates Manchester’s most exciting cultural space with a spellbinding and gleefully offbeat showcase of his acclaimed work, spanning an illustrious career across stage, screen and canvas.

Free to visit throughout its run, Please Feel Free to Ignore My Work offers guests the opportunity to venture through Hoyle’s surreal, kaleidoscopic oeuvre with a vast array of obscure paintings, slogan works and brand new commissions display in the Social, alongside screenings of his unforgettable film and television roles and a joyously absurd programme of talks, live paintings and even a pub quiz, before rounding off the residency with David Hoyle: Still Got It?, a fiendishly anarchic end-of-pier variety show spectacular packed with mischievous flourishes and dramatic surprises.

Known throughout the nation for his notorious alter-ego ‘The Divine David’ in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Hoyle has imbued the art world with his radical vision, singular flair and insurrectionary defiance, queering the conventional boundaries between performance, theatre and cabaret while reshaping modern alternative nightlife and producing star turns in TV and film.

Charting his unique career over the last forty years, Please Feel Free to Ignore My Work blends the driving themes of Hoyle’s creative output, from gender and mental health to AIDS, decadence, cultural revolution and the effects of capitalism.

The exhibition is free to visit and there’s no need to book. Click here for more info.