About

Michael Gutteridge in Didsbury, Manchester

Some information about my artwork.

Before I started painting, I was a conceptual artist who, as part of a conceptual art piece called ‘The Inevitability of Drudgery‘ got a job with a local Greater Manchester council and worked for them for seventeen years doing boring, low-paid work, getting there at 7.30 each morning and leaving at 17.30 pm each evening for 48 weeks a year. In this respect the piece was part performance art in which I, as the artist, entered into the conceptual infrastructure I had designed and decided to experience it by living the seventeen year long artwork in itself. Not wanting to cut corners, its longevity was a necessary aspect of it, if it were to fulfil its title. Since finishing that piece, I have become a painter, yet this in itself is actually part of a larger new conceptual art piece called, eponymously ‘The Painter‘ in which I pose to the viewer questions about the relevancy of traditional painting in the contemporary art world, by assuming the role of painter churning out myriad works and trying, with many a sleepless night, to earn a precarious existence by selling them in an atmosphere of cultural indifference to such a genre due to fashionable pre-occupation with the aforementioned conceptualism. Little do the media who largely ignore this genre know, that it is, as said, actually a conceptual artwork itself!

I have been working on this piece since 2001, when, after submitting a painting to the 2000 Open Exhibition at Stockport Art Gallery, in Greater Manchester, I was invited by them to present a full exhibition of some 20 paintings the following year. Since then, I’ve continued to develop and explore my own unique vision, though I haven’t quite worked out what that is yet (it’s a neverending project!), and have regularly held exhibitions, both solo and jointly at various galleries both commercial and municipal.

I mostly paint unique, bizarre, sensually vibrant urban landscapes or cityscapes usually, but not exclusively, of my home city of Manchester.

My images have been used promotionally by the University of Lancaster for their government funded ‘Mediating Marginalities’ Project, by the University of Manchester, by publishers as the artwork for book jackets, as postcards by the Manchester Tourist Office, wall murals, in an music video and even in various products like silk scarves. My paintings are held in private collections all over the world.

Some exhibitions my work has appeared in:

Solo Exhibitions

Stockport Metropolitan Borough Art Gallery, 2001.
The Octagon Theatre, Bolton, 2004,
Surreal City. The Portico Library & Gallery, Manchester, September 2005,
Manchester Vision. Blyth Gallery, Manchester, January 2007,
Rhapsody in Red Brick. The Portico Library & Gallery, Manchester, May 2008
Firbob and Peacock Gallery, Knutsford, Cheshire, September 2008
All That Jazz. Mooch Gallery, Exchange Square, Manchester. 2010
Duke’s Oak Gallery, Cheshire, October-December 2011.
Masa Gallery, Bolton St., Bury, Lancs 2020

Joint Exhibitions

Stockport Metropolitan Borough Art Gallery, 2000
Adlington Village Hall, Cheshire, 2004
The Bowdon Rooms, Altrincham, 2004
The Cheshire Show, Tabley, 2004
Macclesfield Town Hall, Macclesfield 2004
Manchester Art Show, Manchester, 2004
Macclesfield Town Hall, Macclesfield 2006
Stockport Metropolitan Borough Art Gallery, 2007
Buy Art Fair, Urbis, Manchester, 2009
Manchester Art Fair, Spinningfields, Manchester, 2010
Bury Art Gallery, Bury, Lancs (fund raiser in aid of Bury Hospice) 2011
Manchester Art Fair, Spinningfields, Manchester, 2011 & 2012
Bury Art Gallery, Bury, Lancs 2013.
Stockport Metropolitan Borough Art Gallery, 2013
Buy Art Fair, Manchester, 2013.
Bury Art Gallery, Bury, Lancashire 2014
Granada Studios, Manchester, 2014.
Bury Art Week, Bury Art Gallery, 2015
Granada Studios, Manchester, 2015.
Bury Art Festival, Bury Art Gallery, 2016.
Stockport Metropolitan Borough Art Gallery, 2016
Butterfly Fine Art Gallery, Manchester, 2016
Masa Gallery, Greater Manchester, 2017
Bury Art Festival, Bury Art Gallery, 2017, 2018, & 2019.
Manchester Open, HOME Gallery 2020
Manchester Open, HOME Gallery 2022