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February
Previews Tuesday 2nd February ~ Continues
until Friday 26th February
Not Run of the Mill
A exhibition of works by 10 artists from Vernon Mill Studios
 Vernon
Mill Artists began in 2001 as a small group of like-minded artists
in a disused, run-down cotton mill in central Stockport. It has now
grown into a collective of almost fifty painters, sculptors, photographers
and printmakers... the largest group of its kind in the North West!
As well as those working in traditional materials, such as oil on canvas,
there are artists at the mill who have developed methods of creating
artwork from relatively unusual media such as painting with molten  bitumen,
quick-setting concrete and other textural forms.
The show at The Portico Library and Gallery offers a snap-shot of the
work being made at the mill, an exhibition we hope will whet the appetites
and encourage people to venture out to Stockport and discover this melting
pot of local artistic talent.
Admission free
Thursday 11th February at 6.30pm (talk only 7.15pm)
Jack the Ripper; One murderer
or maybe three?
A talk by Ed
Glinert
 Five
prostitutes randomly murdered in 1888 at various seedy locations in
London's East End... or perhaps deliberately removed from the streets
because they knew too much, their bodies dumped at pre-arranged locations
by men whose minds were warped by their involvement in the mystical
patterns that govern London? Ed Glinert unveils the meaning behind the
lost symbols of Ripperland.
Ed was born in London, and read Classical Hebrew at Manchester University.
In 1983 he set up City Life, and he has since worked for Radio Times,
Private Eye and Mojo. He is the co-author of Fodor's Rock & Roll
Traveler books, has edited The Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon
Grossmith, and annotated the Sherlock Holmes stories, amongst others,
all for Penguin Classics. The author of The Literary Guide to London,
The London Compendium, East End Chronicles, West End Chronicles, The
Manchester Compendium, London's Dead, and Martyrs & Mystics, he
leads a variety of tours for the London Walks company and New Manchester
Walks.
Talk & Buffet £16.50 (talk only £5.00)
March
Previews Wednesday
3rd March ~ Continues until Friday 26th March
Paintings of Stockport
A exhibition of new works by Helen Clapcott
 Painted
over the last 30 years, these delightfully obsessive works depict the
mutation and evolution of a once industrial valley, now a commuter corridor.
Stockport has been dominated by 'the three Rs' - river, rail and road
- and now boasts a motorway, a congestion of roundabouts, sliproads
and a pyramid!
Helen Clapcott is one of the few artists working in egg tempora; for
those unfamiliar to the medium, it is pigment mixed with egg yolk and
painted onto gesso panels. Helen makes all her own panels and mixes
fresh paints every day.
Her paintings have been continuously researched through drawing on location,
each laboured over for periods of months and sometimes years. They are
not critical, nor do they defend a cause or corner. They are a celebration
of light, and show a deep appreciation of a unique landscape.
Exhibition admission free
Thursday 18th March at 12noon
The Portico Library & Gallery AGM
The Annual General Meeting of the Portico Library will begin at 12pm
followed, as usual, by a buffet lunch.
* Please note that the kitchen WILL NOT be serving any lunches
on that day.
* PLEASE ALSO NOTE THAT THIS MEETING IS FOR MEMBERS ONLY.
Buffet lunch: £12.00
Tuesday 23rd March at 6.30pm (talk only 7.15pm)
The Gangs of Victorian Manchester &
Salford
A talk by Dr Andrew Davies
 This
talk explores the world of the "scuttlers." It highlights
patterns of gang formation and conflict in the Manchester conurbation
during the period from the 1870s to the 1890s, profiling scuttlers -
or gang members - by age, occupation, sex, and ethnicity, and examining
their relations with their families and local communities. It concludes
with an assessment of Victorian strategies to deal with the problems
of youthful violence and disorder, focusing both on responses within
the criminal justice system and on the development of the lads' club
movement.
The talk is based on nearly twenty years of research into Victorian
legal records, press reports, and memoirs. The speaker, Andrew Davies,
is a senior lecturer in History at the University of Liverpool and author
of The Gangs of Manchester (2008). He spent twelve months in 2008-9
working with Moston-based MaD Theatre Company on Angels with Manky Faces,
a stage play set in Ancoats in 1894. He is currently writing a book
on street gangs and sectarianism in Glasgow during the 1920s and 1930s.
Talk & Buffet £16.50 (talk only £5.00)
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