David Bowie art exhibition in Manchester Northern Quarter raises money for Cancer Research

JUST months after his death, a charity art exhibition dedicated to David Bowie came to Manchester’s Northern Quarter.

The event was titled Sound and Vision after one of his well-known hits, and took place at the nightclub Texture, Lever Street.

There were 35 artists who all contributed a piece of art – each named after one of Bowie’s songs.

Overall, they raised £2065 for Cancer Research by selling cocktails and prints from the art gallery.

Kirsten Shiel, professional illustrator and co-organiser of the event said: “This amount was far more than we were expecting! I remember before the event we were discussing what we were hoping to raise, and we were saying we’d be lucky to make £200.

“I guess artists are always very pessimistic about selling their own work.

“We were worried about people not having a song they wanted, but luckily, Bowie was the absolutely perfect icon for this set up, with such an impressive and diverse back catalogue, everyone got a song they loved.”

Kirsten too entered a piece focused around Bowie’s cover of Jacques Brel’s My Death.

“It’s a gorgeous, sad song with a heavy romantic theme. But what I’ve always loved about it is how moving it is with only Bowie’s voice and a very quiet acoustic guitar.”

The event was curated by three artists who came up with the idea, via Twitter, when moved by Bowie’s death.

@JAM_WAH @Jimbo_Designs Exhibition??

— Kirsten Shiel (@KirstenShielART) January 11, 2016

The event even had its own novelty list of cocktails all named after one of Bowie’s personas or albums.

“Originally, I was trying to name a cocktail after each persona in Bowie’s career, but I couldn’t help myself with a couple, like Man Who Sold the World, which is about the greed of the music industry, so I paired that with an espresso martini, a drink that was very popular amongst the Wall Street crowd in the 80s.”

Kirsten hopes to create another exhibition, but explained it would be hard to find an artist to focus it around who was as legendary as David Bowie.

Listen to her top ten Bowie songs here.