Don't cross the line

New North West Exhibition explores Imperialism, Internment and Immigration

Working Internment Camp set to highlight human rights abuses

Challenging new work by three artists will hit Manchester's streets in October. The exhibition, entitled Don't Cross the Line, includes site specific sculpture, photography and a large scale installation. The work aims to explore what it means to be displaced, removed or incarcerated at the beginning of this millennium.

Helen Knowles' 'Growth Investment' features plant-paper casts of botanical instruments from a derelict botany lab and will be sited in the banking hall of HSBC on King Street. The artwork highlights the international movement of plants as a highly valued commodity from the colonial era until the present day.

Maggie Lambert's 'Asylum Seekers' challenges our notions of the word 'alien' through her vibrant photographs of spacemen and refugees. The images, to be found on Gloucester Street, recall the complex history of immigration and change which characterises the old 'little Ireland' area of Manchester.

Jai Redman's functioning internment camp, This Is Camp X-Ray, challenges public apathy over the prisoners at the US Army's Guantanamo Bay site and investigates experiences of incarceration and sensory deprivation.

The exhibition is co-curated by Helen Knowles and Jai Redman.

Further details of the exhibition can be obtained from Sarah Irving on 0161 238 8523 or  sarah@uhc-collective.org.uk


Notes for editors

1) Helen Knowles is a practising artist working from the Suite studio in Salford. She was artist-in-residence at Jodrell Bank Science Centre and Arboretum from 1999-2001 and curator of 'Radio Halo.' She also exhibited this year at Gallery Oldham in the touring exhibition 'Wild flowers: their art and science.'

2) Maggie Lambert works in London and has recently completed a series of images of Kurdish refugees for the Refugee Council. Much of her work deals with issues of state control.

3) Jai Redman is a practising artist working in Manchester and a member of the UHC political art collective. His work will soon be featured in the 'Look to this Day' exhibition of Comme Ca art prize nominees at Castlefield Gallery. With Helen Knowles he also co-curated the AgiTate political art exhibition in Manchester last year.

4) Don't Cross the Line is also aimed at increasing community involvement in the arts through interaction between artists, those working with them and the communities in which the work will be sited. The different sites used by the artists expose the works to the gaze of the non-gallery-going public and the ethnically and experientially diverse population of Manchester.

5) The real Camp X-Ray (now rebuilt and re-christened Camp Delta) is the internment camp at Guantanamo Bay used by the US Army to imprison those it deems 'enemy combatants.' These include British nationals and children. All are held without charge and have been denied access to their families or legal representation. Human rights organisations such as Amnesty International have expressed considerable concern at the conditions in the camp, which have provoked high rates of attempted suicide amongst the internees.