To be held on 20 September 2023
Robert McManners’ talk introduces a new genre in contemporary art. The art of the miner is by the working man, about the working man, for the working man, celebrating the nobility in manual work. The title is borrowed from the Arts Council award winning book, which he co-authored with colleague Gillian Wales, which explores why men who spent their working hours striving in dangerously wretched, claustrophobic subterranean darkness chose that same imagery as the principal subject for their artistic expression. Surely landscape, abstraction and portraiture all offered more visually attractive subject matter. We find no similar bodies of artwork from the other heavy industries spawned by the Industrial Revolution, all of which would seem more persuasive to the artist’s eye. In mining art we find a sensitivity, an emotional dimension and even a spirituality which at first sight may seem incongruous but as we interpret their language, through their art, the depth of their emotional investment, and the message conveyed, become abundantly apparent.
Robert McManners
A doctor by profession, Robert is a practising artist and book illustrator he regularly holds exhibitions of his work which is also held in many collections. His main interests are local history and mining art. He has delivered art lectures to, amongst others, the Friends of the Bowes Museum, the Art Fund, various U3As, Bishop Auckland Civic Society and Nunnington Hall, York, as well as to the Mining and Mechanics Institute, Newcastle and numerous Member Societies of The Arts Society. With writing colleague Gillian Wales, for the last 30 years Robert has researched, written about and collected mining art. In 2017, in conjunction with The Auckland Project, they opened the country’s first dedicated mining art gallery displaying their Gemini Collection. It receives great acclaim. He was awarded the OBE in 2014 for his contribution to culture and the arts in the North East.
Publications include the books: The Zurbarans at Auckland Castle (2010) and with Gillian Wales – Tom McGuinness – the art of an underground miner 1997, Shafts of Light – Mining Art in the Great Northern Coalfield (2002), McGuinness – Interpreting the Art of Tom McGuinness (2006), Durham Portraits (2007), The Quintessential Cornish – the life and work of Norman Cornish (2009), A Way to the Better – the history of the Spennymoor Settlement (2011).