The North West Hub for Artist Development was initially set up in 2022, hosted by Venture Arts as part of a three-way partnership with Outside In and The Whitworth. Outside In took over the North West Hub early in 2023. Around the same time, we had the luxury of running a 10-week Exploring Collections course at The Whitworth Art Gallery, as part of Outside In’s Step Up programme, focussed on the Musgrave Kinley Outsider Art Collection, the largest such collection in the UK.

Curators Monica Kinley and Victor Musgrave felt that most contemporary art was “bland and supine in the well-crafted chains of its own making” and chose instead find and collect artworks that they felt “tapped into the mains electricity of the imagination”. They collected works from around the world, mostly throughout Europe, over a 30 year period, from 1979 – 2010.

The six artists taking part in the course were given the seemingly impossible task of choosing one artist from the 129+ artists in the collection to research and respond creatively to. Throughout the course, we explored themes and patterns within the collection, worked on a giant biographical and sociological timeline and had four visits to the stores at The Whitworth where we viewed the artworks close-up alongside specialist curators.

Shown here are some of the participants’ responses to their chosen artists, alongside a few pieces from the Musgrave Kinley Outsider Art Collection itself. The collection houses an outstanding array of artwork made of all kinds of materials and made in all sorts of contexts. If you zoom in closely, you may just start to guess some of the materials Frances Marshall utilised in his sculptures. The title of the exhibition is taken from a quote by Madge Gill, whose iconic work is shown here; “I then had an inspiration to take up my pen and do all kinds of work of an artistic type. I felt that I had an artistic faculty seeking expression.”

So there you have it; all kinds of materials, and all kinds of work.