Reviewer: Elise Gallagher
Upstaged Rating: ⭐⭐
What Old Tools > New Masters ≠ New Futures promises is an alternative gallery walking tour. Each performance tasks the audience to question, celebrate and shed light on collective histories and the stories we are told and tell.
The performance begins at the gallery’s entrance hall where you’re asked to choose a wristband from one of the three people stood at the foot of the stairs. I opt for a wristband given to me by a woman dressed in an acrylic red boiler suit, silver paint dotted and sliced across her face.
From here the company addresses the audience before separating into three groups. My gallery tour takes us from the entrance hall, up the stairs to the Exhibitions room before threading around the Nineteenth Century rooms. These three tours are all going on at the same time. One tour opened with riot-like banging, screaming and crashing, whilst mine opened with a disgruntled cleaner and broom dance.
I felt the tour I was on was strong. Made up of a combination of Contact Young Company and Young Identity, the tour was led by two brilliant and bold women, wearing matching red boiler suits and awash with glitter and paint. The poems delivered in the Nineteenth Century rooms were beautiful and chilling.
(But) Deliberately or not, due to the nature of the gallery (admittedly though a fantastic choice of venue), the sound bled through to other rooms. When tours passed one another you couldn’t help but think if their tour was stronger than the one that you were on. And at £20 a ticket I don’t think you should be thinking that.
At the end of the tour, all three groups gathered at the information desk, but instead of a crescendo or conclusion to wrap up the experience, four young male performers from across the tours delivered a rap. Performed incredibly enthusiastically, issues with the microphone or volume meant their words were distorted and muffled, and it didn’t share the tone of the rest of the evening’s performances. In a way, it counteracted what we had just experienced in the gallery rooms, which was a shame.
What Old Tools > New Masters ≠ New Futures holds is a really promising concept, but it lacked the consistency, fluidity and momentum in practice to drive its message home.
-Elise Gallagher
Old Tools > New Masters ≠ New Futures runs at Manchester Art Gallery until Sunday 16 June 2019.