homegrown

while i was in Manchester recently i visited the Urbis and caught an exhibition called Homegrown, the story of UK hiphop...

it was fab! i learned about shebeens, clubs in people's front rooms born out of racist door policies in British clubs at the time... a music rag article said of them you don't want to live next door to one but you should have one across the road!

it was interesting to think about the rise of a new art form in the 70s, it's spiral into mayhem in the 90s, american dominance, fall from grace and back to the roots for the millennium... funny how everything in western culture seems to be cyclical, like nothing is constant, everything must be fluid and reinvent itself forever...

i later learned that this is to be one of the last exhibitions to be shown at Urbis - that they will no longer be a gallery.. i hope they don't just turn it into another glass office block! how disappointing would that be?!

go see if you are in town before it ends...