Matt Retallick
Ghostlines - PINK, Manchester

Matt Retallick and PINK invited artists Mads Floor Andersen and Cara Davies to Manchester in June 2022

We all make tracks - navigating our lives via trails and desire-lines, creating familiar routes as counter to life’s uncertainties. Artists Mads Floor Andersen and Cara Davies are hosted by PINK in a week-long residency, unpicking the complex meshwork created by our daily comings and goings: travel, memory, and the ghosts of the past. They will translate Vienna’s Südbahnhof quarter onto Manchester’s Oxford Road through various encounters, including walks, performances, installations, and screenings, with conversations, food, reflexology, and palmistry. Ghostlines is curated by Matt Retallick in association with PINK, with the generous support of the Austrian Cultural Forum London.

The project will culminate in a performance on Saturday 4th June - details will be shared on PINK’s website and social media channels as the project develops. PINK is currently located at 86 Princess Street, Manchester, M1 6NG

The week-long project, Ghostlines, forms a connection between toZOMIA in Vienna, and PINK, in central Manchester. Mads and Cara will translate the unique contexts of both sites into a creative method for exploration and sharing. As a starting point, they have looked to the similarities and unique contexts shared between the two venues. PINK is located between two major railway stations and is nestled alongside one of the busiest bus routes in Europe; toZOMIA is found in a newly formed quarter of Vienna, which reappropriates and reimagines the old railway yards and the former tracks of the Südbahnhof. The lines created by bus routes and railway tracks will shape methods of exploration and connection. For example, Mads and Cara will translate Südbahnhof’s web of routes onto the locale of Manchester’s Oxford Road, playing with the idea of certainty of direction. Through their actions, the artists reveal the complexities of ‘journeys’, excavating the hidden, ghosts, and buried memories in the neighbourhood.

Photos by Nora Sola Martínez