Bury Art Museum opened in 1901 as a purpose-built gallery to house and display the Wrigley Collection, which includes ‘Calais Sands’ by JMW Turner and paintings by Clausen and Landseer. Over the last century, Bury’s art collection has developed and since 2000 the Gallery has embarked on an ambitious programme of commissioning contemporary art, which has included 4 major Text Festivals and the establishment of the Text Art Archive. This collection of language art is continually developing, supported by gifts from the Contemporary Art Society.

Through its temporary exhibition programme, Bury Art Museum has developed a reputation as a leading player in showing contemporary art in the North West of England, particularly since the addition of the Sculpture centre in 2014. National partnerships with the Liverpool Biennial, Mark Tanner Sculpture Award and Design Manchester, amongst others, have resulted in an exciting programme of exhibitions, supported by events and workshops.

‘Sitting Pretty’ is collaborative project between artists Tony Heaton, Mike Chavez-Dawson and curator Kat Au and this exhibition at the Manchester Contemporary has been supported by the British Art Network. The show invites viewers to engage in a deep contemplation of one of the most ubiquitous and symbolically charged objects in our daily lives: the chair. Historically, chairs have carried significant cultural weight, often as symbols of power, rank, and authority yet also embodying invisibility, exclusion, and the everyday struggles of those who sit in them, particularly in the case of disability and the wheelchair. New work created for this show will explore how the concept of ‘sitting’ extends far beyond its utilitarian function, framed by an inquiry into the chair's cultural and social meanings, investigating the personal and societal roles chairs occupy within art, exploring their dual nature as solitary objects and social spaces.