With magazines closing, budgets being slashed and commercial interests shaping editorial output, art criticism is struggling. This talk will ask if there's a future for art criticism, or is it doomed forever?

The panel “Collecting Contemporary Art”, chaired by art critic and correspondent Louisa Buck, brings together a distinguished group of collectors to explore the motivations, challenges and responsibilities involved in building contemporary art collections.

"Why so Serious? Painting and Sculpture as Drawing" brings together artist Emma Hart (Sunday Painter) and Claire Dorsett (Arcade) for a conversation with Daniel Pryde-Jarman exploring their shared attitudes to play, process, and improvisation, and how these shape a fluid approach between painting, sculpture, and drawing.

Chaired by former Curator of The Manchester Contemporary and current Grundy Art Gallery Curator, Paulette Brien, this panel discussion will reflect on the 16 year history of the fair and consider its direction of travel. With contributions from artists and galleries who have all been part of the fair’s evolution, join us as we look at the role that The Manchester Contemporary specifically, and art-fairs more generally play in the development of artist’s careers and how they impact the work of the galleries that take part in them.  

Eric Tucker was an unskilled labourer who lived his life in quiet obscurity. Never moving out of his parents' house, his days appeared to revolve around trips to the pub and the bookies. But behind closed doors, he was an accomplished and prolific painter – a fact even close family only came to fully appreciate at the very end of his life, when they uncovered more than 500 paintings tucked away in his end-of-terrace house. Eric's nephew, Joe Tucker, a TV scriptwriter, has now written a memoir-biography, The Secret Painter, telling the story of his uncle's life and unlikely posthumous recognition, and raising questions around how art and social class interact.

Art and the News Media: Navigating Narratives and Uncertainty. This conversation explores the complex relationship between contemporary art and news media. In an age of contested truths, shifting narratives and widespread scepticism toward mainstream information channels, how are artists responding?