Soft Matter Exhibition

Today we are swooning over all the amazing work exhibited at Soft Matter Exhibition last week. Set in the Wonder Inn in Manchester's Northern Quarter and curated by the super talented ladies, Rebecca Kay and Bex Ilsley, Bella Jones and Cerys Thorne, the entire exhibition couldn't be more appropriate for gracing the pages and winning the hearts of us at Ballad Of. We turned up on the Friday closing party to see what these creative bunch had put together, enjoy the music performed by Sobi and Kimberly Anne and eat giant slices of free pizza by their sponsors 23rd Street Pizza.

"Soft Matter aims to function as a catalyst for discussion. We are bringing together a number of international and U.K artists whose work broadly responds to the prevalence of femininity, girlish aesthetics within contemporary art and discussing its place within feminist discourse. Femininity is the thread that links the elements of our exhibition and book but under this umbrella, we are presenting both written and visual explorations of identity, gender, the grotesque, body image, sexuality, sensuality and embarrassment. We were inspired by the wealth of talented female-identifying art collectives such as: The Bunny Collective, The Coven, The Arduous, Clandestine Collective and World Wide Women Collective and the driven, ambitious women that lead them. We were also inspired by online spaces and platforms which have evolved into DIY publications for people to connect and showcase female creative talent, such as Girl Get Busy, Peachy N Keen, The Le Sigh, The Pulp Zine and Rookie magazine.

Our aim for the show was to bring some of these creative people together from around the world and also to showcase home-grown talent from Manchester and the north of England - to celebrate work being made by young women and how that work is changing the art world.

Many of our contributing artists have already shown work in established galleries (Manchester Art Gallery, Royal Academy) and have had work featured in international publications, such as Teen Vogue, Dazed & Confused and Polyester."

Artists exhibiting included: Samantha Conlon Sasha Cresdee Charlotte Cullen Kelly Culver Corie Denby McGowan Hannah Farrell Georgia Grace Gibson Meghan Graydon Darby Eleanor Haswell Jennifer Hewson Bex Ilsley Elizabeth Ilsley Bella Jones Rebecca Kay Brooke Kelty Saffa Khan Robyn Nichol Laurence Philomene Schelsey Mahammadie-Sabet Adelina Sasnauskait? Zoe Schlacter Cerys Thorne Aimee Walker Zeke's Lunchbox

Photos by Rebecca Kay & Bex Ilsley