Approachable abstraction

Fifteen million pounds and a hefty slice of architectural vision have transformed the Whitworth from a fusty Victorian art temple into a sumptuous and thoroughly modern gallery. The space inside now channels the visitor from one gallery to another through split levels and along wide, glass-walled extensions. The great barrel-vaulted spaces at the gallery’s core are now flooded with light from the opening up of the building into the park around it. The redevelopment has embraced the landscape surrounding the gallery and thinned the barrier between inside and out.

The transformation is impressive; the sense of space remarkable. The ground floor currently houses a huge assortment of exhibits including, among other things, many fine watercolours, a selection of portraits, Richard Forster’s hyper-realistic drawings and a display with the oddly punctuated title Art_Textiles, which includes all manner of surprising and entertaining work, from Do Ho Suh’s cotton-embedded-in-paper drawings to warrior garb from Mali. Diverse and extensive, the Whitworth is a gallery to dip in and out of rather than trawl around in penitent servitude to a guidebook.

Upstairs, in a little space beside an extravagant installation by Bedwyr Williams, is an understated exhibition of abstract landscapes drawn from the gallery’s own collection. It is one of the smaller displays in the current programme but a welcome one. While the absolutist abstraction of Rothko or Pollock continues to hold sway in the market and in the minds of curators and public alike, the kind of painting exhibited here has fallen from fashion in recent years.

This work, which is all British and dating from the 1950s and ’60s, is painting that treads the edges of abstraction and figuration. Informed by reality, in this case by landscape, it is resonant stuff that allows the viewer to recognise and interpret elements.