The opening of Charlie Meechams’ ‘Oldham Road, Second View’ took place on Saturday, and I walked nine miles with a friend, from Manchester to Oldham, along the Oldham Road, to get there. I contributed the essay for the gallery guide, which can be seen on the table here.
We arrived at the gallery and strolled around the block, There seemed to be something of a cultural quarter in Oldham, small though it was, and the gallery was very nicely done.
The ‘Oldham Panorama’, a joined set of three wide images, all from 1876, returned us to the era E.P. Thompson covers in his seminal work, revealing a coal mine of some sort, right in the town centre, along with new build houses, and scores of factory chimneys. Just look at the houses, they are modern, and are being built factory-style. It’s a scene most people would place just after World War Two, if asked to take a test, rather than in the late-Victorian era. Places such as Oldham were becoming the centre of things in the early nineteenth century, but they have now moved from their status as globalizing centres, to simply being other territories within globalization.
