Gallery guide – CUBE

Portland Street
Opening times: Monday-Friday, 12-5.30; Sunday, 12-5.
Free entry

CUBE, ‘centre for the urban built environment’. This space is very proudly the only centre for art, architecture and design exhibitions in the Northwest. Sleek, white, modern, and functional, its identity is unsurprisingly bound up in this edifice and its location. Fittingly, the current Junebum Park commission currently showing is based on the Korean artist’s personal experiences in Manchester, and also rests on the actual building itself. Yet, contrary to (some) expectations for ‘sleek and modern’, Park seeks to introduce a playful element to something as potentially stern as a city front. Of equal import, CUBELab artists, Julia Münz and Annika Unterburg bring us Seedbank for Treehouse. A blend of architectural prowess and childlike fantasy, the Venn diagram circles of which overlap at obsession. AND you get a party bag to take home, no cake, but a potential treehouse for personal use. The Bauhaus of Manchester, with a sense of humour. You’ll be laughing all the way home.
Junebum Park: To let, 02/09-05/10
CUBELab: Julia Münz and Annika Unterburg, 02/09-05/10