Young and Queer Up North

Name: Young and Queer Up North
Start: 2026-08-25T10:00:00+01:00
End: 2026-12-06T10:00:00+00:00
Location: HOME

What does it mean to be seen? And to see others?

Tue 25 Aug 10:00 - Sun 6 Dec 10:00

Tue 25 Aug

Sun 6 Dec

From 10:00

Tue 25 Aug

-

Sun 6 Dec

From 10:00

Inspire Gallery

No booking required

This series of artworks were created by HOME’s Young Artists, a group of young creatives aged 14–18, in response to a brief set by artist Conor Collins. The brief invited them to draw on his recent deep exploration into the Queer Up North Archive, which culminated in his first solo exhibition, To See and Be Seen.

Conor Collins worked with HOME’s Young Artists to share access to material from the Queer Up North 1992–2002 digital archive, including festival posters, flyers, brochures and photographs. These resources inspired and informed the Young Artists’ creative responses to his prompt.

The group also met with Gavin Barlow, co-founder of Queer Up North, and Abigail Ward, Queer Up North Project Manager at Manchester Histories, to learn about legendary artists and performers featured in Queer Up North’s programme, including Lois Weaver of Split Britches, The Fabulous Lypsinka, Leigh Bowery, Kate Bornstein, Sadie Lee, David Hoyle, Del LaGrace Volcano, Ursula Martinez, Jeremy Robins, Ronnie Burkett and others.

Through collage, painting, drawing and mixed media, the Young Artists respond on their own terms, to the questions: What does it mean to be seen? And to see others?

Each artwork interprets this differently. For some, they choose to explore and reveal part of their own relationship to queer identity and visibility, for others, they bend clippings from the archive together with their own references to create something new and undefined.

This exhibition is located in our Inspire Gallery on the ground floor.

Free to drop in, no booking required.

Conor Colins says:

“So what does it actually mean to see another person? Not to scan them. Not to categorise them. Not to consume them as information. But to recognise them properly, inconveniently, irreversibly.”

Conor Collins is a queer Manchester based artist who uses unconventional materials and methods in his art to express complex messages and express deeper meanings than a standalone image may convey.

To See and Be Seen, Conor Collins’ solo exhibition can be visited on HOME’s first and second floor Granada Foundation Galleries until Sat 31 Oct.

Please also check out; The Queer Up North exhibition, celebrating Manchester’s LGTBQ+ heritage 1992 - 2002 is now open at Archives+ Manchester Central Library (in the café) and can be visited until December 31st.