Manchester street art January-April

The street art scene in the city centre, especially around the Northern Quarter, continues to be lacking in the amount of new murals; where I would once have visited Manchester regularly, sometimes twice a week as artworks changed so often, my street art hunts are now less frequent unless I’m in the city for another reason. That being so, I’ve accumulated all the artworks I’ve found since mid January into one collection.

First was quite an amusing but grumpy-looking fish/dog and its underwater kennel on one of the advertising walls and not far away a pack of five mosaic dogs stretched along a side wall, although I’ve no idea who either of the artists were. On an interior wall of Yard & Coop chicken restaurant was a smiling fox while an exterior shutter featured a colourful Barbie mural by Katie Scott.

In Stevenson Square a window of Fred Aldous art and craft shop was adorned with a cute cat, the square itself had shed its previous festive images and was preparing for Valentine’s day and round the corner the face of a rabbit paste-up somehow reminded me of John Lennon, while across the narrow back street was one of Ethan Lemon’s trademark green faces.

Round near the police museum I found three more paste-ups – underneath that long black hair is the cute face of a dog – and on a corner in Lever Street was another green face. The end wall of the old Thomas Street/Tib Street substation featured one of Yerp’s grotesque characters while the side wall featured a much nicer and rather amusing duck mural by Hammo. The bookshelf mural was a chance find, spotted as I walked through the streets near the People’s History Museum but I’ve no idea who the artist is.

Back in the NQ a colourful shutter over a side window seemed to be an advertisement for ebay, two more of Yerp’s peculiar characters and a third green face put in an appearance while Stevenson Square has recently undergone a garden transformation in anticipation of the summer weather which seems to be taking a long while to arrive. And finally I couldn’t ignore the two dogs which now decorate the windows at the Fred Aldous shop thanks to Hammo, current artist in residence.

Well that just about wraps up my street art finds from the last four months, and though each month didn’t individually produce a great many artworks I think that adding them all together has created quite a good collection.