There is no other person in sight when I show up at the Maple industrial estate in Ardwick, Manchester. The sprawling, red-bricked complex has the air of an army barracks or an airport hangar. Doors are shuttered, the grass is overgrown, and discarded car parts line the perimeter. It’s also freezing. “Everyone struggles with directions to get here,” says Louise Giovanelli, when she eventually finds me walking in circles outside. The British artist is dressed in black jeans and a black hoodie flecked with paint. As I follow her through a network of tunnels, I feel like we’re about to attend a secret partisan meeting, rather than enter her studio.
But there is a cause being championed here today: the north – and, more specifically, Manchester. The 31-year-old, one of the most talked-about artists of her generation, is at the forefront of a new movement of painters who refuse to bow to industry pressure and relocate to London. A number of them – recently dubbed the “Ardwick Realists” – work together out of this same estate.
