The Shifting Cast
The Shifting Cast is a printmaking gallery between Mayfield and the Picadilly Train Station that aims to connect both points, bringing more people and businesses back into Mayfield. Mayfield was a place seemingly forgotten, with overgrown greenery and sparse landscape next to the Mancunian Way, but in that barren landscape lay stories and vibrant histories buried and forgotten. The gallery is therefore a reminder of the site's printmaking history as the textile factories occupied most of Mayfield in the 1800s.
The gallery offers people a curated passage of prints out of shadows cast within the space by daylight, shifting slightly as the sun moves across the sky. The journey starts with a textile catalogue and then progresses towards the main gallery past the viaducts. The gallery halls are connected by adjoining ramps with translucent cotton partitions between them. These partitions are the templates that form Mayfield's prints with shadows, their sheerness creating an ethereal space as people wander through it. Shrouded in Mayfield’s prints, visitors get an unobstructed view of Mayfield through the large apertures. They will experience the past within the gallery walls and witness the present on the outside.
The Shifting Cast is not only a link between two physical locations, but also between multiple aspects of time, reinforcing Mayfield's identity and development. Bringing together people and stories from different times will initiate a change in Mayfield, retrieving the vitality and intensity that remained during the Industrial Age.
