Celebrating the career of internationally acclaimed, Manchester-based cabaret star, actor and visual artist David Hoyle - aka The Divine David - Please Feel Free to Ignore My Work, is at the city's Aviva Studios until April 28.
The programme offers events celebrating a prolific body of work spanning four decades, as well as rarely-seen paintings, slogan works and new commissions, plus screenings of television appearances and films. Hoyle will also host talks, live painting and a radically-alternative pub quiz.
Please Feel Free to Ignore My Work brings together key themes that run through Hoyle’s back-catalogue: gender, mental health, AIDS, revolution, decadence and the effects of capitalism.
A new end-of-the-pier variety show - David Hoyle: Still Got It? - on April 27, will merge seaside culture and the avant-garde to bring the three-week residency to a close. Hoyle will be joined on stage by performers from the worlds of burlesque, music, drag, film, circus and cabaret.
Hailing from Blackpool, Hoyle’s alter-ego took him from radical alternative settings to the studios of Channel 4. His early career was in the queer nightlife of Manchester – including performances at Paradise Factory, Contact, and Queer Up North, before ascending to the international cabaret circuit. Hoyle has worked extensively as an actor, and his work as a visual artist has been shown in The Hayward Gallery and art spaces from Paris to Liverpool to Copenhagen.
David Hoyle said: "In a way this show at Aviva Studios feels like a great sense of recognition as an artist, coming out of the darkness into light, from marginalisation to validation. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity, for which I shall be eternally grateful.”
More info and tickets here