UNITOM Projects, a new exhibition space dedicated to contemporary visual culture, launching with Goof City, a solo exhibition by Manchester School of Art graduate Mary Lou Lawless-Gill.
Goof City takes its title from The Beat Generation concept coined by poet and activist Ed Sanders. First introduced in his 1963 “Poem from Jail”, it describes an imagined, anarchic and peaceful society, a warless “city on the hill” centred on laughter, art, and community, often linked to the East Village and Lower East Side.
The exhibition brings together a body of work that explores urban life through constructed scenes that sit between memory, observation, and fiction. Across the show, figures appear within quiet, fragmented moments that suggest a wider shared world, where everyday encounters and imagined narratives overlap. The works hold scenes in suspension, allowing meaning to shift between intimacy and distance, and between what is seen and what is remembered.
Mary Lou Lawless-Gill (2004) is an artist who constructs fictional scenes from imagery drawn from photographs, film, music, and memory. Her work captures fleeting moments in the lives of recurring characters, forming fragments of an ambiguous urban narrative that seems to belong to a time both familiar and lost.
Goof City
5th July - 11th June
21 - 23 Quay St, Manchester M3 4AE