Manic Street Preachers’ Nicky Wire announces new art exhibition in Wales

nme.com:

Manic Street Preachers bassist Nicky Wire has announced a new art exhibition, My Little Empire, to be displayed in a Welsh museum.From August 6 until December 13 at Narberth Museum in Pembrokeshire, the exhibition will feature 26 new pieces that showcase Wire’s love of the Polaroid image.My Little Empire, named after a song from the 1998 album ‘This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours’, will include several self-portraits, as well as subjects including Welsh film actor Richard Burton, Marilyn Monroe, Albert Camus and Jean Paul Basquiat.A post shared by Manic Street Preachers (@manics)The show has been curated by Mark Lewis, who has said (via South Wales Argus): “The exhibition came about after I contacted Nicky to say that one of his pictures was being used in the Dylan Thomas exhibition at Narberth Museum.

He said he had always liked Narberth and would love to show his work there. And so, we chatted and arranged it to open between tour dates.”Wire has exhibited his artwork in the past, with the ‘Paintings and Polaroids’ display at Tenby Museum and Art Gallery in Wales in 2018.

Those works were partially taken from his 2011 photography book ‘Death of a Polaroid: A Manics Family Album’, and he told NME about the exhibition at the time.“The work on display spans over three decades,” he told us. “It’s mixture of polaroids and paintings.

There’s a great tradition of bass-playing artists: Kim Gordon, Paul Simonon, Paul McCartney – I thought I’d join that club.”“It’s a great cleansing exercise, really.