All That Is Solid Melts Into Air.

Image of Adrain Streets and Father (Dennis Hutchinson) used to represent Jeremy Deller's exhibition.

In 'All That's Solid Melts Into Air' (being shown at Manchester Art Gallery until January 19th) Jeremy Deller combines contemporary music, film and photography with 19th century images and found objects all representing the influence and impact the Industrial Revolution had and still has over our lives. The large room it occupies is thankfully filled with an intelligent range of perspectives rather than the usual doom and gloom attached to such a sentimental topic.

Deller with mural backdrop by Stuart Sam Hughes; sourced from bbc.co.uk.

The title of the exhibition originates from The Communist Manifesto, written by Marx and Engels in the late 1840's, and has previously been used as the title of Marshal Berman's 1980 academic text 'All That's Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity'. The book examines social and economic modernisation using Goethe's Faust as a literary interpretation of modernisation, Marxist text to illuminate the self-destructive nature of modernisation and a range of French Poetry/Russian Literature to enforce. Much like the title and the aforementioned book, Deller's masterfully curated exhibit is a reminder that extremes generate extremes.