Artist and photographer, Stephen Iles was on site last week to take the latest in a series of photographs of the Whitworth Art Gallery as it transforms from the old Whitworth we all know and love, to the new building as it moves closer to completion. Some of Stephen’s photographs appear almost as abstract portraits of spaces – removed from context and often unrecognisable.

These first three images show the bare bones of rooms – the first room like a ribcage ready to be fleshed out with plaster and paint; the others at various states from raw concrete to plaster skims.

Other photographs show objects in ‘waiting’ – a Panelock screen from the Gallery’s display system, left where it was positioned in the last exhibition on our Mezzanine level, but now in an empty gallery; or a work from the collection covered with Tyvek sheeting for protection, but temporarily stored…