Cornerhouse

Cornerhouse was a cinema and contemporary visual arts centre located on Oxford Street next to Oxford Road Station in Manchester, England. Operating from 1985 to 2015, it combined three floors of art galleries with three cinemas, a bookshop, bar, and café. The institution was operated by Greater Manchester Arts Centre Ltd, a registered charity, and became one of the United Kingdom's most significant venues for independent film and emerging contemporary art before its functions were absorbed into the merged HOME arts centre.

Cornerhouse was conceived by the Greater Manchester Visual Arts Trust, chaired by Sir Bob Scott, and opened with support from the Greater Manchester County Council, Manchester City Council, North West Arts Association (now part of Arts Council England), and the British Film Institute. The building opened on 3 October 1985, with Dewi Lewis as its first director; Lewis had previously directed Bury Metro Arts. The first film screened, on 18 October 1985, was Nicolas Roeg's Insignificance. founding director and CEO Dave Moutrey led the organisation from 1998 until 2024. In 2012, it was announced that Cornerhouse would merge with the Library Theatre Company to form HOME, and in 2015 both organisations relocated to new premises at the HOME centre, ending Cornerhouse's independent existence. From March 2017 to August 2017, the vacant Cornerhouse Cinema building was squatted by the Loose Space Collective before eviction.

Cornerhouse's contemporary visual art programme was dedicated to launching artists who had not received major institutional recognition in Britain, while also enabling mid-career artists to realise new projects through commissions and exhibitions both on and off-site. The programme presented works in all media, with a particular emphasis on film and video that maintained strong links with the cinema programme. The institution produced or co-produced all of its exhibitions and accompanying publications. A regular feature was international group exhibitions exploring socio-political concerns. In 2011, Cornerhouse launched Artist Film, a project for the production and distribution of longer films, beginning with Gillian Wearing's Self Made. Cornerhouse was also a partner in the plus Tate programme.

While Cornerhouse did not maintain a permanent collection in the traditional museum sense, its programming achieved several landmark moments. The venue hosted the UK premiere of Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and was the first UK public gallery to commission work from Damien Hirst. In 1987, Dewi Lewis launched the Cornerhouse Publications imprint with A Green and Pleasant Land by John Davies; the imprint was joint winner of The Sunday Times Small Publisher of The Year Award in 1990 and remained active until 1994, publishing books by many major international photographers.

Cornerhouse occupied two buildings on Oxford Street. The main building at 70 Oxford Street was built for John Shaw in the early 1900s and functioned as a furniture store run by the Shaw family until its closure in 1985. The second building, on the other side of the approach to Oxford Road station, was designed by Peter Cummings, completed in 1934, and opened as the Tatler News Theatre in May 1935. This cinema underwent numerous name changes, including Essoldo, Tatler Classic, and Tatler Cinema Club, before closing in 1981.

During its operational life, Cornerhouse was situated next to Oxford Road Station on Oxford Street in Manchester, with its main entrance on what is also recorded as Wilmslow Road. The three cinemas were open seven days a week, with daily matinée and evening performances (no matinées on Monday), presenting almost 3,500 screenings annually across an average of 30 titles per month. The film programme was international in scope and included new releases, re-releases, overlooked titles, classic and archive material, shorts, animation, documentary, avant-garde work, and foreign language films. Cornerhouse also ran two annual festivals: the ¡Viva! Spanish and Latin American Film Festival and exposures. Following the 2015 relocation to HOME, the original Cornerhouse buildings ceased to function as an arts venue, with the cinema building later subject to squatting before its eventual repurposing.