As the Irwell acts as the invisible boundary between Salford and Manchester, Pomona is the limbo that buffers that waterway; it’s the tapering slice of land that makes way for the river to graze the Bridgewater Canal before both waterways abruptly branch off in opposing directions.
Once a bustling dockland and now a serene wasteland, Pomona, as small as it is manages to straddle Salford, Old Trafford and to a lesser extent Manchester (it takes mere minutes to reach from central Manchester on foot). These edgelands of Manchester are our alternative countryside.
Now owned by Peel with future plans to redevelop the area into apartments, the area has become one of interest to many people including botanists. It has been speculated that drastic steps have been taken to prevent the area from becoming listed as one of ecological importance, as noted by a resident in 2011:
“I jogged past this site this morning, and couldn’t believe what Peel had done to it! The area had previously supported a lot of native shrubs and trees. Mountain ash, gorse, silver birch, etc were all growing there. I even picked wild apples from there last year, too. The site undoubtedly would have provided a lot of habitat for indigenous wildlife and it was great to see a bit of wilderness and biodiversity in what is a very built up area.
I know the site was ripe for development but Peel have obliterated any bit of greenery, whatsoever, and churned it into a muddy, sterile mess which looks more akin to the battlefields of WW1. In what is undoubtedly a “scorched earth policy” towards the site, I still have to ask was it really necessary to remove every single tree ,shrub and blade of grass? Even those mature trees which were growing right by the banks of the canal, and which wouldn’t have got in the way of their developments, got the chop.”
I wanted to take a second to break some numbers down for you. I’m doing this to be transparent. To let you know what the life of producer/DJ looks like from the financial end. People often think there’s a huge amount of money in this scene. There is, but it is very concentrated and in the hands…
Intense. ‘The Fanciful, Monstrous Feminine’ by Jessica Ledwich is a feminist art series that depicts strange, surreal beauty rituals illustrating the concept of the “monstrous feminine.”
Singapore-based artist Fong Qi Wei produced these mesmerizing animated GIFs as a follow-up for his photography series “Time is a dimension“, combining different “time slices” into a single print.
