THERE'S nothing as certain as uncertainty - especially in the visual arts - yet commentators, critics, collectors, curators (and even artists) are forever trading in concrete terms and firing off their definitive decisions.

So it’s refreshing to report from a show that is reassuringly uncertain about what it is or what it might say about art today. This is largely down to the self-confessed "bloody mindedness" of curator, Yue-Lai Mo.

"I'm actually an artist myself," says Mo. "I've exhibited with three of the artists here, that's how I first came across these guys [the artists in current exhibition Reassurance]. We all felt similar at the time - that there was just a lack of Chinese art.

"Then the Chinese Arts Centre was established in Manchester and British Chinese Artists Association in London… back in '97-'98."

In the ensuing years, and echoing the journey of black-British artists in the 1980s, British-Chinese artists have had the unenviable task of juggling their ethnicity alongside their art.

This is bemusing since galleries and their marketing departments have rarely seen fit to promote home-grown white artists via the cultural baggage of bog standard Britishness.

So Mo trusts that Reassurance is the next step forward from those ‘pioneering’ days.

TO read the rest of this feature buy this week's City Life (issue 596). Out now priced £1.50.

Reassurance is on at the Chinese Arts Centre, Market Buildings until Sunday, October 2. Mon - Sat: 10am - 6pm, Sun: 11am - 5pm. Call 0161 832 7271 for more information. Tweet