For some people, conjuring an art show means balancing various concerns across all manner of medium. It’s like treading a tightrope.

Indeed, this eclectic show utilises, in no particular order: digital video, sculpture, sound, drawing and painting. Plus, each medium toys with an unusual subject: levitation, cicadas, a passenger pigeon, fly paper, wurst, grits, ‘Balthazar’, hallucinogenic fungi and ‘a dozen dogs from New York’s Chelsea art district’.

Actually it’s worse than treading a tightrope. It’s like doing that while spinning plates. Now you’d be forgiven for commenting that the content of this show is the kind of hyped-up hogwash that gives contemporary art a bad name.

And you’d be close to the mark because there is just such an argument to be had about many shows of the ‘garbled’ variety. However, the point of the odd mix of items here is to quiz that public response to art.

Art, let’s remember, thrives on being difficult - being uneasy and unorthodox. Following on from this, there’s a glimmer of sense in The Goose Fair. For it has been put together ‘to illuminate the stupefying effect of visual art, and its blunt interruption to the normal flow of everyday images’.

Fair enough. But is that ‘spinning plates’ or just spin?

Jacob Cartwright & Nick Jordan: The Goose Fair is at Castlefield Gallery from
Friday, April 9 to Sunday, May 16. The gallery will be closed on Friday, April 9 and Dunday, April 11 for Easter. Opening times will remain the same for the rest of the Easter period.