ANEW Way to Peel an Orange

Celebrated designer Joe Hartley and the ANEW recovery community present ANEW Way to Peel an Orange, an ambitious exhibition of co-produced work developed during Hartley’s five-month residency with ANEW in Tameside (Greater Manchester, UK).

Hartley’s residency has combined the forces of ANEW’s experienced and creative approach to recovery from substance use, with Hartley’s diverse approach to making and the variety of talents possessed by members of the ANEW community. Rooted in collaboration and creative exchange, the residency has been an evolving journey of creating and reflecting through ceramics and furniture making, photographic experimentation, as well as outdoor and growing activities that include equine-assisted therapy and hatching RECOVERIST chickens as a nurturing metaphor for new life beginnings.

Over the course of Hartley’s time with ANEW, the designer and community have immersed themselves in one another’s spaces and practices. Saturated with a generosity of spirit, honesty, and care, their time together has fostered a deep relationship, feeding a meaningful process of creatively working together to craft new contemporary artworks that challenge thinking around substance use and what it means to be in recovery.

The resulting exhibition will draw together a dynamic collection of artworks – from large-scale black-and-white photographs to ceramics and site-specific interventions that harness the techniques, energy, and immediacy of graffiti – this speaking to the positive energy Hartley and all at ANEW bring to their co-production. Commissioned works are informed by lived experience and underpinned by the critical importance of recovery as a collective process. The presentation itself is to be co-produced with Hartley and ANEW, including the display stands, exhibition furniture, and framing.

Castlefield Gallery will also play host to Hartley and ANEW’s pop-up shop, a space that will imbue the warmth of a rustic farm shop. The shop will house teapots and ceramics enhanced with glazes produced from plants – those often viewed as invasive and not welcome, that when repurposed yield positive, unexpected results. Interventions will appear outside the gallery’s immediate public realm. Hartley and the ANEW community will bring their collaboratively honed growing skills to the venue by developing a garden at the gallery’s entrance occupied by plants that include those used to produce the beautiful glazes to be found on the ceramics inside. The pop-up shop and garden will create further space for pause and reflection.

The title of the exhibition is associated with the phrase ‘Peeling an orange in your pocket’ – a saying that can have multiple meanings, including alluding to secrecy, but more relevant here is the idea of layers and hidden talents, as well as peeling an orange for someone being an act of love and devotion. The exhibition will ask, ‘is there not more than one way of looking at things?’ Shaped by lived experience, underpinned by the importance of process to journeys of recovery for personal growth and healing, the exhibition will seek to prompt and invite conversation over proposing definitive answers.

We are learning that art and recovery can dovetail together to create a relational experience that offers authentic connections, builds trust, and helps us to see each other’s joy and creativity one teapot at a time.

ANEW recovery community

ANEW Way to Peel an Orange, Partners:

ANEW Way to Peel an Orange, Funders:

Partner funders:

Links

More about ANEW

anew.org.uk

More about Portraits of Recovery

portraitsofrecovery.org.uk

Downloads

Press release

523.1884765625kb

Images

Banner:

Equine, ANEW Way to Peel an Orange, 2025. Image courtesy of Joe Hartley

From left to right, top to bottom:

Photography, ANEW Way to Peel an Orange, 2025. Image courtesy of Joe Hartley
Seeds and Sow On, ANEW Way to Peel an Orange, 2025. Image courtesy of Joe Hartley
Photography, ANEW Way to Peel an Orange, 2025. Image courtesy of Joe Hartley
ANEW Recovery Community, ANEW Way to Peel an Orange, 2025. Image courtesy of Joe Hartley

Exhibition

A co-created exhibition of new work developed by Joe Hartley and the ANEW recovery community