Concrete at War

By Mark Wrigley

Concrete at War is a photographic study documenting Britain's coastal wartime defences. These structures, built for purely functional purposes and constructed primarily from concrete, encompass bunkers, pillboxes, and gun emplacements that can now be appreciated as early examples of brutalist architecture—buildings where function uncompromisingly dominates form.

Private View - Thursday 4th September 6pm-8pm all welcome

05.09.25-25.10.25

at the modernist
58 Port Street, Manchester M1 2EQ
open 11am to 5pm, Tuesday to Saturday

The exhibition features 'sound mirrors,' an ingenious acoustic method for detecting enemy aircraft developed between the two world wars. This technology was remarkably analogue, requiring minimal electronics, with amplification provided simply through stethoscopes. The collection includes a 3D printed model of the imposing 30-foot sound mirror at Dungeness—the product of a lockdown project meticulously modelled entirely from web-sourced imagery.

These concrete sentinels, scattered along Britain's coastline, stand as monuments to both wartime necessity and architectural innovation, their stark forms bearing witness to a period when survival shaped aesthetics.

Mark Wrigley is a photographer and visual communicator with a background in physics. His work bridges the physics of image making and visual culture. Using both digital and analogue tools, this exhibition includes images created by medium format and 35mm film cameras as well as digital cameras including iPhone.