WOMANSTANLEY’s DIY art stylings popped up for a third year on Saturday night, with a bigger buzz around the exhibition than ever before.

Following on from shows at the Doghouse (now the Brewhouse) on Buttermarket Street and the leafy surroundings of Warrington Sports Club, the homegrown collective is now well-established and has helped to foster a community among the town’s emerging artists along the way.

This year’s venue the Auction Rooms has been open in various guises over the last few years, most infamously a strip club, so it is appropriate that the building has now been reclaimed by an exhibition with such clear feminist values.

All comers to the Legh Street bar are greeted by mental health-focussed Transpire Art’s mannequin, which is plastered with headlines from magazines and newspapers centred on body image. You could be forgiven for thinking there is another mannequin in attendance, but it is in fact Rebecca Martin mid-performance piece. Standing prone in one corner of the pop-up gallery, attendees are invited to rip off post-it notes scrawled with negative words and glued to her body.

Elsewhere, Beth Davenport has baked a cake which is pleasing on the eye but is actually made entirely of rotting fruit, Roxy Ball pictures Jeremy Corbyn as a deity through monoprinting with Jezza Jesus The evocative colour of Sophie New’s bandana-shrouded figure smoking a bejewelled-cigarette is beautifully-backlit through a window into the bar’s bowels, Ryan Lee Hassey explores gender through a series of photographs and Hayley Reid presents an ode to her pet pooch Marty.

Klaus Pinter encourages interaction through drawing (even if you are severely artistically-challenged like myself), Caitlin Whitcroft has lovingly buried an entire shelving unit in delicate piles of candle wax while Louise Marsh’s brings an old, jaded ladder to life with an elegant flower arrangement with Lara’s Theme.

Womanstanley now promises to evolve from its annual appearance on the Warrington arts calendar, with an exhibition in Leeds plus an appearance at Warrington Contemporary Arts Festival now mooted for later this year. The art collective looks well-placed to go from strength to strength thanks in no small part to the community that it has helped to forge, which has in return supported the event’s three-year incubation and will no doubt continue to do so as Womanstanley spreads its wings.