Salzburg

This Month in Salzburg (March):

Shopping: Opened in September 2009, the designer outlet Salzburg is a great place to shop not only for haute couture clothes but also brand names such as Barbour, as well as furniture and linens (1 Kasernenstrasse, tel: 0662 2544).

Sightseeing: The gallery of contemporary art, Traklhaus, shows a retrospective exhibition of photography, painting and installations by young Mexican artists whose works have been exhibited at the gallery over the last five years. Throughout the month (1A Galerie im Traklhaus, Waagplatz, tel: 0662 8042 2149).

Key areas: Catch the No.25 bus from the main station and head to Untersberg, a mountain near Salzburg. With great walking trails, it provides a picturesque break from the city.

Day trips: Visit the medieval town of Kitzbühel, a chic ski resort. The area is great for winter sports, but if you're not a snow bunny, the town itself, with its romantic scenery, is well worth a visit. The one-hour train journey takes you through both Austrian and German scenery.

Salzburg News & Gossip

Art in Aigen

With its muted façades, packed church services and lederhosen-clad locals, Aigen is a traditional Upper Austrian town two hours from Salzburg. It's renowned for its luxury spa hotel, the Almesberger, the purity of its air and the proximity of the vast Böhmerwald for both hiking and skiing. But over the past four years, something strange has been happening in and around this quiet town - a mini art revolution of the most unexpected kind.

Just off the high street is the former courthouse and prison. The main building is 500 years old and its exterior is pale peach, in keeping with the local vernacular, but there's a suspiciously flamboyant van parked nearby that boasts a cascade of bold pink hearts. I ring the bell and a booming English voice invites me in. I step into a pink new world.

The entrance hall is crowded with brightly coloured wooden sculptures, including a throne, but my gaze soon shifts to my 70-something host, gallery owner and performer Nick Treadwell. His hair, clothes and shoes are all pink. And not only that. Treadwells Gallery, known locally as the Pink Prison, is also replete in rosy tints.

"A visitor sent me those," he laughs, pointing to a pair of large pink slippers. Nick lives surrounded by grotesque paintings and eccentric possessions, such as a life-size skeleton holding a wine bottle and cigarettes called After The Party by British sculptor Keith Harrison and a satin cake bearing a baby. His bedroom - he kindly allows me to tour his inner sanctum - is hung with more art he's collected over the years, including early silk screens by YBAs (Young British Artists) Sue Webster and Tim Noble, and is also a shrine to pink.

So why the pink? "It started off in Britain during the 70s when my gallery was being called vulgar and in bad taste," he says. "I decided to fight back with pink. My hair and clothes went pink in the 90s, and now I've got a pink gallery as well.

It's the colour for love, it's funny, it's often a gay colour. Plus if I walk towards you wearing pink, you can't help smiling. It's also a comment on the gallerist being an entertainer. That is how I see myself."

What about local reactions? "Everyone knows me here," he says happily. "I think they like that I've brought a playful quality to the town and they send their friends to visit. Every September, I have a big, pink party on my birthday. This year, I created the United Pinkdom, which is why Keith made the throne, and in fact it's all about finding ways of living together peacefully and the pink symbolises that harmony."

Ensconced in my super-comfortable hotel room, I'd noticed that in the brochure, Treadwells Gallery was mentioned as the capital of Superhumanism. What is Superhumanism? I wondered. "I invented the term," he says, "for artists who look at everyday life and reveal more about humanity by focusing on one aspect of domesticity."

With a characteristically theatrical flourish, Nick leads me to the former prison cells where there is an exhibition of contemporary, apocalyptic paintings by American artist Jeramy Turner. It also transpires - I meet her that evening - that Jeramy too has moved to Aigen, because of Nick's presence.

Upstairs at Treadwells, there's a cornucopia of art dating back to the late 60s. Not surprisingly, Nick is the subject of quite a few of these artworks. "They'd see that someone had done a sculpture of me, then another artist would think it was a way to my heart," he laughs pointing out several versions of his head, some with a beard and some without.

Nick says he likes to put art in rooms that resemble the domestic space that most people have, so he has filled intimate rooms with quirky pieces by artists who are now established, such as Graham Ibbeson, to work by little-known artists like Michele Howarth, who creates feminist sewing sculptures, and colourful social satire paintings by artist and bus conductor Alun Jury. The final room is full of powerful sculptures - from eerily powder-white women reaching out for each other, to a row of old men in a retirement home by artist, Malcolm Poynter, who has known Nick for the past 35 years.

Funnily enough, later on that day, I call round to see Malcolm as he too has moved to Aigen. In fact, he moved from super-hip Dalston in East London last year. His enormous building in Aigen was a garden centre, now it's his gallery space, his workshops and home. Gaudily beshirted, the larger-than-life Malcolm shows me round.

Outside, there are workshops full of little bodies with duck heads, fish with bird heads and small women carrying umbrellas. Mutation is a theme, and his work often comments on climate change, war or politics in an outspoken way.

As I make my way round the immense rooms, it becomes obvious that he is not just creating a gallery here, but a Poynter world and world-view.

Upstairs, there are curiously attired figures emerging from cupboards, photographs of him in former workshops on the walls and strange baby figures everywhere, balancing on ledges, holding guns, wearing sunglasses. "They're new," he says with gusto, "they're my suicide babies. They are babies who no longer want to live in this world."

His messages may often be about death, but his gallery is full of life and vivid colour. Malcolm is also a prolific artist. There are vegetable figures, a blue figure giving birth to a marrow and his ongoing series (he makes one a year) of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. A beautiful porcelain dancer clad in ethnic costume takes centre stage in the main room. And his signature piece, One Step Forward, which is a vast wheel filled with bones with a figure struggling to keep alive on its rim, dominates the space of the second room.

It's a testament to his determination that at the age of 61, he decided to move to Aigen. "I'd seen the space that Nick had and I had 200 square metres in Dalston; I've got 3,600 square metres here. Half of my work was in storage in the UK; here I can display everything. I fell in love with this building. It gives me the freedom to make what I want."

Malcolm says he sees this space as "an environment rather than a gallery", and he is engaged in various other projects, such as the documentation of his work since the 60s, including the design of two restaurants in Tokyo. He's also transforming his barn into a theatre where he will stage various performances under the banner of the theatre of the absurd, incorporating his sculptures. "I want it to be a living, evolving space," he says, and frankly, with his unstoppable dynamism, I can't imagine anything else. Aigen may never be the same again.

Nick Treadwell's autobiography Kiss My Art will be published in March; Malcolm Poynter's official opening will be in July

ARTISTIC HOTSPOTS IN AND AROUND AIGEN

TREADWELLS GALLERY

Guided tours of Nick Treadwell's gallery are available by prior arrangement. Entry is €5; 4 Kirchengasse, tel: +43(0)664 344 9543, www.treadwell.at

ATELIER POYNTER UND GALERIE

Entry to the atelier is by appointment. 1 Baumgarten Mühle, Schlagl, tel: +43 (0)728 120 584, www.malcolmpoynter.com

MUHLTALHOF HOTEL AND RESTAURANT

Enjoy delicious, locally sourced food in this restaurant's contemporary, arty surroundings. Tel: +43 (0)7282 6258, www.muehltalhof.at

CAFE MULLER

This pastry shop and café in Aigen has contemporary paintings and sculptures on the walls. Open 9am-11pm; 6 Haupstrasse, tel: +43 (0)7281 6257

UBR GALERIE ULRIKE REINERT

A gallery focusing on new trends and young artists. 51 Auerspergstrasse, Salzburg, tel: +43 (0)662 870 786, www.ubr-galerie.com

HOTEL ALMESBERGER

Art courses are offered regularly at this luxury spa hotel in Aigen and include life drawing and an exhibition of the class's work. www.hotelalmesberger.at

WHERE TO STAY NEAR AIGEN

UNDER €75
CITY ART HOTEL SALZBURG

Visit Salzburg's art museums from this affordable design hotel before heading to Aigen for a more edgy scene. From €65, book at www.hotels.easyJet.com

UNDER €100
DORMOTEL TRAUNPARK WELS

Experience the traditions of Upper Austria in the historic city of Wels, then drive the 20 minutes to Aigen. From €86, book at www.hotels.easyJet.com

UNDER €150
PARK INN HOTEL LINZ

The eco-friendly city of Linz was European Capital of Culture last year and is only 50km from Aigen. From €120, book at www.hotels.easyJet.com

Salzburg Trivia

• March: The famous medieval physician Paracelsus spent the last years of his life in Salzburg and is buried at the Sebastiansfriedhof cemetery.

• February: The famous Renaissance physicist Paracelsus spent a part of his life in Salzburg - he lived at 3 Linzergasse way back in 1541.

• January: Obertauern skiing resort was the setting for the skiing scene in the Beatles film Help! in 1965.

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