Final day to see Northern Nori at Great North Museum: Hancock

Sunday 9th September is the final day of Which Way North at Great North Museum:Hancock, and therefore is your last opportunity to see Northern Nori.

It's been an amazing honour to exhibit alongside such well-respected artists, designers and innovators. I would like to thank Which Way North Curator, Grainne Sweeney for commissioning me. Thanks also to Paul Fox at the Great North Museum:Hancock, for all his assistance.

Last week to visit Northern Nori at Great North Museum: Hancock

It is the final week of Which Way North at the Great North Museum: Hancock, featuring my work, Northern Nori.

Image courtesy of Colin Davidson

The exhibition, which takes over the whole of the museum, shows how this part of the country has shaped our present and is inspiring our future.

Featuring 250 high-profile loans from over 100 leading museums, galleries and private collections, the exhibition includes astronaut Helen Sharman’s space suit, the last piano played by John Lennon, original models of Postman Pat, and John Hancock’s Struggle with the Quarry, which was part of the original Great Exhibition in 1851.

The show takes its inspiration from the Duchess of Newcastle’s 1666 novel The Blazing World, thought to be one of the earliest works of science fiction. Visitors will find a 1668 edition of the book at their starting point, as well as other items they might need for an adventure, including the 11th Doctor’s sonic screwdriver and a fan showing a map of the North from 1778.

The exhibition journeys through a number of themed interventions, including To the Moon and Back, Buried Treasures, Human Machine Motion and This Kingdom Called Home, an emporium dedicated to Northern achievements that have influenced the way we live.



https://getnorth2018.com/events/which-way-north/

Opening of Which Way North at the Great North Museum: Hancock

Thursday night was the VIP preview of the exhibition 'Which Way North' at the Great North Museum: Hancock. 

I felt rather out of place, but ever so honoured to have been commissioned to make a work for such an important museum and for it to be amongst such an amazing selection of objects and artworks by artists such as Ryan Gander, Andy Lomas and Barbara Hepworth.

After all, how often is my work going to be sandwiched between Helen Sharman’s Zvezda Sokol space suit and Damien Hirst's shark (Heaven)!

https://getnorth2018.com/events/to-the-moon-and-back/

Newcastle University Undergraduate Fine Art Degree Show - Preview Friday 2nd June, 6-9pm

I'm looking forward to attending the preview of the Newcastle University Undergraduate Fine Art Degree Show tonight.



"The Newcastle University Fine Art BA Degree Show brings together the work of over fifty young artists at the culmination of four-year study on the BA in Fine Art. The exhibition displays a diverse set of practices and media including painting, new media, film, video, sculpture, photography, print, sound, performance and installation.



The Newcastle Show will take place in the Fine Art Department of Newcastle University and nearby in the Great North Museum: Hancock from Saturday 3rd June to Saturday 17th June with a Preview from 6pm on Friday 2nd June.



The exhibition will then transfer to London where it will be exhibited in the Hoxton Arches from the Wednesday 22ND June to Monday 26th June with a Preview from 7pm on Friday 23rd June."



I've had the pleasure of working with some of the students in various capacities over the last two years, and I am excited to see how their work has developed.



For more information about the artists involved, visit

http://fineart.ncl.ac.uk/ba2017/

Interpreting the Hancock Museum collection through dance

Yesterday I spent the day participating in Icon Dance’s workshop at the Great North Museum, Hancock.

It was billed as "a fun and creative exploration of the Great North Museum’s Ancient Greek Collection", and certainly delivered this.

Jilly, Karen, Helen and Niki

There were three other ladies taking part, all of whom were lovely and had very interesting backgrounds. Niki has recently completed a PhD at Newcastle University and was researching the Social history of festivals in rural communities. She is just about to start a position as a Research Associate at the University. Prior to this career path, Niki was a visual artist. Jilly is a friend of Niki's and they are bee keeping partners. Jilly is a dance enthusiast. Karen completed her Archeology Masters course in 2015, and her aim is to work in museums. We made a really good team.

After briefly meeting choreographer Martin Joyce, dancers Alex and Emma, and the Creative Learning Producer, Laura, we spent the morning doing various exercises with Laura.

She took us to the Ancient Greek Collection and we viewed the specific vessel that would be the main focus of our dance.

One of the first group activities was for one of us to stand in the middle of a circle and make a pose. Then one of the other participants had to make three changes to the pose that they thought would make. We repeated this so everyone got a turn at making the changes and being in the middle.

Another exercise was to work in pairs, and mirror each others actions. We were not allowed to speak to the each other to say who was leading, and so had to watch closely. At times it was very difficult to work out who was leading and who was following.

Thinking about the vessel in the collection, we had to think of words to describe how it looked, felt, tasted and smelled. We then devised short dance routines that in relation to these words.

Evidence of me dancing!

After lunch we met Andrew Parkin, the Keeper of Archaeology, who gave us a short introduction to the Greek Gallery/Collection, and spoke in detail about the history and purpose of the vessel we had been examining. It was a vessel for mixing wine and water and was used in symposiums that were meetings for men only, and involved lots of drinking and treating each other brutally; often fighting and causing harm to each other. Following the stories of it's history, my opinion of the object and what it referenced was changed drastically.

We then went back to the dance room to discuss words that summed up the vessel, and then, in pairs, developed a sequence consisting of 3 static poses and transitions between them. Throughout the sequence we had to maintain some form of physical connection to each other.

The dancers and choreographer then joined us, and they watched what we had developed and we watched what they had developed. They had devised a dance routine working its through the room, and had included references to the entire Ancient Greek collection. They had left a short part of the dance for us to choreograph, so we pooled our ideas together from the whole day, and provided instructions for them.

 

The day ended with the dancers doing the full dance to the members of the public.

 

The whole day was a totally unique experience and it made me appreciate the collection in a way I would otherwise have not been able to.


Thank you ladies!

Visit to the Great North Museum archive at the Discovery Museum

This afternoon we had a class outing to the Discovery museum where we met Dan Gordon, Keeper of Biology for Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums. 

Dan gave us a fascinating tour of the archives...

"Several extinct and endangered species are represented, including great auk, moa, dodo, huia, kakapo, blue-wattled crow or kokako, Inaccessible Island rail, passenger pigeon and the only surviving specimen of the extinct British race of the capercaillie.

The bird mount collection numbers around 2,000 specimens and a comprehensive range of British species, including the only known juvenile specimen of a great auk, the only surviving specimen of the extinct British race of the Capercaillie and at least one 18th Century type specimen. Other Extinct species, or those on the verge of extinction, are represented by the Huia, Kakapo, Blue-Wattled Crow, Inaccessible Island Rail and Passenger Pigeon, and there are many specimens of other rare and endangered species.

The study skin collection (around 12,000 specimens) is divided, for the purposes of cataloguing and storage into Palaearctic (the bulk of Eurasia and North Africa) and non-Palaearctic specimens. It is especially strong in material from the British Isles.

The collection of non-Palaearctic study skins includes 4,050 birds collected in Assam, Sikkim and Tonkin during the 1920s, areas which have suffered major environmental deterioration in recent decades. It also include a type specimen of Dickinson's Falcon, Falco Dickinsoni (donated 1863) from Zambia.

The historic egg and nest collection, housing around 28,000 specimens is predominantly British in origin, and provides comprehensive coverage of the national fauna. A small number of exotic specimens include eggs from Siberia.

The museum also holds several historically important marine collections, including the Alder Hancock collection of nudibranchs and tunicates, and George Brady’s ostracods. The marine specimens are complimented by 50 models of sea anemones made by the Bohemian glass-worker Blaschka in the late 19th Century: originally bought for scientific purposes, they are also superb examples of the model-maker's art.

A whale head!

Poisoned spears

The Great North Museum’s botany collections include over 79,000 specimens from a variety of taxonomic groups, including algae, bryophytes (mosses and liverworts), tracheophytes (flowering plants and ferns), and fungi, including lichens. Many of the specimens are from historically interesting collections, some of which are almost 200 years old. Local and national species are well represented.

Insect collections

The insect collection incorporates a large array of Lepidoptera, Coleoptera and Ditptera specimens. All include a large British component, and the Lepidoptera collection is strong in material from the Oriental region, containing a birdwing butterfly collection."

Butterfly collections

http://www.twmuseums.org.uk/great-north-museum/collections/natural-sciences.html