Art visit to Middlesbrough

It's been a while since I have been to Middlesbrough, and in that time a number of new spaces have opened as art galleries and the art scene seems to have developed. I went to check out a few exhibitions at a mixture of familiar and less familiar spaces.

Platform A
GUTTER WORDS
Jo Hamill



"Gutter Words is a complex book work and the culmination of a 10 year enquiry which aims to explore the sculptural space of language, the book and its physical connection to the body.



Working with an edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses, Hamill systematically obliterated the words of Joyce but carefully retained those words positioned closest to the gutter – the technical term used to describe the central margin of a bound page.

Gutter Words, is also presented in the form of a book. Hamill explores the relationship between the book, as a sculptural space and the role the body plays in activating this physical space. Notable here is how design and typographic terminology is so entrenched in bodily references. Header, footer, body-copy, the arm of a ‘K’, the crotch of a ‘Y’, the foot of a ‘T’, the ear of a ‘G’, the shoulder of an ‘R’ and so on. As is the architectural scaffolding of Joyce’s schema which underpins the structure of Ulysses; kidney, genitals, heart, lungs, esophagus, brain, blood, ear. etc."

The most interesting part of this artwork for me was the seemingly unconnected series of words that were paired due to their position in the gutter. However, it was lacking in terms of visual appeal.





Hamill chose to display the vinyl words in two vertical columns, starting with those from the first page in the book. The simplicity of the two columns effectively signified the gutters. They began on the right wall and spanned the length of the gallery along the floor and up the left wall. I felt distracted by the additional column that had been added on one of the side walls as it diverted my attention.

http://www.platformagallery.net/index.php/shows/gutter-words




The Auxillary
LEGACY - 50 years of Painting in the Tees Valley

"The exhibition brings together the work of 30 artists that tells a story of painting in Tees Valley spanning 50 years, tracing a lineage of painters who have influenced and supported each other in various ways. Established and emerging practices sit side by side to acknowledge the impact and importance of painters who have taught, mentored and championed each other marking a continuum of knowledge sharing, generosity and trust across generations."

https://www.artrabbit.com/organisations/the-auxiliary-middlesbrough

It was refreshing to see such a mixture of paintings and styles and recognise the strength of painting within the Tees Valley.

After spending a couple of hours in galleries without heating (on what seemed like the coldest day of the year), I was relieved to arrive at MIMA to defrost before returning to the studio in Newcastle.



MIMA
Mikhail Karikis
For Many Voices

For Many Voices is Mikhail Karikis's first large-scale survey exhibition presented at MIMA (UK). In each of the 5 rooms was a different audiovisual installation. I was particularly moved by Sounds from Beneath.

"Sounds from Beneath (2011-2012) centers around a sound work for which the artist Mikhail Karikis asked a community of a former coal miners’ choir to recall and vocalise the industrial sounds of a working coal mine, which they used to hear when they worked in the pits. Karikis located the former Kentish coalmine where the men used to work, and upon completing the sound work he invited the artist Uriel Orlow to collaborate on a video which depicts the desolate colliery brought back to life through the miners’ song. The sunken mine transforms into an amphitheater resonating sounds of former underground explosions, mechanical clangs cutting the coal-face, wailing alarms and shovels scratching the earth, all sung by Snowdown Colliery Male Voice Choir grouping in formations reminiscent of picket lines."

http://www.mikhailkarikis.com/2015/07/20/sounds-from-beneath-video/

The sound alone was powerful; but the vastness of the landscape featured in the video emphasised the emptiness that the miners could have felt when they were no longer working together down the coal mine. Such textured and layered sounds would only be possible to achieve when in a group, and seeing the men united and singing together emphasised their collective spirit.

Gallery visit to Middlesbrough

My trip to Middlesbrough began with Something Coquettish, a solo exhibition by Juliet Fleming at House of Blah Blah, an independent, artist-led gallery, studio complex and project space. House of Blah Blah has a strong emphasis on supporting and developing underground and emerging artists from the region. I'll do a blog post specifically about this exhibition soon.



I then made my way to Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA), which is known as a 'useful' museum, a civic institution that promotes art as a tool for social change. Its programme integrates exhibitions and collection displays with learning activities, off-site projects, commissions and community-focused initiatives.

"We wish to have an influence on society, taking a leading role in addressing current issues within politics, economics and culture, and contributing to change. Our programmes encompass themes such as housing, migration, inequality, regeneration, and healthcare."

The tall walls are put to good use in the Kellenberger-White Print Room. Kellenberger-White is redesigning the institution’s brand throughout 2017. The project includes exhibitions featuring archival materials, samples of their own productions, and printed matter drawn from workshops and consultation sessions. The exhibition consisted of a workstation—a printing machine and a digital interface—that visitors could use to create posters expressing their views on Middlesbrough, art, society, and what a museum should be. The posters are being displayed in the gallery on a rotating basis.

http://www.visitmima.com/landing/



The final destination on my visit to Middlesbrough was Platform A located in the railway station of central Middlesbrough. Founded as an extension to Platform Art Studios in 2011, Platform A is a gallery dedicated to innovative developments in contemporary art through its diverse programme of exhibitions. Platform A represents emerging and established artists.

The current exhibition, My Paths Are My Ideas of Imagination is by one of the associate artists, Rachel Clewlow. See my separate blog post for more information about this exhibition.



I had previously arranged to meet Tony Charles, the Director of the gallery to see the exhibition outside of the gallery opening hours. Not only did he do this, he gave us a wonderful tour of the studios attached to the gallery and the workshop facilities that studio holders have access to. He is one of the artists represented by Platform A, and has a studio at Platform Art Studios attached to the gallery. We were fortunate enough to be shown his work which involves the investigation into the relationship between sculpture and painting. Working on aluminium, he paints onto the surface and then uses a grinder to remove some of the surface. He then applies a layer of resin to give an incredible sense of depth and retain the vibrancy of the colours. As the viewer walks around the work, the light reflects different areas of the scratched surface, creating a moving drawing.

For more information about Tony's work visit http://www.platformagallery.net/artists/tony-charles/

Thanks Tony for a wonderful insight into the gallery and studios. It was a great way to end my Middlesbrough gallery tour.

Rachel Clewlow at Platform A

The current exhibition, My Paths Are My Ideas of Imagination at Platform A is by one of the associate artists, Rachel Clewlow.



It consists of a number of beautifully executed paintings and drawings relating to walks made by Clewlow. Employing tactics used by cartologists, she transforms raw data gathered from her experiences and transforms this into colourful charts, maps and patterns that are in themselves a new form of landscape.



"Through painting and printmaking Rachael Clewlow has created a visual language that reflects an obsessive attention to detail and a desire to map out her own experiences of the world. In an ongoing series of diaries begun in 2003, she creates rigorous and detailed recordings of her every day movements. Planned abstract journeys taken to explore selected cities and regions sit alongside the mundane routes she takes from A to B. This record becomes a highly personal form of trace and a rich source of data from which Clewlow begins to construct paintings and prints. Drawing from elements of the language of infographics and of cartography, these works also demonstrate an obsession with colour and the formal concerns of abstract painting.



Over the past 18 months she has created a large body of new work for her first solo exhibition. A series of paintings presented in groups, focus on a set of pre-defined walks around Newcastle, London and Rochdale. Each walk represents a performative journey made to explore place through the demands of the related paintings. In the case of this group of works, it is the scale and proportion of the paintings, themselves derived from OS maps, which influences the nature and duration of the walks. Clewlow is bound to 'complete' the walks, a slave to her own rules, composing with her feet and discovering chance like paths through this quasi-intuitive process.



A group of walks in London saw her attempt to find routes across the city created by the 13 protected vistas of St Paul's Cathedral and other monuments. In Protected Views, 69.78 Miles Walked, London (2017), architectural planning restrictions provide Clewlow with a hidden visual structure, which she seeks to make real through the process of walking the streets it traverses below. As with each group of works, a 'Map' and several 'Keys' are the manifestation of this performed experience, charting these new routes as images whilst also speaking of an unknowable, sublime landscape.

Longitudinal Geometry, 129.53 Miles Walked, Newcastle (2016) charts seven days walking north to south across an OS sheet map. By playfully and absurdly sticking as closely as possible to lines of longitude, she invites us to consider the nature of theoretical systems of measure and mapping. The meandering lines of circles in her own map chart the physical meeting of our real world roads, routes and rivers with the cold authority of the OS National Grid. Realised in complementary colours, these delicate forms dance across the surface of one painting, each one a waypoint, a moment of lived experience and a data point in a grander scheme.



Her most recently completed group of four paintings explores the industrial heritage of the area around Rochdale. Man Made Waterways, 91.9 Miles Walked, Rochdale (2017) saw her crossing the Pennine Hills over five days to join a large group of reservoirs, canals and waterways. Here, Clewlow is interested in establishing a new route that honours these critical historic monuments at the heart of the regions growth. For the first time in these works, Clewlow introduces a system of symbols and forms that organises every moment, thing and place she records into her own taxonomy. These paintings offer a visual codification of Clewlow's exterior and interior observations during the process of 'collecting' these unassuming local landmarks. Together with her other recent work, these works provide us with a new way of imagining the ordinary and overlooked as parts in a rich constellation of interconnected moments – new landscapes of colour, form and imagination."

Nick Kennedy



For me, it is the hand-drawn and human elements that elevate the work from being a translation of information into another realm. Clewlow's work gives me great pleasure and the more time I spend with it, the more I am drawn into the detail and notice new things. The process behind the work adds weight to what simply are stunningly beautiful creations.

The exhibition runs until 5th October

http://www.platformagallery.net/shows/my-paths-are-my-ideas-of-imagination/