Side Gallery exhibition - Childhoods

Today I discovered Side Gallery, a newly re-opened gallery in Newcastle.

"Side is dedicated to showing the best in humanist documentary photography: rich, powerful and challenging work engaged with people’s lives and landscapes, telling stories that often get marginalised, whether they are from the North East of England or anywhere else in the world."

Side Gallery was opened in 1977 by The Amber collective because there wasn’t a venue in Newcastle, at the time, which would show the documentary work it was producing. Over the past 2 years the gallery has been closed to allow for building works to take place. The gallery accessibility was greatly improved, both physically and digitally.

The current exhibition, CHILDHOODS brings together 12 photographers and film makers creating work between 1977 and the present and crossing four continents. The exhibition creates a complex portrait of children’s imaginative lives, the social contexts they deal with and their resilience; of ourselves.

PORTRAITS AND DREAMS, 1975 – 1982, Wendy Ewald
JUVENILE JAZZ BANDS, 1978 – 1979, Tish Murtha
STEP BY STEP, 1980 – 1987, Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen
SEACOAL, 1982 – 1984, Chris Killip
THE TIME OF HER LIFE, 1984 – 2004, Lesley McIntyre
SHIFTING GROUND, 1997 – 2005, Dean Chapman
DOVANA FILMS, 2000 – 2016, Duco Tellegen
ALL DRESSED UP, 2004 – 2005, Karen Robinson
CLASSROOM PORTRAITS, 2004 – 2012, Julian Germain
WHERE CHILDREN SLEEP, 2008 – 2010, James Mollison
SYRIAN COLLATERAL, 2014 – 2016, Kai Wiedenhöfer
HOME MADE IN SMETHWICK, 2015 – 2016, Liz Hingley

I was particularly fascinated by the series of photographs called Where Children Sleep by James Mollison. He was commissioned to make work engaging with children's rights, which lead him to think about children's bedrooms and how they help children form who they are. Mollison was conscious that he wanted to document children from diverse backgrounds and so the photographs feature children from privileged and unprivileged circumstances. The photographs are deeply moving, made more so by the stories that go alongside them which really bring them to life.

There is a real power to this exhibition. It has the effect of getting people talking. The above series of photographs prompted a conversation between a small group of strangers. We discussed the changes to family values over the decades, differences in upbringing and the subsequent effects on society.

I would urge anyone to go to the exhibition. I would find it hard to believe if you were not moved by what you see.

Graham Dolphin at NGCA

"Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art (NGCA) present[s] a major survey of works by Graham Dolphin. Encompassing drawing, sculpture, sound and video the exhibition include[s] works drawn from private collections alongside new pieces created specifically for the NGCA. Over the last 15 years Dolphin has developed an extensive body of work exploring issues of fandom and idolatry, often with a meticulous and highly crafted approach to making. A graffiti-strewn door, lyrics carved into a vinyl record, a heavily worn bench carved with messages to a recently departed rock star, Dolphin offers sacred sites for a secular age."

"While Dolphin's sculptures often have the look of something found, they are laboriously constructed using materials such as plaster, tip-ex, biro, felt-tips and graphite pencil. The artist harnesses readily available and cheap materials found in hobby stores and office stationary cupboards. Dolphin elides the materials of the workplace and the home, focusing our attention on issues of labour and time. In new works such as '660 Hits' (2016) Dolphin smashes up an electric guitar, filming the process and then painstakingly re-assembling it."

Gallery visit to Leeds - &Model

My gallery visit to Leeds began at &Model gallery, where I had arranged to meet artist Toby Lloyd, who, along with Andrew Wilson has a residency at &Model during the current 'Project Radio' exhibition at the gallery.

Project Radio is an exhibition space and online radio broadcast created by artists Marion Harrison and Sophie Mallett. The programme is dedicated to the political and collaborative potential of sound art and radio.



Hosted by &Model, Project Radio coincides with the British Art Show 8 opening in Leeds and offers up a shared space for artists and public to make radio. Artist residencies run alongside live broadcasts, interviews and workshops.

The gallery is open 12-5 Wednesday - Sunday, and at times there are events and live broadcasts taking place that are open to the public.

Broadcasts are live Wed to Sun 2-5pm in the gallery and online. They can be listened back at https://www.mixcloud.com/projectradiouk/



For their residency at &Model, Toby and Andrew have built a bar in the room adjacent to where the live broadcasts happen.

'Borrowing heavily from the socially conducive architecture of the public house, this environment will encourage alternative conversation modes to blur the customary roles of artist and audience, guest and host, whilst simultaneously presenting and creating materials for broadcast.'








http://lloyd-wilson.co.uk

http://www.andmodel.com/index.htm

'Eat Ebstractedly' at Mary Mary, Glasgow

Sometimes I can't put my finger on why I am intrigued by an artwork, or artworks, and when I visited 'Eat Ebstractedly' at Mary Mary, Glasgow and saw Hayley Tompkins' work I felt this way.

Perhaps it is the way that the images work together through careful use of colour.

Fiona Banner, WP WP WP at Longside Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park

The title of the exhibition, WP WP WP derives the sound of helicopter blades in motion. In the current exhibition at Longside Gallery, Fiona Banner has suspended two sets of Chinook helicopter blades from the ceiling which rotate in opposite directions to each other and vary in speed. Although the top speed is not enough to produce real vibrations in the space, the presence of these structures moving is powerful and mesmerising. Despite the absence of the rest of the Chinook aircraft, one gets an impression of the weight and size of these flying machines. The elegance and precision with which they spin, carefully programmed to skim past each other without touching, can be likened to the wings of a beautiful creature such as a dragonfly, so it seems wrong that these blades are the force behind these potentially dangerous vehicles.

The grace with which the Chinook aircrafts can move is demonstrated in the film Chinook (2013) in which Banner documents the dance-like quality of Chinook flight at military air shows. Removed from their military function, the Chinook follows an acrobatic and beautiful routine intended to impress viewers and show off its agile possibilities. As the tannoy announces the end of the performance, the audience applaud and the Chinook dips its front and raises its back, its own way of taking a bow. This emphasises the notion of the Chinook as an entertainer.

The windows of the gallery space in which the Chinook blades are installed are covered in UV reductive vinyl which obscure the view out of the gallery onto the picturesque scenery of the Bretton Estate. At seemingly random points within the vinyl, small parts of the vinyl have been revealed to create shapes of 'full stops' in a variety of fonts. Only when peering through the full stops can one see the view properly. This rather subtle intervention focuses ones attention on Chinook, but also links in to Banner's ongoing preoccupation with language, and the title, Ha-ha,(2014) links to her interest in the way walls or other boundary markers are set in a ditch so as not to interrupt the landscape.

Wp Wp Wp (2014) is a wall drawing that establishes its own rhythm and flow through the repetition of this simple word.

Another video, Tete a Tete, (2014) documents two motorised windsocks interacting with each other, reminding me of the precision with which the Chinook blades relate to each other. Outside the gallery, a single motorised windsock moves in isolation; a lonely cry for companionship.

For more information please visit http://www.ysp.co.uk/exhibitions/fiona-banner-wp-wp-wp

Trip to the new Tetley art gallery in Leeds

A new contemporary art gallery opened in Leeds about 3 weeks ago so I paid it a visit while in the area. The building, the old Tetley Brewery Headquarters, is beautiful. On the ground floor there is a bar, restaurant and exhibition space. The next three floors consist of art galleries, a workshop space, offices and studios.

The Tetley's first exhibition, ‘A ‘New Reality’, invites audiences to join artists in unraveling the history and future use of the former Tetley Brewery headquarters through a series of artist projects, exhibitions, events and residencies.

Part 1 of this 9-month programme features projects and exhibitions from artists Emma Rushton & Derek Tyman, James Clarkson, Simon Lewandowksi & Sam Belinfante, and Rehana Zaman.

‘A New Reality’ launches The Tetley as a permanent contemporary art space, taking the theme of ‘labour’, the telling of overlooked or fading history, and the cyclical process of change, as starting points for the space’s transformation. An intergenerational mix of contemporary artists have been invited to create cross-disciplinary interventions that are sensitive to the site’s past.

The work in the galleries seemed to be more like a museum survey of the history of the Tetley building than art exhibitions. Unfortunately there were no artists around at the time of my visit, and , but there was evidence of activity in the form of a stage like structure constructed by Rushton & Tyman for their project titled Fear of the Surplus.

A series of public discussions and events around the topics of work, labour and welfare will take place on this stage. An impressive line-up of invited speakers – authors, activists, academics, theorists, organisers and campaigners will debate ideas of work – what it is, why and how we do it, its values and rewards and the conflicting ideas and issues which surround it. As stated on the Tetley website "With current government rhetoric surrounding work and welfare, Fear of the Surplus is timely in providing a space where conflicting ideas about labour, work systems and possible alternatives can be voiced and debated.

Fear of the Surplus refers to those groups – unemployed, the elderly, migrant workers, the recently made redundant, single mothers, under employed, public sector workers – that are either used as scapegoats by those in power, or considered extra to requirement or ‘surplus’ to requirements, or both."

I look forward to following the development of this exciting new contemporary art space.

http://thetetley.org

http://www.creativetourist.com/articles/art/yorkshire/its-art-leeds-but-not-as-we-know-it-the-tetley-launches/

@The_Tetley