If London felt charming, then Newcastle was like a nice bear hug from your grandfather. If your grandfather liked to drink to all night and yell loudly about football. Nestled on the Tyne River, the city is loaded with history (which to my surprise people seemed quite knowledgeable about) and tells another story of post-industrial hardships. I’ve been in England long enough to start noticing the differences in the accents; in Newcastle people sound more Scottish. For example, the word “do”. In London it sounds like “due”. In Newcastle it sounds like “dew”. I found it comforting for some reason; Geordies (as they are called) seem very rugged, hardworking and hard playing, and maybe just a little bit brash at times. I did inadvertently get mooned here after all.
(studying the mating rituals of the Geordies from my hotel window. apparently that involves dressing like superheros.)
In the art world circles run small and I found myself on a tour yesterday with the incredibly nice and lovely Paul, the brother of a friend of a friend. Michael, the brother, happens to be in Chicago, as a resident of InCUBATE, a space run by some friends of mine. I’d been e-mailing with Michael about my trip here and he kindly put me touch with his brother and off Paul and I went yesterday for the Newcastle art tour.
My favorite stop on the tour was on the outskirts of the city center, in an area known as Byker. The amazing gallery space Waygood (in the city center) is under massive reconstruction and while the new building is being redone, the studio spaces are located in a giant old furniture factory in Byker. The building itself is pretty isolated in a largely industrial area that is slowly being torn down (Paul informed me that a newly empty lot across the street was until recently, an emptied industrial building). It looked like Flint in a way and I immediately felt a warm cozy feeling. We toured through some of the studios, including Michaels, and went to the communal kitchen on the first floor for some tea. The first floor also has a space reserved for exhibitions, a way for the artists with the studios in the building to experiment with displaying their work or contextualizing it with other work – when the exhibitions are up a public reception is held. Truly brilliant.
During tea, James Johnson-Perkins joined us from a nap on the couch and we ventured to his studio to see his work. During the entire time I was cursing myself for the dead batteries in my camera; particularly when we went up the narrow staircase to Perkins’ studio. Standing floor to ceiling were huge lego-bots made out of plastic Tupperware-type containers in bright primary colors. Shelves lined the walls with hundreds of smaller, yet equally satisfying, lego-bots made out of actual legos. Some had guns, some wore skirts. Paul asked if one was wearing a chef hat. Perkins shrugged and said, sure. On the floor was his latest project, an in-progress dinosaur made out of Ken-dolls tie wrapped together in a big blob.
There seems to be this underlying theme of good silly humor in a lot of the art I saw made by the Northerners. At Vane Gallery there was work up by Jock Mooney, an Edinburgh-born artist. There were small black and white drawings lined on the wall, simple illustrations that were absurdist and induced many giggles in me, for example a dog with four very saggy breasts looks out to the viewer, and above it simply says “hello boys”. When I flipped through Mooney’s book of drawings and photographs of his sculptures I stopped at a drawing of a pasty in mid flight. Underneath in a hand-drawn font of mock-horror was written “The Pasty”. I bought a copy of the book…art about pasties?! If only I could curate an entire show with that theme…for now that page may have to be cut out of the book and framed on my wall. And I’m not going to go into Mooney’s sculptures, grotesquely awesome and made out of lightweight plastic. They need to be seen in person to be fully appreciated.
At the Laing Gallery I had a pleasant surprise of seeing an installation by Song Dong, based on his “Writing the Diary With Water” work. Song Dong is a prolific artist whose work beautifully and subtly addresses issues of the passage of time and the often futile nature of life. “Writing the Diary With Water” is part of a daily ritual that Song Dong does, where he literally writes a daily diary with water. At the Laing, Song Dong had set up a series of rocks across the gallery floor, about 2 feet by 3 feet. Next to the rocks were pillows and a container of water with a brush. Gallery visitors were encouraged to sit at a rock and write their own entries with water. A few children sat at rocks and wrote their names and then slowly the water evaporated. As with most of Song Dong’s work, its simple but extremely effective.
My first day in Newcastle was spent at the BALTIC Center for Contemporary Art and was largely my reason for visiting Newcastle. The BALTIC, much like MASS MoCA, is housed in a converted factory. The Baltic was a flour and grain mill that closed in the early 80s. With a lot of help from the government (as is typical with the arts in England), almost the entire interior was ripped out (including well over 100 silos) and rebuilt into five floors of art space.
The BALTIC is impressive from the outside, the towering brick structure looking over the Tyne. But from the outside the Millennium Bridge (for pedestrians and bikes only, designed by Wilkinson Eyre and Partners) stole the show. It’s very sculptural and takes on different shapes and characters depending on which side you view it from. Looking at it from the Newcastle side, it has less of an anthropomorphic quality, looking more like something from a Miro painting. As I wandered up to the entrance of the bridge I noticed a sign, announcing “lift times” for that day. Lift? Hmm. The next one was about 5 minutes away so I walked down the river a bit and waited. Sure enough, a big horn sounded and a man came over a loud speaker, cheerily kicking everyone off the bridge – and then it started to lift. The bottom part, the actual part you walk on, began to rise up, the row of steel wires barely creaking with effort as it rose. It was breathtaking as the shape started to completely change as the bottom rose up, visually criss-crossing with the top part of the structure. No boats were around to make the passage underneath, so it paused briefly then began the descent. Impressive.
When I made my way into the BALTIC, I went first to the top floor (to my dismay the rooftop restaurant was closed for remodeling) to check out the viewing box. Another view of the bridge and of the city – I had a sneaking suspicion that for some, the draw of the BALTIC is the view up there.
The exhibitions at the BALTIC were hit and miss – a Yoshitoma Nara show that was fun, I’ll admit it. The stuff is cute. He worked with an architect to create three structures out of scraps of wood (one structure was sourced locally in Newcastle which had some amazing windows). Nara’s work filled the inside, creating a bizarre environment of ugly materials painted pastel colors and filled with images of Nara’s misplaced children and pets.
The group show, Double Agent, was on loan from the ICI London and had some interesting work – particularly photos by Phil Collins of art world people (curators, etc.) in the form of portraits taken in the style of a head shot. Collins had permission to slap the person as hard as he could before the photo was taken. He has had no trouble finding people to be in the photos, including the two curators of the Double Agent exhibition, looking startled with a big red mark along the side of their faces. How far will people go to be included? Pretty far.
The exhibition also had a video piece by the Polish artist, Artur Zmijewski. He brings together four groups of people in a big warehouse space: Polish nationalists, socialists, Christians and Jews. He gives them each a big sheet of paper mounted on stretcher bars. Each group wears the same color t-shirt according to their association. They are asked to paint symbols that are important to them, then they are asked to paint over each other’s work, over and over and over again. It gets pretty ridiculous and destructive but it’s also really poignant and entertaining. Sure he’s manipulating people’s emotions and their actions but that’s sort of the point, I think.
I liked the BALTIC, but beyond the factory converted building, it seems very very different than MASS MoCA. I won’t expound on that here, you’ll have to take me for a beer when I get back if you want to talk about it.
I’m now in Birmingham and preparing for my presentation…so far I’ve met some nice people here for the conference, bonding in our mass confusion of how to check into the dorm rooms…you never know at these things how you will end up befriending people.
(special thanks to Paul for showing me around! Here he is on the left with Dee and Pat of the wonderful Waygood Gallery)
