Art is flourishing around the region and not just in our leading galleries but also in rural locations and city pop-ups which we might not normally reach.
Alongside gems such as the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle - which is soon to host the Lindisfarne Gospels - there are venues across the North East hosting new exhibitions this August that deserve a share of the limelight. From photographs to illustrations, and audio to painting, they invite people to dip into nostalgia, take stock of life today and celebrate the North East and its people.
The shows include work inspired by the pandemic - such as one in County Durham that captures the experience of women who had babies during the isolation of lockdown - and images shedding light upon under-valued female farmworkers in Northumberland.
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Others celebrate the wonders of nature and the urban magic of city life. Here is a top five pick of the new exhibitions waiting to be explored this August.
Daughters of the Soil
Women involved with farming are the focus of this newly-opened solo exhibition by photographer Joanne Coates who has captured images of agricultural workers across Northumberland and up to the Scottish borders.
Her portraits - on show at the Vane Gallery on Gateshead High Street - result from collaborations with more than 40 women working in the industry and exploring the issues they face. While females make up 15% of the UK's farming industry, their significant contribution is often overlooked.
Coates, an award-winning documentary photographer, said: “The project offered the opportunity for me to chronicle the lives and stories of these women. Women aren’t as visible as men on farms but we are seeing them more.
"The female workforce are driving tractors, having a social media presence and can be seen on the TV - but they don't often inherit land or work in leadership positions.”
Her exhibition also includes field recordings to ensure an immersive experience. Composer and multi-instrumentalist Erland Cooper was involved in creating a sound installation to feature alongside the portraits which Coates took as part of an artist residency involving Newcastle University and The Maltings visual arts hub in Berwick which saw her undertake 1 2 months of research into gender and agriculture.
Daughters of the Soil, which examines issues such as land inheritance, farming stereotypes and the history of land workers, can be seen until September 3. The gallery is open Wednesday to Saturday from noon until 5pm. For more about the photographer see here.
Back to Life
Local artist Kevin Day has a solo exhibition of his artwork coming up in a new pop-up gallery at The BottleWorks in Riverside Walk in the lower Ouseburn area of Newcastle - just down from Brinkburn Street Brewery.
Back to Life, which is set to open on August 25, is all-new work by Day, following on from a busy time during lockdown when he teamed up with former Lindisfarne member Marty Craggs on a project which saw him provide the artwork for a video to accompany a new song called Geordie Boy. Craggs, who wrote the track to express what he most missed about Newcastle during the imposed restrictions, felt that Day's local paintings, which capture the city heart, suited the mood perfectly.
Now Day, from Burnopfield, has created fresh scenes of Newcastle for his upcoming show which this time, as its title suggests, reflects the improved situation. Created out of lockdown to the present day, they're all to do, he says, "with the last few years and a hopeful return of life back to normal". He added: "It will be all new works of Newcastle as well as other parts."
The exhibition will run at the BottleWorks from 10am to 8pm, August 25-30. For more about the artist and his work see here.
Betty Larom and Neville Main
Transporting us back to a bygone era, a new exhibition at Seven Stories, the national centre for children's books, is set to see a fresh generation of children enjoy the storybook illustrations of the late Larom and Main, whose comic strip art and nostalgic illustrations over the decades captured the hearts of so many young readers.
Main, who was known for the likes of Muffin the Mule and Larry the Lamb, married Larom in the 1960s. She illustrated British nursery comics in the 1950s and 60s and the Ouseburn venue is showcasing her drawings for post-war stories such as Twinky and its iconic horse, which recently featured on a T-shirt designed by Molly Goddard and worn by Harry Styles in this summer's Boyfriends music video, 72 year's on from its creation.
The exhibition, which runs until January, also includes artist items from Seven Stories' archive collection. To complement it are themed storytimes and T-shirt design craft sessions for all ages and exclusive Betty Larom merchandise is also on sale from both its shop and online.
Wendy Elliott, chief executive officer at Seven Stories, said: “Betty Larom and Neville Main’s post-war stories and art influenced decades of artists who succeeded them and introduced us to the worlds of Twinky, Jimmy, Happy and Butterball, and Tufty among others." For more about Seven Stories, which now offers free entry, see here.
The Lost Spells: Listening to a Landscape of Voices
Taking its title from the best-selling book by Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane, this exhibition celebrating wildlife and the natural world promises a magical blend of the former's artwork and the latter's poems.
Even its location - at The Sill : National Landscape Discovery Centre, within Northumberland National Park - is nature-infused and the exhibition's soundscapes, including wild calls and acoustic music, will add to the immersive world created by the 'spell-poems' and the book's artworks which conjure up animals, birds, trees and flowers. An interactive touch-screen will also allow visitors to create their own songs of nature using live recordings of wildlife such as the owl, fox and curlew.
Musicians from the Spell Songs ensemble - which evolved from The Lost Spells and earlier book, The Lost Words - have recorded spoken word pieces, inviting people to listen to nature. Artist Morris said the venue is ideal for the exhibition: "The swallows in The Lost Spells were drawn from birds nesting on the building next door, curlew call overhead, owls are close and the landscape is stunning in all its weathers.”
Writer Macfarlane said he hoped the exhibition, which runs until next June and includes plenty interactive elements for all ages, will encourage visitors to look afresh and "tune in to the lives, songs and voices of the creatures and plants with whom we share the world". Find out more about The Sill here.
Can Any Mother Help Me?
Created with women who were pregnant or gave birth during the pandemic, this exhibition, due to open in Bishop Auckland on August 15, will feature a mix of the paintings, sculptures, writing and photographs they were invited to produce to capture their experiences of preparing to become new mothers during such a turbulent time.
On show at The Auckland Project’s community venue No.42 in the town's Market Place, it will have an accompanying publication to help share the stories of how the women coped during the period of lockdown and restrictions. And, working with local artists including photographer Louise Taylor, the result is tales of success, triumph and sadness.
The Auckland Project’s arts officer Jillian Johnston, who was also involved in encouraging the women to use creativity to express themselves, said that being pregnant during a global pandemic led many to feel isolated, as they attended ante-natal appointments without partners and had little or no contact with wider family following their baby's birth.
For the exhibition, some of the women took inspiration from a painting hanging in The Auckland Project's Spanish Gallery and, with their children, recreated the scene of Murillo's Virgin and Child. And some shared how they felt trapped; suffered post-natal depression or post-traumatic stress disorder following a traumatic birth with no support due to care services being under so much pressure.
Jillian said: “The Covid lockdowns and restrictions took away so much of this vital community support. With this project, we wanted to recognise the importance of their stories, and create that community among those who had been through something extraordinary together, if forced to be apart.”
The title of the exhibition, which runs until the autumn, comes from an advert in a 1935 Nursery World magazine which started: ‘Can any mother help me?"
It continued: "I live a very lonely life. I cannot afford to buy a wireless. I adore reading, but with no library I am very limited with books… I know it’s bad to brood and breed hard thoughts and resentment. Can any reader suggest an occupation that will intrigue me and exclude ‘thinking’ and cost nothing." The plea sparked such a response from similar-minded women countrywide that a new private magazine, The Cooperative Correspondent Club, was born which ran until 1990.
See here for information about The Auckland Project.
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