It’s ironic that the Side Gallery’s closure due to Arts Council England funding cuts (Report, 6 April) has coincided with the opening, to great acclaim, of Chris Killip’s major retrospective at the nearby Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art. Killip was a founder member of the photographers’ and film-makers’ cooperative that forged the Side, and his indelible cultural mark on north-east England was first cultivated by a two-year Northern Arts funded fellowship.
Such backstories are important to tell, because great art and photography don’t magically appear, gallery-ready, whenever an Arts Council flagship needs a blockbuster exhibition. Significant new bodies of work arise when artists get no-strings funding and commissions, giving them time and space to take artistic risks and leaps.
