The Side Gallery.
Street Life Instantaneous:
Photographs of Newcastle in the 1890’s.
The Side Gallery is a lovely
quaint exhibiting space down by the Quayside; since its opening in 1977 it has
been showcasing the local photography scene in the North East of England and
the inspiring historical and contemporary work from around the world. ‘Street
Life Instantaneous: Photographs of Newcastle in the 1890’s’ was a delightful
exhibition of Glass plate negatives recently discovered by the photographer
Aaron Guy. They document street life in Newcastle in the late 19th
Century with hand held cameras; the photographs depict an endearing honestly
into city life focusing on areas such as down by the Milk market, Sandgate and
Quayside. The photographs are most likely the work Newcastle Photographer Edgar
Lee, whose work had been previously showcased in the Side gallery in the 1890’s.
Lee was a respected and successful Photographer in the Newcastle area and even
had a professional studio in Eldon Square. Despite the relative infancy of
photography as a medium, Lee was making his own Hand held cameras and fast
drying exposure plates. These innovative techniques allowed lee to ‘capture a
moment’ with pioneering immediacy. This was my first visit to the Side gallery,
but I will defiantly be going again after seeing this exhibition. It is a
lovely Gallery space and the careful curation of images made the exhibition
interesting an engaging. It is free Admission, and has a wonderful collection
of Prints, postcards, Amber films and books all concerned with photography and
often linked with the North East, well worth a visit!
The Vane Gallery.
Narbi Price: Shan’t Quit
I think the Vane
Gallery is one of the city’s best exhibiting spaces, and is often largely
missed! The Vane was founded in 1997 and was designed to be a cutting edge
contemporary art space right in the centre of Newcastle, it has exhibitions of
a variety of contemporary artists from across the world as well as showcasing
the regional talent. Currently being exhibited at the Vane is An exhibition by
the Local artists Narbi Price called ‘Shan’t Quit’. This is a great exhibition
of paintings and prints by Price who tends to use acrylics and a variety of
Glazes to create a charming realism in his work whilst retaining a painterly
honesty. The ‘mundane and overlooked’ are a frequent subject matter in his work,
which is also the case for this exhibition with scenes of loading bays, car
parks and such like. This series of works by Price actually depicts the
location of the 1888 Jack the Ripper Whitechapel Murders, with the initial of
the victim subtly added to the title of selected works. Through this series
Price is exploring the relationship between the history of any given site and
the mundanity of experiencing it, a contrast also reflected in his painting
technique. From a distance the locations appear to be painted almost photorealistic,
but when you get close to the surface you can see the painterly gestures and
thick dabs of paint. This exhibition certainly didn’t disappoint, it is on till
26th October, don’t miss out!!
Baltic: Thomas
Scheibitz. ‘ONE-Time Pad’ 26 July- 3 Novemeber 2013.
Thomas
Scheibitz is a German artist, born in 1968 and he studied at the Art Academy in
Dresden where he developed his signature visual language. Scheibitz creates
work across a variety of media but most are concerned with the formality of
geometric shapes, vivid colour and a continual play between figuration and
abstraction. Scheibitz tends to seek his inspiration from assorted found
objects, which feature in the exhibition; he has deliberately painted some of
them yellow so that the colour of the object less easily distracts from its
formal quality’s. Thomas Scheibitz’s work also references themes in the
everyday and he draws from a wide range of motifs; from film, literature and
design to the great renaissance masters. This exhibition is a showcase of over
two hundred works by the artist over the last five years, and is spread across
two floors in the Baltic. The lower level, is mainly large scale paintings but
also an archive of found objects taken directly from the artists studio in
Berlin. Whilst the upper level contains a more eclectic mix of pieces and
covered more of the artists process behind the works with a room full of
preparatory drawings. I really enjoyed the exhibition and found it quite
engaging, especially Scheibitz sculptures out of cardboard which were highly
glossed and gave the illusion of wood and dense materiality. I was less
impressed with the paintings, however this could be to do with my irrational
prejudice towards all things ‘Neon’ in artwork. Nevertheless Scheibitz large
scale works do have a striking quality about them, he paints a very shallow
pictorial space with interlocking geometric forms that almost echo some kind of
impossible jigsaw. Formally the paintings are quite interesting as Scheibitz
uses a combination of traditional paints such as oils alongside household
‘B&Q purchases’ with even greater juxtaposition between rapid painterly
marks and a carefully rendered almost graphic approach. Furthermore this flirtation
between the figurative and the abstract in his work is interesting, and wholly subjective
so defiantly take a trip so see what you make of it yourself!!
