In March 2006 Novellus Castellum curated a group exhibition of emerging artists, performers, filmmakers and musicians from the North East. From the live music of Cathode, to performance artists RudeBoy Noah and Chris Rollen. Visual artists with considerable exhibition experience were participating alongside the finest recent graduates from two of the best art schools in the country: The University of Newcastle upon Tyne and Northumbria University.
This show was a multi-disciplinary event which expressed a vibrancy that exists in the North-East, a chrysalis for inspired art, music and film. It will took place in venues across the city Gallery North and the Project Space at Northumbria University, the Long Gallery at Newcastle University at Morden Tower, and at one of the most exciting new galleries in the UK: Workplace, Gateshead.
The Long Gallery, Newcastle University
Phil Marsden, Ant Macari & Graeme Walker
In Phil Marsden's work 'The Fucking middle of nowhere' he uses a comic strip which traces an unsettling and crazy dialogue between to characters one with a cowboy hat and the other with a wrestlers mask. Eventually they both turn guns on each other. Ant Macari's 'Im loving it your way' complements this work, using an exquisite paper robot (made from a map found on the internet), which communicates with a hapless hamburger. Graeme Walkers 'You are now entering the real world'* reinterprets an exit sign and makes us ponder what world we are in, and what’s real or not. All three of the works have a existential quality that mockingly questions life.
Workplace Gallery, Gateshead
Andrew Chadwich, Richard Rigg, Ebony Andrews, James Johnson-Perkins & Graeme Walker
Andrew Chadwick work displays a mathematic obsession with Polyhedra, like Macari he uses a modal to create objects. In 'International Kidney, Shetland Black' he re-represents two English potato species, These are obviously a metaphor for two large testicles and this is emphasised by the Playboy magazine displayed on the table alongside. Richard Riggs also re-represents objects but in a slightly different way. In 'No More nails' he makes nails from no nails glue and in 'Title' he exhibits a title which is the title of itself. In contrast Ebony Andrews makes objects using taxidermy which and are startlingly unusual and crafty such as in 'Meep' which has a Rat head in the form of a hunting prize. In the Upstairs gallery James Johnson-Perkins’ work ZX Spectrum is a full length video of an episode of the A-Team transformed into ZX Spectrum 8 bit Graphics.
This was not part of Workplace's general program
Novellus Castellum would like to thank Paul Moss and Miles Thirlow for donating thier gallery space to use for this part of the events program.
Gallery North, Northumbria University
Paul Moss, Matthew Cowan, James Johnson-Perkins, Starboard Home
In 'Word' Paul Moss' uses shapes from Microsoft Word made in sparklene and conteboard and contrasts these with a striking three dimensional optical illusion 'The possibilities are endless', these works harmonize well with Johnson-Perkins’ ‘Gauntlet’ a selection of large scale Lego robots which are both totemic and charming. These two artists works are both quirky and eccentric in similarity to Matthew Cowan’s ‘Pieces of plum pudding’ which shows a biomechanics video trace of a Morris Jig’ form the village of Bleddington’ performed by the artist himself.
In the Project Space Starboard Home (Susie Green and Illana Michell) presented thier stunning new video work in the project space which comprised of live music performaces from some of the best bands in the North-East.
Morden Tower
RudeBoy Noah, Chris Rollen, Film Bee, Cathode
In RudeboyNoahs ‘Performance no.12’, he transforms himself from a wrapped up cocoon into a fully fledged chav, including ghetto blaster and tracksuit. Acting both drunk and disorderly. This was followed by Chris Rollens astonishing ‘Gingham a era semic eht’ performance. Here the artist performs on guitar and vocals Bob Dylan ‘The times are changing backwards’, which is recorded and then played backwards. We were then treated to a selection of charming films made by the Film Bee film collective which specialise in using old 16 and 35 millimetre film equipment. To round of the event Cathode the North-East based one man electronica outfit presented us with a miscellany of live entrancing sound works.
*This work was also shown in Workplace and Gallery North
Panel Discussion, Bridge Hotel
Illana Mitchell - Director of Platform North-East and Starboard Home
Susie Green - Artist and co-director of Starboard Home
Helen Smith - Director of Waygood Gallery
RudeBoyNoah- Artist and Organiser for Novellus Castellum
Discussion Topic “What is the potential for national and international exposure of the North-East art Scene’
This was a thought provoking and lively discussion about the potential of the North-East’s art scene. The discussion panellists talked at length about the North-East and how each worked within it. It was agreed that ‘Something was happening’ and that 2006 is a significant time for change and action. The art critic Paul Usherwood, who was in the audience talked about the influence of the Baltic and alluded to the fact it may be harmful to the do-it yourself ethics that that small art organisations have had great success with. A lot was said about how other art organisations need to up their ante and increase their international profiles. That more needs to be written critically in the art press about independent art events in the area and that there is a need for a Newcastle arts festival akin to the Liverpool Bienalle.
Is this Newcastle’s moment? Memory is fallible but it’s hard to think of any time like it in the last thirty years.
Only 1990 comes to mind. There were two extraordinary events that year: the Tyne International and Edge 90 [Art & Life in the Nineties]. As the title suggests, the first of these, curated by Declan McGonagle, took place mainly on the Quayside. I particularly remember two telling pieces down by the river, both of which drew attention to the commercial exploitation of the area that was just beginning to happen at the time. The first by Krzysztof Wodiczko was one of the artist’s trademark projections, an image of skeleton hands paddling their way through mounds of coins, on the side of the nightclub-cum-ferry moored under the main Tyne Bridge. The other by Paul Bradley consisted of just two words, ‘True North’, in big steel letters on the north wall of one of the then vacant nineteenth-century industrial buildings on the southern, Gateshead, side of the river. These were positioned in such a way that they were all but impossible to read except from across the river in Newcastle and this was important because it served as vivid reminder that power in Britain always tends to be located in the South. That is, it’s not in the north you will actually find true north; the south, particularly London, is where ideas about northernness always turn out to be generated and ratified.
However, the event that really made 1990 special was Edge: two or three delirious weeks of performances and installations in buildings and spaces along the Quayside, a part of Newcastle that at the time few knew about, let alone visited. All kinds of interesting artists were involved. Orlan, for instance, was there, starting her celebrated personal transformation project. There was a mesmerising performance by Marina Abramovic in All Saints with pythons – live pythons – slithering across the floor. I also remember a live version of Isaac Julien’s homoerotic film Looking for Langston in which some twenty or so performers did strange, troubling things beneath the Tyne Bridge, in the official rooms upstairs at the Guildhall or amongst the headstones in All Saint’s churchyard. In addition, the dark, low-ceilinged, labyrinthine interior of the now mostly burnt-down nineteenth-century bonded warehouses in Hanover Street (opposite the site of what is now the Copthorne Hotel) was the venue for a number of remarkable installations. Richard Wilson’s was especially neat: another timely snipe at the impending gentrification of the Quayside, in the form of one of those dinky little balconies that seemed to epitomise stylish loft living made out of ancient planks that appeared to have been taken from the warehouse floor. Indeed, one’s sense of what might be called imminent Slug and Lettuce-ization was what gave a special urgency to Edge. It made the dark and dingy Victorian office buildings of the Quayside suddenly seem rich in possibility in a way they never quite had before.
However, there was a down-side. When Edge was all over there was nothing much left behind. Which, of course, is not how it is with the various DIY artist-run initiatives that Tyneside has now. They aim to stay. I am thinking of the yearly VANE jamborees and the Vane gallery on Forth Banks that they eventually spawned, and Waygood, Globe, Workplace, Gallery North, Platform Projects, Star and Shadow cinema, the artist communities in Berwick and Allenheads and, yes, Novellus Castellum. Together these all seem to add up to something we’ve never had before in Newcastle and certainly didn’t have in 1990: an established, self-sustaining art scene.
Naturally, when people talk about contemporary art on Tyneside today, they tend to focus on the Baltic. And indeed, as one of the largest dedicated contemporary art spaces in the world, the Baltic is undoubtedly a wonderful asset. However, it is becoming clear that as with any major public gallery, say Tate Modern, it is under pressure to offer star names, tried and tested acts and a kind of ambience that will appeal to, or at least not put off, a mainly tourist audience. So there is definitely room for small shoe-string galleries and grassroots organisations as well, the advantage of such spaces being that they can offer the offbeat, the surprising and the transgressive and can take risks in a way that the Baltic can’t. Also, they don’t have to apologise for showing the work of young, locally based artists at the start of their careers. Yet such spaces in turn obviously have their own drawbacks. For instance, after the opening evening they tend to attract only small numbers and that can make the experience of visiting an exhibition at that stage seem somewhat forbidding.
However, maybe Novellus Castellum has an answer to that. Their inaugural shows seemed to demonstrate that it is possible to put on exhibitions that are every bit as edgy and interesting, as in touch with what’s happening in the international art world and as professional in terms of presentation as anything you come across elsewhere and yet still command an audience. The way that they did this was in part simply by confining the event to just one evening – the evening of the private view. This tactic seemed to allow them to recapture the excitement and bountifulness of 1990 - plus there was the added bonus that you felt you were experiencing something that might lead on to other good things in the future.
Paul Usherwood
Paul Usherwood is a History Art Lecturer at Northumbria University and writes for Art Monthly, UK.
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