"The White Night" Paul Moss & Miles Thurlow, Tyne Bridge Tower, Newcastle, UK

We are pleased to present:

The White Night
by Paul Moss & Miles Thurlow

A New Collaborative Installation In the North Tower of Newcastle & Gateshead’s Famous Tyne Bridge

Opening: Thursday 30th November 5 – 9pm
Installation continues from 31st November – 9th December
Thurs – Sat: 5pm – 9pm (Free Admission)

Some words from our sponsors:

NewcastleGateshead’s International Festival of Light

Thurs 30th Nov – Sat 2nd December
Thurs 7th – Sat 9th December
5pm – 9pm

NVA, one of the UK’s leading public art and event producers has been commissioned to curate Glow, NewcastleGatesheads first International Festival of Light in partnership with NewcastleGateshead Initiative. Glow brings a brilliant array of celebrated artists and emerging talent to the city and offers an internationally significant visual arts programme with striking light installations and projection work, alongside popular and innovative community-based commissions. Working with local arts organisations and galleries NVA have invited a broad range of artists and designers to show pieces that will intrigue, amuse and bring warmth and life to the darkest winter night.

http://www.visitnewcastlegateshead.com/1982/Glow_Trail.html

The NewcastleGateshead Winter Festival takes place throughout December. One element of the festival, GLOW, which has been curated by environmental arts organisation NVA, will bring a brilliant array of world class lightworks to the city over the first two weekends in December. Celebrating both iconic landmarks as well as hidden and quirky buildings and features, the programme will offer a fascinating glimpse of a stimulating and enchanting world set within familiar landscapes. Working with local arts organisations and galleries, nva, have invited a glittering host of artists and designers working with light to create original illuminations and installations that will intrigue, amuse, and bring warmth and life to the darkest winter night.

The Winter Festival is part of NewcastleGateshead’s world-class programme of events and festivals. The programme is managed by NewcastleGateshead Initiative and supported by Arts Council England, North East, Gateshead Council, Newcastle City Council, Northern Rock Foundation, One NorthEast and TyneWear Partnership.

Darren Banks and Ginny Reed in "Electrical Activity"

Electrical Activity:
Creative experiments with Lightning and Power

Star & Shadow Cinema, Ouseburn
Open Air Cinema, High Bridge

Preview Thursday 30th November 5-11pm

Electrical Activity
‘Electrical Activity’ is an exciting programme of classic and experimental film and art, investigating the electrical and cultural power of light. Films will be presented at public ‘Open Air Cinema’ screen in Newcastle’s High Bridge, in the Mobile Cinema caravan, and throughout the Star & Shadow Cinema.

Light is both the form and content of cinema, but rarely do we think about the electricity powering the projector, and its effect on our lives. The films and art works explore many different aspects of electrical power. Electricity occurs ‘naturally’ in the form of lighting and static energy, and is used to create a sense of magic, awe and wonder within film and photography. Water and glass can act as a prism for the projection of light and sequential images. Electrical light is the hallmark of cinema and forms the basis of many film distributors’ graphics. In narrative fiction, electricity is used to create monsters and special powers.

Lenin famously described Communism as Socialism plus electricity, highlighting the role of electrical power in implementing the infrastructure of the communist state. Harnessing electrical energy to create light has completely changed society and human behaviour: from media and information to altering work patterns. Yet we have not necessarily used it wisely, and take its presence for granted as a cultural as well as an energy provider.

On Saturday 2nd December Honor Harger will discuss ways in which artists have worked within the electromagnetic spectrum. Elin Wikström will present a proposal for a ‘Power Cut’ conceptualising a moment with no electric power.

For details on individual artworks and films: www.starandshadow.org.uk/ea

The Electrical Activity Programme is part of GLOW, NewcastleGateshead's festival of light: http://www.nva.org.uk/new-projects/glow/

Curated by Ele Carpenter with Natalie Frost and Flora Whiteley and the Star & Shadow Cinema. The Open Air Cinema is curated by the Star & Shadow Cinema and organised in association with Waygood Gallery and Studios. The Star & Shadow is supported by Arts Council England, and Newcastle City Council and the Ouseburn Development Trust.

'The City Is Ours?' - organised by Matt Stokes

THE CITY IS OURS?
Wednesday 22nd November, 7-8pm
George Scott Barber Shop, The Side, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 1PR

THE CITY IS OURS? is the first in a series of three events, which explore Newcastle’s heritage and treasures by considering their connection to 'alternative' aspects and social networks of the city.

Over the past 10 years, the urban fabric of Newcastle/Gateshead has undergone radical changes. As a consequence of these transformations, our relationship to the city has also altered and adapted.

This introductory event brings together key people from within the city who influence and manage the changing landscape and cultural climate; from the regeneration of our surroundings and the commissioning public art, to the collection of artwork and programming for galleries/museums. Through informal discussion, it will examine issues of ‘public-ness’ and question how these activities shape the identity of both the place and its people.

Panel members include;

Elisabetta Fabrizi, Curator, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead

Julie Milne, Curator, Laing Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne

Matthew Lennon, Public Arts Officer, Newcastle City Council

Paul Rubenstein, Director of Policy and Assistant Chief Executive, Newcastle City Council

Peter Rogers, PhD graduate of Newcastle University, and currently Research Associate at the School of Environment and Development, Manchester Metropolitan University, whose interests focus on urban and cultural sociology

The evening will be punctuated with light entertainment provided by the Abacus Barbershop Quartet, and refreshments will be available.

The event is FREE, but due to limited capacity booking is strongly advised. To reserve a place or find out more please email socialspaces@hotmail.co.uk


This event has been organised by Matt Stokes in association with the BBC2 series by Simon Schama, 'The Power of Art'. It is one of ten ‘Art-Tripper’ commissions taking place in cities across the UK, funded and coordinated by Arts Council England.


Coming soon …

A 1000 Days in Sodom
Metal music culture and the paintings of John Martin
Wednesday 29th November, 7-8pm
Pre-Raphaelite Room, Laing Art Gallery, New Bridge Street, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE1 8AG


The High Seas
Maritime heritage and surfing the Northeast coast
Thursday 14th December, 7-8pm
Trinity House, Broad Chare, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, NE1 3DQ


Both forthcoming events are also FREE, but booking is advised. To find out more or to reserve a place please email socialspaces@hotmail.co.uk

Paul Moss & Miles Thurlow in "International Enquirer" at Art Gene

An Exhibition of work by artists who currently extend their practice by running organisations, curating, designing and writing.
Curated by Paul Moss

17th November - 17th December
Wed - Sun, 12.30 - 4.30. Late Night Thurs untill 6pm
Art Gene, Bath St, Barrow in Furness, Cumbria

1, 2, 3, 4

1,2,3,4

Maurice Doherty
Mick Peter
Owen Piper
David Sherry


4th November – 2nd December 2006
Thurs - Sat, 12 -5pm (or by appointment)

Preview: Friday 3rd November, 6 - 9pm

Workplace Gallery are pleased to present 1,2,3,4 a group exhibition of new and existing works by four artists currently living and working in Glasgow: Maurice Doherty, Mick Peter, Owen Piper, and David Sherry.

Maurice Doherty's art employs a variety of techniques - lens based, sculptural and two dimensional. For 1,2,3,4 Doherty will be presenting artworks from a new series titled 'Readymaids'. Creating a playful idiom, Doherty calls to mind early twentieth century avant-garde terminology and processes. In contrast to the iconic pieces of early modernism, aesthetic delectation is central to Doherty's latest works.
Mick Peter’s sculpture is highly improbable: simultaneously vulgar and breezily complicated. The objects interweave familiarity with oddity; the conceptually ludicrous and aesthetically irresponsible begins to reveal bits of brutalist architecture or clunky public sculpture. For Workplace Gallery he has made an improvised structure that uses motifs from recent works with added ‘sculpturistic’ sculpture in the form of casts of jugs and teapots.
Owen Piper often constructs replicas of existing objects in alternative materials, creating a space where the boundaries between sculpture, furniture and abstract structures are blurred. Usually employing domestic materials Piper alters and amplifies the final construction allowing interplay between scale, subject, and meaning.
David Sherry is interested in the social rules and regulations that fill up every human head to bursting point. For him even walking past a stranger in the street has a number of checks and balances to be acknowledged.
His current work such as ‘Breaking the hug barrier’ looks at commonly accepted social patterns. These works establish frictions that offset normal situations, highlighting how the artist filters actions and near paranoiac social preconditions. Sherry plays with these preconditions in an effort to plunge beneath an accepted normality.

Spanning traditional definitions of art including drawing, painting, performance, sculpture, and video, 1,2,3,4 presents artists working with the most appropriate material to communicate their intentions, rather than any labored attempt to work within a specific genre. All four artists create layers of sophistication, language, and humour. Social norms and aesthetic conventions bear the brunt of their enquiry raising questions about how we engage with the most basic human activities. Combining the familiar with the odd they make work that deliberately doesn’t quite add up and evades conceptual closure.

Since 1997, Doherty has exhibited widely, in Britain, Ireland, Europe and the US. His recent solo exhibitions include Catalyst Arts - Belfast, Tramway - Glasgow and The Floating Series, Kochhannstraße 14b - Berlin. He has also exhibited at AK28 – Stockholm, the Collective Gallery – Edinburgh, Three Walls Gallery – Chicago, and Künstlerhaus Bethanien – Berlin.
Mick Peter’s recent exhibitions include a solo show at Transmission Gallery in Glasgow, Cell Projects, London, Galerie Nomadenoase at Fortescue Avenue, London, and a publication in collaboration with Transmission Gallery is due this winter.
Owen Piper has exhibited at Tramway, Glasgow and Witte de With, Rotterdam, Holland. Recent exhibitions include a solo show at Kaiserpassage 16/21a, Karlsruhe, Germany, Inbox: Glasgow, Centro Nacional de las Artes, Mexico City, and Busco Similar at Collective Gallery, Edinburgh.
David Sherry was shortlisted for ‘Becks Futures’ in 2003. His solo exhibitions include Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, Schnittraum, Cologne, Germany, and Collective Gallery, Edinburgh. Group projects include I don’t know my name‚ Tart Contemporary, San Francisco, I’m trying to tell you I love you‚ Kunstraum Kreutzberg, Berlin, and Zenomap at the Venice Biennale, 2003.


For more information about this exhibition or Workplace Gallery please contact: info@workplacegallery.co.uk