Could you give our readers a brief history of Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art?
Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art has been going for over 50 years. Within that time, it’s moved around Sunderland a few times and has been based in its current location at National Glass Centre for nine years. Its central focus is to foreground cutting edge visual arts with a connection to the north east.
The Main Gallery shows temporary exhibitions which change every four and a half months, and whilst there’s a specialism in lens-based media, there are also shows with painting and installations, with a connection to film and photography.
The Collections Space predominantly shows works from the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art Collection, at times that are relevant. Due to its size, it’s also a good space to show emerging artists work from the north east. These can often be the artists first shows and tend to run for around two and a half months, which equates to two per Main Gallery show. Although the work can be quite different, both the Main Gallery and the Collections Space connect. For example, we’ve just had Ian Macdonald in the Main Gallery which looked at the industrial heritage of the region, and Jeremy Deller’s Battle of Orgreave focused on the miners’ strike in the Collections Space. So there is a central theme, and the theme changes per show.
The other thing to mention about Northern Gallery is that since 2006 it’s been acquiring works by artists and photographers we’ve worked with. We’ve built up a rich and varied Collection of lens work with a specialism in lens-based media – film, digital and photography – and that’s unique to the north east. We’re delighted that the next exhibition – The Skin We Live In – is bringing that work from the Collection out for the first time in the Main Gallery.
The Skin We Live In, along with Harry Griffin: My name is Harry, these are my pictures and they are nice, opens at the Gallery on Saturday 23 November. What can people expect?
In the simplest terms, The Skin We Live in is contemporary portraits taken from the Collection. Traditionally, portraiture was used to provide a likeness of the sitter. This was often connected to an idea of grandeur – someone immortalised through the portrait and that became an important document at that moment in time. Instead of looking at portraiture traditionally (as an individual subject) The Skin We Live In is more a collective experience told through portraiture.
The pieces featured within the exhibition move away from representing an individual and into talking about a community of people. I feel there’s an importance in presenting that on the gallery walls for other people to see, and for those narratives to be visible, shared, and taken in the context of peoples own personal experiences. And within that, there are difficult issues that are not regularly shared publicly; depression, isolation, illness, domestic abuse, but are being presented on the gallery walls in a way that we hope will provide a power, a visibility and ultimately, a conversation starter.
There’s also a focus on different communities – working class, LGBTQ+, black and Asian – that have not historically had a lot of exposure through gallery shows, represented in a way that gives a voice to our society as a whole, rather than just the specific few.
The device used to de-couple the portrait from an individual and to make it a collective experience is to mask the features that would usually give the individual connection – the face, the hands. This forces the viewer to switch emphasis onto the staging of the picture and the performance within it, and it’s that which connects to a wider audience.
We spoke earlier about the linked themes between the work displayed in the Main Gallery and the Collections Space. How does the Harry Griffin exhibition, which also opens later this month, connect to The Skin We Live In?
Harry’s photographs are often portraits, but they’re a document of his life as a tour manager for comedians on the road. Those close bonds and the friendships that are formed by living and working in such close proximity are very much on display within the pictures. You get to take a peek at the moments you wouldn’t usually have access to. The photos aren’t capturing the moments happening on stage, they’re behind the scenes, the green rooms, the tour buses, the days off, the joy of just being around creative people with a similar outlook, they’re revealing a life on the road with famous faces from the UK comedy scene, it’s those moments when the performer isn’t performing. That connects with some of the themes of friendship, of community, of coming together that are featured in The Skin We Live In.
The Skin We Live In: Portraits from the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art Collection, and Harry Griffin: My name is Harry, these are my pictures and they are nice both open on Saturday 23 November. Entry is free.
