Chad McCail: Hopes and Fears
In Partnership with Young Asian Voices and Pallion Action Group
Summer 2023
FREE / No booking required
Nexus Millfield Metro Station, Sunderland
Chad McCail (b. 1961, Manchester) is a printmaker, painter and sculptor. Since July 2022 McCail has been running workshops with Young Asian Voices and Pallion Action Group to devise Hopes and Fears, a large-scale mural which will be painted on Millfield Metro Station’s entrance wall in Summer 2023.
Hopes and Fears explores a collective experience of living and working in Sunderland and the hopes for Sunderland’s future. The mural touches on current concerns including the privatisation of the NHS, high rents and rising energy bills and food costs while searching for a different, kinder and more sustainable way of life.
The theme of the mural is community and the value of relationships. It will take the form of a storyboard which will wind across the wall telling a story in pictures. While I was working in Sunderland it became apparent how much nostalgia there is for the industrial past and an understanding that there was then a more cohesive community life. In the story long dead miners and shipyard workers rise from their graves. They are shocked by what has become of their city and they inspire the residents to begin to create a better world. – Chad McCail.
More information about the Millfield Metro Station mural will be shared over the coming months so keep your eyes peeled! An accompanying exhibition of the project material will run at Hills Art Centre from 31 July to 1 September.
Chad McCail (born 1961 in Manchester) studied English at the University of Kent and obtained a BA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, University of London in 1989. His solo exhibitions include: TOY, Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art, Sunderland (2020); We are not dead, Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow (2006); Food, Shelter, Clothing, Fuel, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore (2004); and Life is driven by the desire for pleasure, The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh (2003). His group exhibitions include Eye on Europe: Prints, Books and Multiples, 1960 to Now, MoMA, New York (2006); British Art Show 5, UK touring exhibition (2000); and Becks Futures, ICA, London (2000). He lives and works in Thankerton, South Lanarkshire.
This project forms part of Nexus’ 2020 Metro Community Takeover and is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
Image: Chad McCail, Hopes and Fears (detail), 2023. Courtesy of the artist.
