SUMMER SHOW 2022
The return of our annual Summer Open at Pineapple Black.
Featuring an exhibition curated from the 261 submissions we received from across the Tees Valley in our main gallery,
alongside a new exhibition, WHAT IT ISN’T., by the brilliant Michael Reece in our window gallery.
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ARTISTS:
Samara N Sajid : BURSTING LOVE ( collage & watercolour) Buzzing with the possibilities of of growth, joy and balance I created this collage as a gift to my love.
Young creative working in traditional (paint) and non traditional mediums (film) to express the feelings and imagination of their inner world and help the external one become sweeter.
Beth Johnson : Blue Burst: Mixed Media, embroidered card, 2D, 35x35cm Blue burst was inspired by the combination of the open sea and sky, and the freedom they bring, marred by the restrictions in life, the routine, the limitations we face.
Beth Johnson is an emerging Scottish artist based in Teesside, North-East England. Beth works with embroidery and having concentrated on traditional forms of the craft moved to develop and experiment; playing with the media she stitches through, including exploring embroidering concrete with light. Her background and formal training in Architectural Studies can be seen throughout her work in its structure and influence; of geometric shapes and infrastructure as well as its juxtaposition with the nature surrounding it.
Roma : Being influence by current worldwide fight of women for her right and decision making of their own body I have came up with series of portraits representing women in colourful artistic and powerful portraits. empowering women and letting them to speak for themselves and make their own decision. It is very fresh idea as we speak paint is still drying that why there is not so much of the story behind its more being touched as a women to speak out and express my feelings on the canvas.
Roma is a Polish born (from Kraków) artist who graduated from Teeside university with a master’s degree in the Future design field in 2015. Her work includes sophisticated graphics with a strong aesthetic judgement. The main focus of her creations is surrealism mixed with brut art. However this is not her only focus as she is inspired by daily life and personal feelings to express herself. Always mixing and experimenting with media’s such as forms of paint, illustrations, digital art, video making, sculpting, fashion, interior and textiles. Her main aim is to provoke viewers to stop and think about her art.
Lanabagu : Worm Cats (or Swamp Tiger & Ruby Mew) are Limited Edition Lino Prints, with 21 in each colourway 12.5cm x 28cm Prints (5″ x 9″), 3 Layered Reduction Lino Print with a Hand Pressed Stamp, Cranfield Traditional Relief Inks on 300gsm Somerset Satin White Paper. All relief prints are carved and printed in my home studio, and pressed with an antique book press. Finished off with a signature, and numbered. The marbling process means each print is completely unique. These prints are not entirely perfect, as is the nature of printmaking.
Em Jaxon or ‘Lanabagu’ is a process driven linocut printmaker, and tattoo artist. Her subject matter often focuses on whimsical character designs through legendary Japanese creatures, and traditional tattoo themes; such as snakes, tigers, and floral designs. These are transformed into Em’s unique style through their vibrant colour palettes; bold, clean shapes; and subtle textures.
Mary E Crick : I was thinking about Gender Equality when I I made this art work. How difficult it is to give a female child the same opportunities as a male child because of preconceptions in our society.
‘My left foot and other Family’ explores this through shoe boxes, but they do not hold the shoes that would be worn by the family members but their feet. This then makes the viewer wonder which feet are female or male this would be more obvious if the shoes were in the boxes.
I began to study as a mature student and gained a Fine Art Degree from the Northern School of Art (formerly CCAD). My work reflects the every day and routine. I am also interested in the Status of Women in Society and how to depict this through Art works.
John James Perangie : Three pieces from of a Series of current work called tin can fabrics.
John James Perangie is a north east based Queer Artist working currently working in found object, painting and sculpture.
Morgan Byers : This is a piece inspired from the growth in mother nature over covid. I’ve done what I’d imagine New York to turn out like once nature took over and the buildings start to fall and the huge growth of plants around it has taken all the water.
Georgia Dalzell : I am an aspiring artist just finishing my gap year before I start studying at university. I began learning oil paintings while I was at college during lockdown and have continued to practice since then. I enjoy painting from personal experience, memorabilia/photographs. Slowly building my painting collection and getting myself out there has been my focus.
Jonathan Marshall : I studied Fine Art at Sunderland University in the early 1990’s, before going on to gain an MA from Chelsea College of Art and Design in London. I currently live and work in Darlington, County Durham. I have been making figurative drawings and paintings for over 30 years; works which have been expressive in character, full of narrative and symbolism. My current series of drawings are inspired by Edward Kienholz’s seminal installation ‘The Beanery’ (1965). A work I first saw in 1989, but encountered again in spring 2018, while visiting Amsterdam and the Stedelijk Museum. Kienholz made his installation in response to ‘Barney’s Beanery’, the famous LA diner. His work centres on a homophobic countenance, which has caused me to question those present in his work, comfortable to socialise under the offensive sign ‘Fagots – Stay Out!’. My reaction has been to reinvent Kienholz’s characters through layered narratives, to celebrate the strange and peculiar and all those who exist on the margins.
‘Francis At Prik’ (charcoal on paper, 225x150cm, 2020-21)
‘The Weta’ (charcoal on paper, 225x150cm, 2020)
Catherine Grainge : A small, cloth bag rust print sitting snuggly in an equally rusted mini shopping basket, ideal for the everyday consumer. Inside the cloth bag is the can used to make the rust print with it’s lid wide open like a gaping mouth begging for more. The rust print was made by soaking the cloth bag in boiled green tea, a technique done by Alice Fox, and placing it inside the can for 3 days.
I’m a UK artist born and bred in Gateshead and I enjoy experimenting with found objects, exploring their potential of what people can interpret from them. I grew up with found objects on my old Council estate where there was a game to find the coolest scrap and mixing that with some encouragement from my tutors at Teesside University gave me a practice full of rust. No technique is off limits but my favourite is rust printmaking because of it’s unpredictability. You never know how the rust will react and transfer to the paper/fabric once you spray it with some vinegar or flood it with green tea and leave it in a tub by the radiator for 2 days – plus it’s somewhat sustainable in that you can regrow the rust. This lack of control and the abstract results give me excitement in my practice as I learn something new about rust printmaking and the object itself from peoples interpretations every time I print. No print is the same – I’ve tried.
Bella Downey : Paragraph 14×14 canvas
I’m 13 years old and I’m from Eston.I have a passion for art and fashion .I have been accepted for the northern school of art, bronze award.I have art displayed in Eston art centre recently.
Ellie Clewlow : ‘Women’s Hours’ is made from the pages of secondhand Mills and Boon romances that I remember my mother reading avidly when I was younger. The books come from the stall from where I remember her buying and exchanging books, located in the market where she used to work. The colour detail is created from handwritten extracts from the daily texts we exchange describing how we have spent our day. The form echoes that of memory quilts, in which treasured fabric scraps are sewn together to celebrate important milestones or the life of a loved one. And yet there is a contrast here with the use of cheap paperback books as material, and the inclusion of mundane text exchanges. The celebration in the 365 squares of Women’s Hours is of time passing, of an ordinary life being lived, of the everyday. Women’s Hours asks how the ways in which we spend our time define our identities as women: as mother, wife, daughter, maker, author, worker, consumer, reader, patient.
I am a largely self-taught emerging artist based in Sunderland. I work with unwanted books and paper, using traditional craft techniques such as origami, weaving and quilting, to explore ideas of place and identity.
Agatha Somerville : Over, Acrylic on canvas, 2022, 31cm x 23cm & Memento Mori, Acrylic on canvas, 2022, 30cm diameter.
13 year old local student
Sam Judge : Slow Death Pay, 2022, Oil on canvas, framed, 50x60cm & Waterbird, 2022, Oil on canvas, framed, 50x60cm
Sam Judge lives and works in North Yorkshire. He was born in Dudley in 1988 and began working as a designer in London in 2010. Since starting his art practice in 2020, Sam has created a body of work full of energy and excitement. His forceful gestural marks sometimes appear punched onto the canvas, his choice of colour is often contrasted and unexpected.
“As a painter I’m drawn to the infinite possibilities of abstraction. My process invites unexpected moments, I work with no prior plan or conceived idea and respond to the paintings as they evolve over weeks and months. I see it as a back and forth conversation between myself and the painting. What do I think? What does it want? My background in design was all about constraints. Art provides me with a freedom that I relish. It also connects me with my inner child. As a father it’s important for me to create time and space for irresponsibility. When I work in the studio it’s just me and the materials.”
“As a painter I’m drawn to the infinite possibilities of abstraction. My process invites unexpected moments, I work with no prior plan or conceived idea and respond to the paintings as they evolve over weeks and months. I see it as a back and forth conversation between myself and the painting. What do I think? What does it want? My background in design was all about constraints. Art provides me with a freedom that I relish. It also connects me with my inner child. As a father it’s important for me to create time and space for irresponsibility. When I work in the studio it’s just me and the materials.”
Kimi Marlowe : ‘Holding onto your dreams’ 90x90cm canvas. This abstract landscape is a mixed media piece, created using layers of acrylic, oil pastel, pen and pencil and sealed with a matt medium. Its purpose is to stir something in the viewer and capture a sense of place that is personal to the individual. The big skies represent big dreams and hope for the future. It was created during a turning point in my life and like most of my work it signifies change and contrast in feeling.
I am a mixed media abstract artist based in North Yorkshire. I paint very intuitively, building up layers of energy which represent me at that moment in time. I sometimes use collage and draw a lot of inspiration from fashion and popular culture. I always want to create an air of ambiguity and for my work to pose more questions than answers.
Lucie Brown : Lucie Brown is an artist based in the Northeast of England whose paintings employ colour and texture to produce a tension between the physicality of paint and the image of technological devices. Gestural, impasto brush strokes of colour are applied to her surfaces which are presented with reference to the flatness of digital media screens. Brown’s work confronts the viewer with the current political issues that are consumed through widely used technological devices. The relationship between painting and digital imagery is explored, with a particular focus on how technology has influenced both communication and art practices. These painterly gestures serve to add movement and texture to the work and in doing so, challenge an audience to not only consider illusionary space, but also observe the materiality of the painted surface.
Simone Myers : Refugees – length 80cm width – 60cm is a painting in honour of children and families of war from Syria and palestine & Hunger – length 80cm width – 60cm a painting highlighting important topic of children and hunger in Yemen.
Freelancer artist illustrator based in Middlesbrough. Mainly work on realistic portraits but also other areas depending on what inspires us me
I create artwork inspired by tv shows and films like Star Wars and marvel
But I also have a passion for creating paintings on important topics and humanitarian issues like global warming and animals.
I create artwork inspired by tv shows and films like Star Wars and marvel
But I also have a passion for creating paintings on important topics and humanitarian issues like global warming and animals.
Sharon Howard : I am a Sunderland based artist. I have been painting and drawing for most of my life . I studied for a degree in Fine Art at Sunderland University and graduated in 2012 with a first. My painting practice has continued and developed since then and I have been able to become more dedicated to that process as circumstances have changed and eased and priorities have shifted. Recently the work has taken a new direction . Lock down gave me time to reflect about everything including why I paint,what I paint and how I paint. The beginning of the new works were drawings around the theme of the cabin in the woods and all the symbolism associated with that idea. These have progressed around that theme through experimentation with paint and colour. I’ve exhibited some work recently through Hunnortheast and was part of the 2021 Middlebrough Art Weekender and am keen to show my work more.
Jo Jenner : 22×16.5″ (frame size) collage, charcoal, acrylic and a household tester paint. A view of a pond in Guisborough forest. 2022.
I have just finished year one of a fine art degree at the Northern School of Art. I have developed my instinctual semi abstract landscape style and become excited about creating works in situ. I love working with acrylic paint and big thick crayons!
bloomjoshuatree : 900x1000mm red blue orange & 1125x1325mm red big
my name is josh and I paint a little bit. non representational expression
I like to play and use strong colours with spontaneous mark making.
I like to play and use strong colours with spontaneous mark making.
Harry Fraser : Yeehaw (9.9×25.9”) denim glued together in frame, drawn on and spray painted & Untitled (9×11”) found painting collaged and drawn on
I am a queer artist that uses mainly digital art and sculptural format to push a pink and queer themed point of view. I use nostalgic imagery through a queer point of view usually referencing elements of internet culture. Graduate of The Northern School Of Art which helped me to fine tune my artwork.
Zoe Forster : 2.19min 16mm film piece. ‘Ordinary People’. This piece is a monument to these ordinary people and their landscape, shown on a huge scale – looking up at themselves, I want the viewer to feel the significance of these people and hopefully, in turn see the significance of their own normality. I am very proud of my heritage, I am proud I know Factory Workers and Carers, Farmers and Dinner Ladies. And I think art should absolutely be for them too. Hence why my practice is concerned with representing and working within my community, with a group of people who I know feel that art is not for them, that it is for the other and that I know to be underrepresented within the art realm.
Identity and representation of the working classes, more so the West Cumbrian working-class is an experience I have been raised within therefore I’m comfortable in the knowledge that I will not exploit this community. Using materials that feel authentic to the people and landscape I wish to record is imperative to my work. To use my platform to raise my community up, having access to primarily exclusive art spaces and infiltrating these with working class people to create a space that feels more accessible for this community.
Carol Lonsdale : ‘Blank Canvas’. Each minute 250 babies are born into the world, all a blank canvas, ready to adorn their personal canvas physically and mentally, hopefully having the right to decorate in the manner they wish, free from external pressure to conform to other people’s ideology of how a canvas should appear. I have hand painted the eyeballs using clear glass drops, needle felted the eyelids, decorated it with the wording ‘blank canvas’ in 42 world wide languages.
I am a Craft Practitioner working on a self employed basis, for six years now I have regular contracts with Arc in Stockton-on-Tees and various other Teesside venues. I specialise in needle felting along with a variety of other mixed media and textile topics, sewing, knitting, crochet, decoupage, beadwork. I lead workshops for adults and children, I have discovered how creativity can improve people’s well being in a positive way through mindfulness and sense of pride in making something. Being part of this process is extremely rewarding.
Ursula Troche : ‘The Internet’ was exhibited twice, so would be up for its third exhibition, one was at Florence Mine Arts Centre in Egremont, West Cumbria, and the other time was again at Compressed Time Frames. It’s two fruit nets (one onion and one plum net), placed next to each other, with the space in between those nets becoming the internet space.
I am an artist who writes, performs and makes between places, reflecting somehow the multiple places I have lived, travelled to and migrated from. Migrations started across the North Sea, in Germany, leading to London, and then to the Irish Sea coast in West Cumbria, across from Scotland on the Solway. Questioning our world order, and with a desire to live off-grid, after studying politics and African Studies, I became a performance poet. Later, I studied Intercultural Therapy,, began training in psychotherapy and ended up doing psychogeography instead! Through my work as a life model, I gained a deeper experience of stillness and movement, as well as time and space – this led me to incorporate more sound and dance in my art practice. Together with psychogeography’s focus on place, space- and edge(land)s, I also moved into walking- and live art . I then made a assemblages and interventions, such as layering yarn around trees, on walks but also at community festivals in public parks. A desire to make things that last, combined with the urgency to work to save our environment, led me to work with plastic packaging, and found objects on the beach, by stitching on them.
Billy Wainwright : I’m just a 14 year old aspiring artist who loves working with spray paints and creating pieces all about space! I’m hoping to one day show my work all around the world and learn and improve as I go.
Miranda Richmond : Demolition study, mixed media on paper, 56 x 76cms 2021. Platform, oil on canvas, 58 x 42cms 2021. Florabella Marsh, oil on canvas, 60 x 84 cms 2022
I was born in Buckinghamshire, studied Fine Art at the University of Bristol, and moved to North Yorkshire in 1981. I was married to Miles Richmond (founder member of Borough group) and lived at the Motorhouse, East Rounton, where I taught at summer schools for the University of Hertfordshire . Moving to Middlesbrough in 1994, I went on to teach painting at various adult education courses in Middlesborough and Stockton-on-Tees, as well as organising and running workshops and classes for many client groups. Later, after training in art therapy at the University of Sheffield, I worked full-time for some years as a Community and Support worker for the North of England Refugee Service. For the past 3 years, together with the well-known artist and community worker, Adrian Moule, I have been engaged in setting up and helping to run a Community Arts and Health organisation, 2B, situated in the Hill Street Centre, Middlesbrough
I think of myself as primarily a landscape painter, mainly working out in the landscape in front of the subject , though I also undertake figure paintings and portraiture. Recent work has concentrated on a series of studies of the marshes near Seaton Carew including studies of the off-shore structures undergoing decommissioning at the Able Seaton port.
I think of myself as primarily a landscape painter, mainly working out in the landscape in front of the subject , though I also undertake figure paintings and portraiture. Recent work has concentrated on a series of studies of the marshes near Seaton Carew including studies of the off-shore structures undergoing decommissioning at the Able Seaton port.
Stephen Irving : Penthouse Parking – concrete, toy car, gloss paint & LOVE LUST LIES – Spray paint on gloss paint on wood + Gravity.
My work exploits practice and form to create work that is not predetermined by its outcome, but rather through the process in which it is created. Destruction, abstraction and re-imagining drives the process and, as a result, the finished work can be seen more as a by-product of its production then the piece itself.
Bobby Benjamin : Steel & Balls (Wind & Piss), 2022. Steel, footballs, snooker balls.
Bobby Benjamin is an English artist and curator working predominantly in found objects. His delicately balanced, counter hegemonic works explore themes of class fetishisation, masculine identity and place.
Nadene Micklewright : Chinese Whispers Polyptych’, 2022
This piece is a process piece which displays a continuous print; adding a new mark and printing it onto the other four canvases and waiting for them to dry then repeating the process with each other colour. This piece concludes the research conducted in my final major project which focused mainly on Baudrillard’s theory of simulacrum which was essentially the notion of copying a copy until there is no ‘original’ piece alongside artists such as Roy Lichtenstein and Glenn Brown who focusses on aspects of the theories I researched.
This piece is a process piece which displays a continuous print; adding a new mark and printing it onto the other four canvases and waiting for them to dry then repeating the process with each other colour. This piece concludes the research conducted in my final major project which focused mainly on Baudrillard’s theory of simulacrum which was essentially the notion of copying a copy until there is no ‘original’ piece alongside artists such as Roy Lichtenstein and Glenn Brown who focusses on aspects of the theories I researched.
I am an artist that focusses on the notion of process and printmaking. I have recently just graduated from The Northern School of Art with a Bachelor’s in Fine Art. Later in the year i will be continuing my artistic journey by continuing onto my Master’s degree in Arts Practice.
Andy Broderick : The Outsider, Shut it and Magic Beans
Originally from Kilkenny in the Republic of Ireland, Andy Broderick arrived in the UK in 1997 to study Fine Art at Teesside University and since graduating in 2000, has been working as an artist from his studio in Saltburn, exhibiting widely throughout the country and internationally including exhibiting at the Royal College of Art in London and with the Royal Society of Portrait Painters at the Hatton Gallery in Newcastle. Andy recently completed a Master’s Degree in Art Psychotherapy.
Lauryn Brede : My artworks challenge parameters surrounding painting and sculpture by utilising and fusing materials. Distorted, twisted and restored artworks are born from destruction; a process-based exploration engaged with subverting notions of categorisation. With no particular narrative, complex ideas are minimized and presented in a simplified manner, anticipating the appearance of raw material and questioning laws of tradition.
I have been studying fine art for 5 years now at The Northern School of Art, both college and university; graduating in July. Furthermore, my intentions are to continue this creative path into my masters. I have collaborated in a number of virtual and physical exhibitions including Stockton library, Pineapple Black, The Holy Art and Tebbsgallery. I have also been awarded with the Auxiliary award, which has provided me with the opportunity to exhibit artworks in September. In the lead up to this, I intent to get involved with the art industry and exhibit more artworks.
Joshua Parker : ‘Uncanny Dream’ (2022) 10 min video installation
When an animation contains an error, it distracts the viewer. Thus when an animation is composed of errors, it mesmerises the viewer. Uncanny Dream is inspired in part by Tommy Wiseau’s, The Room – a famously bad movie with a cult following. Joshua Parker’s video is intentionally made to look and sound poor, to feel like a dream you cannot remember. The memory is crude because you cannot remember its entirety and not all of it makes sense – akin to a distant, fading memory.
When an animation contains an error, it distracts the viewer. Thus when an animation is composed of errors, it mesmerises the viewer. Uncanny Dream is inspired in part by Tommy Wiseau’s, The Room – a famously bad movie with a cult following. Joshua Parker’s video is intentionally made to look and sound poor, to feel like a dream you cannot remember. The memory is crude because you cannot remember its entirety and not all of it makes sense – akin to a distant, fading memory.
I am an A-Level student currently studying Fine Art and Film Studies at New College Durham. Film, Photography and Music are my passion, and all play a big part in my current art practice. As a person with ADHD, my artistic direction has come out of necessity. I often have difficulty with memory which sometimes makes it harder for me to be as creatively proactive as my peers – I tried to embrace that in my current project.
Alan Morley : ‘Billy Jean’. 2018-19. Remake of a student artwork which in 1983 failed to be made. Emulsion, acrylic and oil paint on canvas with stuck-on audio tape cassettes.
Part of Britain’s New Image Art (painting’s resurgence) – the movement which supercharged art in the 1980s after modernism’s conceptualism and minimalism high point of the 1970s. The movement which paved the way for Brit Art at the end of the decade by championing the return of the ‘visual’ to visual art. Secretary and archivist of the Cleveland Art Society – one of Britain’s oldest practising art groups. Author of the Short Compendium and related articles on the history of the Cleveland Art Society – the group which helped found Middlesbrough’s art and literary institutions.
Colleen Ellington : The first stumbling block and big thing to cross over is “what am I going to draw/ carve ?” to move forward from this I decided to:-
* stick with lino printing but no editions or runs
* Use random shapes to print to over print
* Use any other media that I enjoy
* Let the journey develop in its own direction…
* stick with lino printing but no editions or runs
* Use random shapes to print to over print
* Use any other media that I enjoy
* Let the journey develop in its own direction…
A South Arfrican now living on Teesside. I am a mid career artist I think, not that it matters. Lockdown has seen quite a shift in art world:- any and everybody seems to be an artist, so for me being an artist doesn’t feel as special it used to be. But not all bad…as it has pushed me to reevaluate and see that I’ve reached a stage in my artist journey where I need to go off track, make a big step and move out of my comfort zone…This is also very necessary as I am experiencing serious eye sight issues. It is important to explore new ways of working in light of this ….future proof my creative practice and just keep doing something that makes me happy.
Sophie Coleman : Heavily inspired by kitsch, pop, and internet culture, I take elements like colour or shape and using them within abstract expressionist painting. Working with bright colours in flat blocks with little tone or dimension. Using a mathematical, organised approach to creating patterns and straight lines which can feel almost synthetic, then combining it with unmistakably handmade marks like a splatter or a brushstroke. This creates a tension as the controlled precision is ruined with one quick movement.
Patterns are a recurring theme within the work, often inspired from movies or advertising. The pattern represents kitsch, the idea of mass-production under capitalism and the act of hand-painting a pattern which can easily be bought or found is somewhat ironic, as my work often is. By using expressive marks on top of this pattern, it once again creates that tension between the ideas of mass-production and abstract expressionist painting.
Recent work has been using a ‘queer colour palette’ to explore domestic themes, exploring the idea of queer domesticity and suburbia in a camp way. I aim to create art that is fun to look at, oversaturated, gaudy and ridiculous. The foray into queer domesticity has led my work away from abstraction and has become focused on capturing hyper realised snapshots of domestic settings, often including three dimensional elements to achieve this goal. Dado rails and tongue and groove panelling used to form the suggestion of a wall, which becomes ironic when the canvas itself is then placed on a wall. Patterns and shapes taken from the familiar interior of an everyday home; light switches and frames residing within paintings.
Recent work has been using a ‘queer colour palette’ to explore domestic themes, exploring the idea of queer domesticity and suburbia in a camp way. I aim to create art that is fun to look at, oversaturated, gaudy and ridiculous. The foray into queer domesticity has led my work away from abstraction and has become focused on capturing hyper realised snapshots of domestic settings, often including three dimensional elements to achieve this goal. Dado rails and tongue and groove panelling used to form the suggestion of a wall, which becomes ironic when the canvas itself is then placed on a wall. Patterns and shapes taken from the familiar interior of an everyday home; light switches and frames residing within paintings.
Francis Fitzgerald : A set of three image selected from a series of works around the urban landscapes in Teesside. Though they could be anywhere. I discovered this space on a walk around North Ormesby in the Boro. It lies beneath the A66 flyovers and is essentially anon space that leads to nowhere in particular. I was put in mind of a Concrete Island, a JG Ballard novel, in which a man is marooned in a space between motorways after a crash. I think there also allusions, in my mind at least, to the dungeons of Piranesi.
have a long career behind me as an educator in the arts, mostly at Cleveland College of Art and Design (latterly Northern School of Art), where I headed up the Degree in Graphic Design and taught on several other courses too. I was also producing and exhibiting my own work (Screenprint, Letterpress and Photography). Just over two years ago, I retired from teaching to concentrate on my own practice, which is moving away from print and more toward photography. Where I aim to document political and social events with some immediacy, I use digital photography and social media to provide very quick visual feedback to the communities involved. However, my narratives upon the urban environment and its inhabitants are more contemplative/ meditative and for these images I tend to use analogue means. For this I process and print everything in my own darkroom.
Mick Gibson : The Boy in the Bath ( a painting of a memory of myself as a child playing with a ‘Rolykins’ Dalek in the bath). Oil on canvas
3′ x 2′ & The Wrestler (gouache on paper, a reference to the Saturday afternoon wrestling on TV and attending matches on holiday to see ‘The Fox’ Les Kellet, in action).
3′ x 2′ & The Wrestler (gouache on paper, a reference to the Saturday afternoon wrestling on TV and attending matches on holiday to see ‘The Fox’ Les Kellet, in action).
Mick’s work is biographical, exploring my experiences of life in a working class community.
Stuart Mel Wilson : Wilsons work concentrates on a personal focus on the human existence. The absurdity and the humour in the way we process this world, whether as an individual or as a collective. There is a heavy interest in the ways we digest the information given to us from the world, the background study to this is philosophy, psychology and language theory, some influences to Wilson’s thinking in this areas stretch from Adorno, Jung to Wittgenstein.
Dyslexia is a massive influence and is also I reason Wilson makes art. Wilson own dyslexia dictates that he exorcise his own intellect in art. Saying that, it also defines one of my truest beliefs in art. Art can talks where the person is unable, regularly the spoken word is too literal. Art, at times he reference art as his language.
Exploring the relationship we have with myth making through images. The relationship between myths in history and the modern idea of myth making. Using history and contemporary thought to give the viewer an unconscious understanding to art and the world it is situated in.
The current focus is on curating engaging installation art, using art to curate a space for the viewer can immerse themselves in doing this with traditional mark making processes as to not convolute the viewer idea that this is a piece of art. Turning them into installation and sculptural works. The intention of taking over the space, subtlety.
A drive force behind Stuart Wilson Ideas are that of art being throw away. Instantly we are questioning if this in a fact, then is this troublesum are a personal stumbling block for Wilson. Wilson presents it as a problem in the great scheme of arts and society.
For Stuart Mel Wilson these are the contradictions that exist between the aspirations of the artist and realities of working in an age in which art has been knocked off the pedestal it once stood upon as an exemplar of the ‘highest’ virtues. In this time of the throw away, the passing fad, and the ephemeral in art, Wilson sets himself the task of mimicking the scale, grandeur and the intensity of labour of The Old Masters.
Dyslexia is a massive influence and is also I reason Wilson makes art. Wilson own dyslexia dictates that he exorcise his own intellect in art. Saying that, it also defines one of my truest beliefs in art. Art can talks where the person is unable, regularly the spoken word is too literal. Art, at times he reference art as his language.
Exploring the relationship we have with myth making through images. The relationship between myths in history and the modern idea of myth making. Using history and contemporary thought to give the viewer an unconscious understanding to art and the world it is situated in.
The current focus is on curating engaging installation art, using art to curate a space for the viewer can immerse themselves in doing this with traditional mark making processes as to not convolute the viewer idea that this is a piece of art. Turning them into installation and sculptural works. The intention of taking over the space, subtlety.
A drive force behind Stuart Wilson Ideas are that of art being throw away. Instantly we are questioning if this in a fact, then is this troublesum are a personal stumbling block for Wilson. Wilson presents it as a problem in the great scheme of arts and society.
For Stuart Mel Wilson these are the contradictions that exist between the aspirations of the artist and realities of working in an age in which art has been knocked off the pedestal it once stood upon as an exemplar of the ‘highest’ virtues. In this time of the throw away, the passing fad, and the ephemeral in art, Wilson sets himself the task of mimicking the scale, grandeur and the intensity of labour of The Old Masters.
Sarah Murray : Altered dolls – While dolls are usually associated with innocence and childhood play, these porcelain dolls have been dismembered and butchered to form something that is more fascinatingly grotesque.
I’m a goth psychology teacher and so find myself drawn to the macabre and unusual, which are as much a part of human nature and experience as joy and beauty. And indeed, there can be joy and beauty in the darkness – I get great happiness from my more sinister creations.
Suhail Mitoubsi : Elevate, 2020 – Acrylic paints on canvas
100 x 70 x 3.8 cm (39 x 28 x 1.5 inch). The language of colours is absolutely fascinating. In this painting, the struggle between two powerful contrasting colours, black and white (my favourite colours) produces amazing energy. Black colour is incredibly strong and intimidating exudes authority and makes us feel secure and protected. White, on the other hand, is the colour of purity and innocence. It represents space and a new beginning. The overall composition of the painting creates a beautifully balanced harmony. Seeking balance and harmony is the subject of all my paintings. I have a great passion for reflecting calm and harmony despite what may seem otherwise in the artwork. Every painting I make is a special journey of my life experience. I completed the painting during the first COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020, seeking light through dark times.
100 x 70 x 3.8 cm (39 x 28 x 1.5 inch). The language of colours is absolutely fascinating. In this painting, the struggle between two powerful contrasting colours, black and white (my favourite colours) produces amazing energy. Black colour is incredibly strong and intimidating exudes authority and makes us feel secure and protected. White, on the other hand, is the colour of purity and innocence. It represents space and a new beginning. The overall composition of the painting creates a beautifully balanced harmony. Seeking balance and harmony is the subject of all my paintings. I have a great passion for reflecting calm and harmony despite what may seem otherwise in the artwork. Every painting I make is a special journey of my life experience. I completed the painting during the first COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020, seeking light through dark times.
I’m fascinated by the expressive language of colours, shapes and lines. Painting and calligraphy have always been part of my life since early childhood. Some of my extended family members were professional artists and calligraphers and that seems to have been passed down the generations. My journey in art began with watercolour figurative and landscapes. Later, I became interested in photography and nearly made it into a professional career. Painting and photography are amazing creative art, but I needed more freedom of self-expression not constrained by realism rules. I found that freedom in non-representational abstract painting, which I have been perusing for over 30 years and never looked back. My abstract paintings are far beyond the aesthetic beauty and do not try to create a realistic rendering of the external appearance of the subject, but instead, seek to capture its inner spirit. My inspirations are influenced by the concept of “life force energy or Chi”, the energy that gives us life and can transform negative feelings into positive. Every painting I make attempts to expose the delicate balance of such energy to hopefully help enhance relaxation and reduce stress, depression, anxiety and other mental health issues.
Joseph Goddard : Joseph Goddard’s latest sculptural project, Heritage, creates an intersection between urbanism, abstraction and expressionism.
The work acts as an uprooting of artefacts forged in the former modernist era. Fragments suggestive of monumentality indicate a duality of process and the passing of time, as the hyperactivity of unfiltered consciousness is scrawled on to the surfaces of slow glacial modernist structures. Displaced, relocated into the now and displayed in armatures , the work stimulates questions regarding the effects and functions of post-war relics, provoking an ambivalence of protection, warning, veneration and restraint .
“My work is responsive to early memories of encountering big cities; the feeling of stepping into a set, one filled with props and constructs ; testaments to the grand visions of their makers and their unwieldly doctrines. Ever since then the urban-scape has never failed to offer moments and objects of real presence.
Cities are arenas of competing ambitions and ideologies; dialogues exist between structures, materials and gestures, which echo from the past, permeate the present and encroach into the future. There are times and encounters which, although are happenstance, just feel too designed, they radiate aura and emanate the spirit of art. At these times it feels as if the environment’s sole function is to operate as an art object, it instils within me a desire to fuse, sculpt and atomise these forms and their associations at will .”
In dealing with the familiar-made-incongruous, Heritage foregrounds notions of legacy, preservation, ruination, functionality and fragility, whilst employing the fetishistic mode of urban photography.
The work acts as an uprooting of artefacts forged in the former modernist era. Fragments suggestive of monumentality indicate a duality of process and the passing of time, as the hyperactivity of unfiltered consciousness is scrawled on to the surfaces of slow glacial modernist structures. Displaced, relocated into the now and displayed in armatures , the work stimulates questions regarding the effects and functions of post-war relics, provoking an ambivalence of protection, warning, veneration and restraint .
“My work is responsive to early memories of encountering big cities; the feeling of stepping into a set, one filled with props and constructs ; testaments to the grand visions of their makers and their unwieldly doctrines. Ever since then the urban-scape has never failed to offer moments and objects of real presence.
Cities are arenas of competing ambitions and ideologies; dialogues exist between structures, materials and gestures, which echo from the past, permeate the present and encroach into the future. There are times and encounters which, although are happenstance, just feel too designed, they radiate aura and emanate the spirit of art. At these times it feels as if the environment’s sole function is to operate as an art object, it instils within me a desire to fuse, sculpt and atomise these forms and their associations at will .”
In dealing with the familiar-made-incongruous, Heritage foregrounds notions of legacy, preservation, ruination, functionality and fragility, whilst employing the fetishistic mode of urban photography.
Mary Watson : Ed’s Hat, blown glass and feather, 30x35x30cm Karen’s Crystal, Blown glass, enamel painted sheet glass and steel armature, 80x60x4cm Ruth’s Rucksack, Smoke-fired Terracotta, 40x65x30cm
Through a series of drawing workshops with family, friends, and colleagues we explore the question: what objects from our lives do we value and why? Influenced by archaeological ceramics, drawing games and social histories I have created several ceramic and glass sculptures. These sculptures act as alternative portraiture, not depicting images of people, but instead helping us consider ourselves and our contemporary culture through the objects, patterns, and shapes that we surround ourselves with.
Participants were asked to draw an object from their life that they value, they were then asked to do a series of line drawings with differing restrictions, this began a process of abstraction which ended with my sculptural interpretation of the drawings. Through QR codes each piece is linked to a sound clip, with the participant sharing something about their choice of object.
Participants were asked to draw an object from their life that they value, they were then asked to do a series of line drawings with differing restrictions, this began a process of abstraction which ended with my sculptural interpretation of the drawings. Through QR codes each piece is linked to a sound clip, with the participant sharing something about their choice of object.
Material learning, exploration, and teaching are within my practice as a ceramic and mixed media artist, emerging researcher, and educator. I am an active professional artist whose work follows three strands. Under the brand of Mareware, I create and sell functional ceramics through fairs, retail and commission. My sculptural work encompasses objects, installations, and engagement, which share stories about the communities, identities, and values of people surrounding me. I also work in education and in well-being as Ceramics Technician at the University of Sunderland, where I have seized opportunities to engage with research projects, which I have now entwined with my own practice.
Olivia Askwith : I am a feminist abstract artist who explores the female form through hyper feminine colour palettes and erotic female forms.
Lucy Harding : A creepy and eerie video consisting of four different stop motions, purposefully stitched together along with music that will hopefully ‘disturb’ the viewer… I probably spent 2 months on this, thinking of the concept, taking the shoots, editing, re editing, re shooting, and then finally creating the final video. It was fun but I also learnt a lot and I’m proud of how it looks.
I’m a young artist from Stockton on Tees. I’m really interested in film and one day hope to be a cinematographer, but right now I’m into anything creative. My art is usually big and messy, whilst my photography is very edited and creepy looking. I’ve deferred from university for an extra year to focus on fully immersing myself in the North East creative industry where I hope to gain lots of experience and build my confidence as an artist.
Junior Durrani : Misspent Youth: vol. I – Acrylic on A2 canvas (42 x 59.4 cm) & Matchday Memories – Acrylic on canvas (91.4 x 61 cm)
In my art, I want the observer to take a journey back in time, become immersed in the story behind the piece and free themselves of traditional ways of painting. My intent is to express a vibe, a feeling, a moment: a shared collective experience through the combination of local subjects and an alternative palette knife technique. I want to capture something that conveys the very essence of remembering where we once were or who we were trying to be. After spending the last few years incorporating minute brush strokes, focusing on finer, illustrative details within typically picturesque landscape paintings, I am now much more excited by the process of telling a story using recognisable landmarks, relying on much looser, abstract, expressive strokes on a canvas. One of the most freeing things I have uncovered through my practice is that by only using a limited number of materials, sometimes just one palette knife and four to five colours on the palette, the whole process of presenting a shared love of the local area to the viewer has become much more exciting and contemporary. The viewer is presented with art that acknowledges and utilises some of the conventional ways of painting and breaks free from these methods with a sense of naivety, creating a striking nostalgia.
Brian Lee : Willow Pattern Roseberry. Digital illustration. A trip from darlingto to the coast. A2 – Parmographic. Digital illustration. Information graphic detailing the construction of a Parmo. A2 – Roseberry Vibes. Digital Illustration. A celebrationat the end of one of the lockdowns. A2
I was raised in Redcar and has now settled in Darlington after many years moving around the UK and abroad. I undertook my Foundation course on the Arts at the Burlem Road annex of Cleveland College of Art and Design. This led to me studying for a degree at Exeter College of Art and Design, specializing in illustration.
Alongside my work as a freelance illustrator and designer I have begun to create a series of images and illustrations based on stories a connected to growing up and living in the northeast of the UK. Many centre around landmarks and specific places, whilst some are responses to the oddities and idiosyncrasies of the culture of this region. There is a broad variety of approaches to my image making which covers traditional and digital media.
Alongside my work as a freelance illustrator and designer I have begun to create a series of images and illustrations based on stories a connected to growing up and living in the northeast of the UK. Many centre around landmarks and specific places, whilst some are responses to the oddities and idiosyncrasies of the culture of this region. There is a broad variety of approaches to my image making which covers traditional and digital media.
Horace Zontal : Billingham based photographer and digital artist, musician, producer and DJ.
I love to explore and document Teesside’s iconic industrial areas, urban decay, brutalist architecture, liminal spaces and its juxtaposition with nature. I’d quite like to do some sort of digital slide show, perhaps with the atmospheric ambient music I compose playing alongside it.
Hugh Mooney : The sharp end, the receiving end, the shitty end of the stick. This is where I came from, this heritage of received hate and class war has and continues to inform and form the work of many artists like me. Anger once channeled into a creative energy is a major force.
Plato, Baudrillard, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Kant, Marx and Bergson and a few others yes I have read them, and yes some of their ideas have helped form my world view and my work but not as much the whole field of potatoes I carry on both my shoulders.
Middle class bastards, some of them very well meaning ones, talk in pretentious tones about working at the “coal face”. The Coalface of education, of social services etc..Yes it might be tough, But try being the coalface itself.. the body of life, substance and humans constantly being drilled, cut, carved and exploded by the ideas and policies of the powerful and the rich, all in the name of profit and power for the few at the top, or what the rulers call progress.
This is where my work and I come from no matter how different processes may alter the look of the work, it all starts in the same place. The certain knowledge that the world as it is structured and designed by the influential and powerful is wrong, that many of the aims, ambitions and ideas propagated among the masses as “normal” or “positive” are flawed, destructive and inhuman. The certain knowledge that we are controlled by insane heartless bastards who need to be attacked, criticised and ridiculed whenever the chance presents itself. One way I have of doing this is through the creation of work that uses collage, photo montage and assemblage made of images and text taken from various media sources, images that combine text and images from often, banal sources to make simple, question-raising statements, that combine the incongruous and incompatible to question and challenge all commonly accepted ideas, all norms and the viewer’s acceptance of the status quo..
Plato, Baudrillard, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Kant, Marx and Bergson and a few others yes I have read them, and yes some of their ideas have helped form my world view and my work but not as much the whole field of potatoes I carry on both my shoulders.
Middle class bastards, some of them very well meaning ones, talk in pretentious tones about working at the “coal face”. The Coalface of education, of social services etc..Yes it might be tough, But try being the coalface itself.. the body of life, substance and humans constantly being drilled, cut, carved and exploded by the ideas and policies of the powerful and the rich, all in the name of profit and power for the few at the top, or what the rulers call progress.
This is where my work and I come from no matter how different processes may alter the look of the work, it all starts in the same place. The certain knowledge that the world as it is structured and designed by the influential and powerful is wrong, that many of the aims, ambitions and ideas propagated among the masses as “normal” or “positive” are flawed, destructive and inhuman. The certain knowledge that we are controlled by insane heartless bastards who need to be attacked, criticised and ridiculed whenever the chance presents itself. One way I have of doing this is through the creation of work that uses collage, photo montage and assemblage made of images and text taken from various media sources, images that combine text and images from often, banal sources to make simple, question-raising statements, that combine the incongruous and incompatible to question and challenge all commonly accepted ideas, all norms and the viewer’s acceptance of the status quo..
David Stewart : I got paralysed January last year from eyes to toes blah blah anyway made a mega fast recovery but since my recovery I’ve been very disjointed in my life. I don’t really have a clue about painting, everything I’m using I’ve found at the local tip or carboot sale e.g paints canvases.
Erin Collins : “I’m a Geordie Girl with a VIP Edge” Digital Photograph, 36 x 42 cm & “Lust is Cheap as Chips”, Digital Photograph 34 x 41 cm.
Within this current body of work Collins subverts the boundaries between body and food to generate a corporeal engagement which is both seductive and repulsive in equal measure. The accompanying satirical text gives nod to the saccharine affirmations which have infiltrated our homes, feeds and dentist offices. A complementarity of humour and darkness, the uncanny and the familiar, reveals the grotesque undertones of the aesthetically driven human character. Subject, object and viewer are interweaved in ways that are at once extravagant, aesthetic, unsettling and bizarre.
Erin Collins works to explore the phenomenological boundaries of lens-based media, set within the margins of Surrealism, popular culture and social media. In quest of an embodied experience through photographic tactility and media technology, Collins’s practice centres on the disconcerting juxtapositions yet gratifying association of textures, food and the disjointed elusive body. Employing a highly stylised visual language, motifs mined from everyday curiosities and social media algorithms intersect with surrealist strategies. Themes often include satirical text, fragmented body parts, soiled clothing and wet food, exposed and reworked through the uncanny. Shallow depths of field and rich colour palettes enhance the instant gratification of the works visually pleasing surreality; grotesqueness is subdued by aesthetic.
James Falloon : ‘The Hysterical Hierarchy’
I am a local artist from Middlesbrough and have always wanted to be creative but never really went out of my way to do so until about 4 years ago. I love the way abstract art that doesn’t have a clear meaning looks I love the open to interpretation side of things and I love to see and hear what people get out of any of the works I create.
Oliveia Bartlett : The work that I have uploaded is a series of images where I have used a camera-less photographic technique called cliche-verre. Within these images I have explored the reactionary process between inks and household chemicals such as bleach and laundry liquid. This work showcases unseen perspectives of landscapes in an abstract way while communicating the uncertainty of climate change.
Over the course of the past year, I have been exploring and experimenting with a range of materials and techniques within the time of the Anthropocene with a heavy focus on the sublime and uncertainty of climate change. I have been pushing the boundaries of photography by using camera-less photographic techniques which have a fine art and experimental side to them. Within my work I aim to create a sublime feeling while considering the phenomenological perceptions of the human experience.
Sam Sherborne : I have worked as a blacksmith for many years but have only fairly recently been able to concentrate on making sculpture. Over the years I have also taught metalwork and woodwork [design and Technology] as well as art in comprehensive schools. More recently I have taught blacksmithing to young adults with special needs.
My sculptures are often autobiographical and I make them to process memories and concerns and clarify my ideas as well as to generate ‘flow’. By making the sculptures I can explore a feeling and so understand it more clearly.
My method starts with a lot of quick sketching to produce drawings which are spontaneous and lively, tapping into serendipity and the unconscious. Then, using precise technical blacksmithing skills, I aim to bring the sketches’ energy and immediacy into forged metalwork.
My work has themes which can be categorised into either ‘family’ [memories, emotions, dysfunction and dynamics] or ‘everyday’, including the scourge of modern technology, work, impoverished modern-day ritual, and worry.
Having an element of humour is important to me, even though some of the subject matter is quite serious. By bringing together opposites such as humour and worry I strive to create an unusual alloy. I aim for the sculpture not to be too concrete with fixed prescribed meanings. The meaning is mostly quite specific for me but not meant to be too concrete for the viewer; they can make their own stories up.
My method starts with a lot of quick sketching to produce drawings which are spontaneous and lively, tapping into serendipity and the unconscious. Then, using precise technical blacksmithing skills, I aim to bring the sketches’ energy and immediacy into forged metalwork.
My work has themes which can be categorised into either ‘family’ [memories, emotions, dysfunction and dynamics] or ‘everyday’, including the scourge of modern technology, work, impoverished modern-day ritual, and worry.
Having an element of humour is important to me, even though some of the subject matter is quite serious. By bringing together opposites such as humour and worry I strive to create an unusual alloy. I aim for the sculpture not to be too concrete with fixed prescribed meanings. The meaning is mostly quite specific for me but not meant to be too concrete for the viewer; they can make their own stories up.
Caozhehao : Enemy of the people
My work is a hand-drawn animation. The inspiration for this animation comes from Wuhan, where Covid-19 from out in this city. In this process, Doctor Li Wenliang told his classmates and friends about a new virus about he knew in the chat app. But then he was admonished by the local police. After the full outbreak of the epidemic, a large number of citizen investigators from other cities rushed to this city to investigate the origin of the epidemic. But without exception, they were all arrested by the police. Based on these stories, I created a new story as the principal line of this animation. Simultaneously, I also incorporated Ibsen’s drama into my work.
My name is Cao Zhehao. I am artist. Now I live and work in Newcastle. I graduated in BA(hons) Fine Art of Teesside University in 2020. I will graduate in MFA of Northumbria University in 2022. I previously participated the exhibition in MIMA in 2021. I also participated the other exhibition in Italy. I focus on hand-drawn animation. At the same time, I also make drawing, painting and sculpture.
Jade Lenehan : I’m an illustrator based in Hartlepool and my art shows off the feminine and the raw emotions we face as human beings. I have been doing a series this year based around clowns and alcoholism. It’s about how being self aware about your addiction makes you feel a fool at times.
Wendy Copeland : Wendy is an artist teacher that works in the Teesside area. She is heavily influenced by her local surroundings and enjoys going out and about and capturing her adventures with a wide range of film and photography techniques.