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Co-curated with Nabila Abdel Nabi
and Bilal Akkouche
Collections Exhibition
October 7, 2024 – ongoing
The connections and exchanges formed by artists as they moved across the globe resulted in a variety of visual expressions, often shaped by their unique trajectories or memories of their distant homes. While some artists pursued these approaches independently, others were part of schools and groups. These included: the Casablanca Art School, CoBrA (acronym for Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam), the Khartoum School, Bauhaus, as well as artistic currents such as Lettrism, Surrealism and Saqqakhana.
Following the devastation of the two world wars, artists across different cities were already experimenting with modes of abstraction, and the figure had all but disappeared from painting. Artists from newly independent countries sought new artistic vocabularies rooted in their local visual heritages. Working within a continuum of forms across history, many experimented with letters and script as the basis for new, anticolonial, abstract languages. These forms often converged to suggest figures, landscapes and cityscapes at the intersection of abstraction and representation.
At the same time, European artists turned to Asia and North Africa for new artistic ideas. These ranged from the interlocking geometric shapes in Kufic script to the fluid brush marks in Japanese and Chinese calligraphy. This display demonstrates some of these transformative encounters, that pushed artists to reconceive ideas of depth, surface and materiality.
Exhibition curated by Salma Tuqan
Guest Curator: Algeria Archive Display
May 25, 2024 – September 8, 2024
This era saw a generation of painters, most of whom were formally trained in fine art academies in France, called upon to establish a national school of painting. Their goal was to develop a pictorial language that reflected their cultural heritage and the revolutionary ideals of the new state by producing works that were uniquely Algerian and readily identifiable as such. Known colloquially as ‘independence painters’, these artists were politically savvy; many were informed by anticolonial nationalist discourses.
Through print media outlets, notably Révolution Africaine and El Moudjahid, and nationalised art institutions such as Union Nationale des Arts Plastiques (UNAP, or National Union of Plastic Artists), they came together and engaged in prolific but sometimes incendiary and slanderous debates on establishing Algeria’s new art. Artists diverged significantly in their approaches, leading to a diverse range of themes and styles. Influenced by Soviet art, some embraced social realism and others expressionism, while an overwhelming number turned to abstraction.
This form of abstraction, however, did not signify a break from tradition, as commonly recognised in European art, but rather a reinvention of it with a modern twist. Abstract painters drew from a rich array of sources, including, not least, Arabic calligraphy, architectural shapes, carpet designs, local materials, and geometric symbols. The members of the avant-garde artist collective Aouchem, Choukri Mesli (b.1931, Algeria; d.2017, France) and Denis Martinez (b. 1941, Algeria), set themselves apart from the artistic expression of their time by proposing a return to the Sahara and the millennial visual forms of the indigenous territories known as Tamazgha.
The post-independence era was an energetic yet tumultuous one, with no ultimate method for image-making or consensus on defining Algerian art. For the artists of the abstract genre, this particular expression offered not a definitive answer but one of several possibilities.
Co-curated with Angela Burdon
October 18 - 19, 2024
Organized for the Third Biennial Black Midwest Symposium, Roots and Horizons brings together the work of artists who received the inaugural Artist Fellowships from the Black Midwest Initiative in Summer 2023. The selection presented here rethinks the idea of the Black Midwest from a variety of expansive perspectives.
The themes range from the history of Midwestern cities and their Black communities to collecting oral histories and building accessible archives. Some artists consider individual identities and what it means to operate on an intersectional level as a Black Midwesterner. And while certain works focus on the resilience of Black communities throughout history, others dwell on the present moment and address current issues. Together, they reimagine potential futures—new horizons—for the Black Midwest, rooted in dialogue with their past, communities, and one another.
Co-curated with Angela Burdon
October 9, 2018
Part 1: Waiting Room
This section presents nine videos by Korean-American artist Laura Hyunjhee Kim. Kim’s humorous works utilize DIY, amateur internet aesthetics and consumer electronics, drawing inspiration from viral memes, lo-fi pop music, narrative found-footage film, and kitschy low-budget commercials. Her videos explore emerging trends in consumer-grade technology to capture the underlying dreams and desires that influence human and non-human existence. All selected works feature unique soundtracks blending Korean pop with waiting room music, introducing Kim’s playful visual and auditory style.
Run Time: 18’28”
Part 2: Masculine Vulnerability
Emerging filmmaker Kariim Case presents Take Me to The Water. The film explores Black masculinity and the construction of self. Inspired by pioneering Black artists like Marlon Riggs and Carrie Mae Weems, the film examines three life stages—childhood, adolescence, and adulthood—investigating who and what formed the man Case is today while challenging stereotypes society attributes to Black men. The work unpacks masculine vulnerability, scrutinizing social norms governing how men experience and express emotions. Stemming from homesickness and desire to connect with home (both physical and ancestral), the film finds ways to express contradictions and vulnerabilities without fear of stereotyping, directly challenging audiences. Case will introduce his work and take questions afterward.
Run Time: 17’21”
Part 3: Deterritoralized Voices
This section features Inside / Outside - What is Love? by Turkish filmmaker Müge Yıldız. Set in Tarlabasi, a historically marginalized, Kurdish-heavy Istanbul neighborhood with high rates of violence and conflict, the film captures an area undergoing forced gentrification due to Turkish government urban renewal laws that have displaced many residents. Yıldız walks into local shops, casually chatting with owners about love, while the film features only passersby outside, capturing the neighborhood’s daily rhythm accompanied by displaced monologues. Without any manipulation, Yıldız observes these spaces in their own time; every moment of the film has its own destiny.
The film creates a cacophony of voices rising from Istanbul, characterized by objectivity that shows rather than interprets, presenting collages, snippets, and vignettes. Yıldız's use of voice creates an auditory urban landscape while conveying collective messages isolated from individual speakers. The work raises awareness of forceful urban developments in Istanbul under Erdogan's totalitarian regime and to give a voice to those often kept in the margins at a safe distance from the ideology.
Run Time: 22’30”
April 21, 2018 – June 30, 2018
The exhibition examines power dynamics that drive wedges between individuals and communities within the U.K., revealing dominant narratives that influence public and personal relations. It exposes cultural judgment systems that shape and maintain social stratification, dividing society by economic class, regional identity, and status—creating “imaginary” chasms that often seem insurmountable.
In the exhibition, you will find paintings and photographs by Jill Tate reflecting on worlds that are alien to us and structures that keep us in isolation. Meanwhile, Fang Qi’s animations create poetic landscapes as an homage to the North Sea and capture people's fading memories of village life in North County Durham. Finally, Ella Ray Barnes presents narrated illustrations exploring the Miners’ Strike of the Thatcher era and the socio-economic consequences of mine closures.
April 21, 2018 – June 30, 2018
The exhibition is primarily concerned with the production of knowledge and adopts a curatorial model informed by Deleuze and Guattari’s “rhizome” theory. The show explores the dialogical relationship between artworks and ideas, composed of multiple paths of investigation into how we create meaning. The Latin origin of the word dialogue, dialogus (dia: through, logos: words/meaning), suggests a natural flow of meaning that permeates through everything, ready to be extracted.
Dialogus presents works by eleven North East artists whose mediums span video, short film, photography, sculpture, painting, drawing, performance, and illustration. Artists include: Amy Roberts, Callum Costello, Emma Bennett, Joe Jefford, Lauren Drummond, Liam McCabe, Mark Chapman, Molly Bythell, Matthew Wilkinson, Steven Lowery, and Zara Worth.
The preview features poetry readings by Newcastle-based poets Caroline Hardaker, David Spittle, and Matt Miller.