Gateshead in a Box
The artwork commissioned by The Shipley Art Gallery in 2010, was completed in June 2011. It is the first object in the Contemporary Craft Collection to specifically reference Gateshead itself, and was produced as a result of independent artistic research and community consultation, including with the Soul Soup Project, young people from the Crossroads Young Carers Group and school students from Hookergate School, Rowlands Gill.
It seeks to distill something of Gateshead’s past, present and future into a domestic sized object, suitable for Gallery and wider community display.
Gateshead is: not Newcastle….
It is – the Angel of the North, The Baltic and The Sage. The Metro Centre, The Gateshead International Stadium, Gateshead FC, Get Carter Car Park and the Dunston Rocket. Its urban, rural, suburban, cosmopolitan, commuter. Metro, buses, trains and trams. Rivers, boats, rowing and bridges River Team, River Tyne…. The Blaydon Races Allerdene, Barlow, Bar Moor, Bensham, Beacon Lough, Bill Quay, Birtley, Blaydon, Blaydon Burn, Bottle Bank, Carr Hill, Chopwell, Chowdene, Clara Vale, Crawcrook, Crookhill, Deckham, Derwent Haugh, Dunston, Eighton Banks, Felling, Fellside, Friars Goose, Greenside, Harlow Green, Hedgefield, Heworth, High Spen, Kibblesworth, Lamesley, Lobley Hill, Low Fell, Lyndhurst, Old Ford, Pelaw, Riverside, Rowlands Gill, Ryton, Saltmeadows, Saltwell, Sheriff Hill, Shipcote, Silver Hills, Springwell, Sunniside, Swalwell, Teams, Team Valley, Wardley, Whickham, Windy Nook, Winlaton, Winlaton Mill, Wrekenton, Industrial and Post-Industrial Brickworks, Cement Works, Chemical Works, Coal, Engineering, Farms, Glassworks, Iron works, Mills, Paintworks, Potteries, Quarries, Railways, Rope-making, Ship Building, Steel. Allhusen Chemicals, Atlas Rivet Works, Boiler Cover Works, Bensham Brickworks, Clockmill Brickworks, Davidsons Glass, Derwent Brickworks, Dolly Pit, Dunston Coal Staiths, Dunston Engine Works, Dunston Colliery, Dunston Saw Mills, Ellison Glass Works, Fanny Pit, Felling Drops (Coal Shoots), Grease Works, Holzapfel’s Paint works, Hope Pit, Marble Works, Mossheap Quarries, North Eastern Railway Works, Oil and Bitmo Works, Norwood Brickworks, Paper Mills, Pelaw Brickworks, Photographic Dry Plate Works, Pipewellgate Bottle Works, Pipewell Foundry, Redheugh, Colliery, Redheugh Engine Works, Redheugh Manure Works, Redheugh Sheet Iron and Steel Works, Sheriff Hill Pottery, Shipbreaking Yards, Sowerby Glass, Teams Glass Works, Teams Hemp and Wire Rope Works, Team Valley Paper Mills, Tyne Bolt and Rivet Works, Tyne Nail Works, Tynevale Brickworks, Upper Heworth Quarry, Victoria Engineering Works, Wardley Colliery, William Pit, Wire Rope Works, Nature reserves, bike trails and footpaths Axwell Park, Bill Quay Farm, Black Hill, Blackburn Fell, Blackman’s Wood, Blaydon Burn, Bleach Green, Carrhill Reservoir, Cattyside Wood, Chickens Wood, Channels Wood, Clockburn Wood, Colway Plantation, Coxclose Wood, Crookoe Wood, Crosslane Meadows, Dents Hole Ferry, Eels Wood, Eslington Park, Fugarfield Wood, Gas Works, Haghill Wood, Heworth Windmill, Hill Head Wood, Lady Park, Lands Wood, Lamsley Pastures, Longacre Wood, Low Horseclose Wood, Martin’s Wood, Milkwellburn Wood, Miller’s Park, Miller’s Wood, Norman’s Riding Wood, Ousebrough Wood, Pottery Lane,
Distilling into artwork: How do you distill all that into an artwork, made from ceramics?
Firstly I decided that the main fabric of the object should be from something of Gateshead itself. I often work with ready made forms – white-ware plates bought from a factory, old tableware from antique/ junk shops or e-Bay. I enjoy using old objects because they have already had a life and their surfaces can carry something of their story. In the nineteenth century, there were potteries and sanitary-ware factories in the town, but little of their production survives today and I found it very difficult to find any contemporary objects with true provenance.
Bricks:
Gateshead as we know it today is very largely a product of the local exploitation of rich geological resources. Quarried stone and coal – the driving force of the industrial revolution – were two of the materials mined, but another was clay, used for brick making. Fireclay was found under the coal seams, but ‘common clay’ used for building bricks was found much nearer the surface – and would have to be dug through to get to the coal. Here was the perfect synthesis of building material and the fuel to fire it.
Perhaps it could be local clay that I used. Of the 125 brick companies once in Gateshead1, only one survives today – Ipstock at Birtley. In September 2010 Ray Johnson, factory manager showed me round the existing site and explained the current methodology of brick manufacture. I left with a bag of Birtley clay and a fired brick. Back in my studio the brick was placed alongside the piece of brick ‘core’ that Doug Tuck had given to me a few weeks before at Bill Quay Farm. Builders putting up new fencing at Bill Quay farm had cut circular holes in a brick edged base to house the new steel railings. The piece of brick core, now sat alongside the new orange/red block from Ipstock Birtley.
Then I began to wonder If I could I get old bricks – from demolition sites for example, and somehow use these for the artwork? Peter Clayson from the Discovery Museum provided much information on Gateshead’s brick history – and a small number of old examples. Later Trevor Underwood at Path Head Water Mill donated more. I have a professional tile cutting machine that I use with glazed porcelain. I successfully tested cutting into a brick, and thence began slicing these fired ceramic blocks into tiles. Now I needed something to hold/display them.
A drawer, a box:
In my home we have an old print drawer once used for type blocks – in which we place small momentos – of journeys, places and people. It has become a domestic repository of memories. But it is also a remnant of the print industry – one of the facilitators of the industrial revolution. The media revolution of print meant that knowledge that had previously been housed in the homes of the aristocracy leached, then flooded to a much wider populace. It acted as a catalyst for the rapid exchange and development of ideas. So here was a repository of memories but also an object which in its own way typified the ingenuity of the industrial revolution…
Home and Collections:
As for collections, well museums hold our collective cultural accumulations of objects – this commission is going to be one of them – but we all have our own private versions. Family momentos -for me they are the delicate thin glass that belonged to my gran, grandad’s medal from the first world war, a miniature painting of an old cat by my mother, small porcelain egg cups, matchboxes full of buttons, dinky toys, an old Hornby train – you know the sort of things I mean. One of the things I had been interested in when researching the commission was the nature and type of domestic collections in people’s Gateshead homes, but as the consultations continued it was clear this sort of information would not be forthcoming – situations weren’t right for these kind of conversations and requests for this sort of stuff, and participatory blogs were clearly not working.
It was easy to get people talking about the place though, and amidst all the individual stories, memories and hopes for the future, what became clear was that people liked, loved Gateshead – because it was home. Art, Industry and Skill: The sort of objects and materials associated with contemporary craft tend to be concerned with the working of particular materials – ceramics, textiles, stone, wood, metal – but in a very specific context. The Arts and Crafts movement – from which the notion of contemporary crafts has developed – was fundamentally oppositional to industrial production, so until recently craft has been focussed on the small-scale rurally associated practices and objects. What is clear as we start the second decade of the 21st century is that we are losing not only the rural, so beloved of the tourist industry and the Crafts Council, but with the shift of manufacturing to the east, society is haemorrhaging industrial craft knowledge and skills.
My intent then was that the artwork for Shipley’s Contemporary Craft Collection would make specific reference to the industrial, and the domestic in an object that fits into the context of a museum collection. In its hinged form the artwork is also suitable for exhibiting in other venues. Gateshead in a Box is created from the very fabric of the town, holding prints, images, text, material and patterns from the town itself.