Contemporary Art

I would say that I’m agnostic as to my views on contemporary art. If the meaning of art is to invoke some emotional response, then by that definition I believe we are surrounded by art in our everyday lives. On my way to the Baltic Centre I admired the magnificent High Level Bridge, built by Robert Stephenson between 1847-49. I then wandered over to the sweeping aesthetics of the Sage Centre with its magnificent curving steelwork and glass walls. Just because the bridge and building also have function, would you discount them from progressing art in any way? Well, they both deserve an Art Oscar in my view. On a wall, near the Sage building there is a large graffiti painting of Keith Flint (from the band, Prodigy). I found this to be impressive too, but I wondered whether this would be classed as low brow compared to that in the Baltic.  In 1917 Marcel Duchamp submitted a mass produced porcelain urinal to an art exhibition to challenge the concept that everyday objects can’t be artwork. His submission was rejected, but I would have to agree with Marcel with the point he was making. Art is everywhere, not just in galleries and its value is how much emotional response it invokes in you.   

I headed into the Baltic’s front entrance. First things first; all these thoughts about urinals had had unintended consequences…I went in search of some toilets. 

The Mothership Collective 2.0 And A Joyful Parasite

There are six levels in the Baltic Centre. One of the lifts was out of action which made the other one rather busy and so I chose to use the stairs to get between the different levels. Each floor level is actually quite a lot higher than the lower one so this involved some effort. I’d probably have been better taking the lift to the top and then using the stairs to make my way down. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. I have to confess that I mistook Harold Offeh’s ‘The Mothership Collective 2.0’  as a kindergarten. The exhibition hall was full of screaming kids who were running around the place like Tasmanian Devils. I could see some bean bags on the floor and a few ‘fiery’ type paintings on the walls. I thought that given the age group of the attendees, it would probably not be a good idea to take photos of the setup and so I didn’t and moved on to the next floor. 

The next level was Saelia Aparicio’s ‘A Joyful Parasite.’ I actually thought this might be another kindergarten on first inspection, but it seemed less busy and so I went in for a peruse. There were chains suspended from the ceiling and these supported monkey like figures with illuminated heads. They looked a bit like one of those toys that you might suspend above a baby in a cot in order to distract them from the business of crying. The room was painted a rather gloomy orange and the lights from the suspended creatures cast spooky shadows of themselves onto the walls. I did spend a minute or two wondering what it all might mean, but in the end I gave up and read an explanation about the work that was printed on a wall. I have to say that I wasn’t much wiser once I’d read it. An extract reads…
‘Through humour and horror, A Joyful Parasite explores what it means to share space - with each other, with the non-human-world, and with the messy systems that sustain and unsettle us. Playful and disquieting, Saelia’s work encourages us to reflect on how bodies and structures carry, nourish and transform one another.'   
Presumably, all these little creatures hanging from chains were parasites. Maybe the dark orange walls were supposed to be flesh and as an observer I was supposed to imagine I was in a human body. I wasn’t sure and so decided to go up a level.

Remember, Somewhere

I was sweating buckets by the time I’d dragged myself and my joyful parasites up to the next level. Thankfully the ‘Remember, Somewhere’ exhibition had some seats and I took the opportunity to sit down and have a rest. At least this exhibition was well lit and more conventional in that it displayed paintings on the walls. These were created by a couple of sisters from Hartlepool: Laura and Rachel Lancaster. The exhibition was quite good in that the artists had distinct, almost opposing styles. Rachel’s paintings were what I would call photo-realism with unusually cropped subject areas, such as the nape of a neck. A lot of her paintings were quite large and it did occur to me whether she got bored or possibly even overwhelmed by having to paint a large area of canvas with such little detail. I had to stand metres away from the painting in order to focus on it. I wondered how difficult it was to produce realism this good at such a distance. Maybe she had a very long paint brush.   

Out of the two artists, I preferred Laura’s work. These were more traditional in nature, painted in an impressionist’s style. Splodges of paint had been dabbed and splodged on the canvas with the intention of the viewer processing the colourful patterns to make sense of it all. The scenes were usually of people in woodland or near water. One of the pictures was of somebody looking down into the water from a boat. It did take me a second or two to realise that the splodges were indeed intended to represent a person. They were pleasing pictures though and I would quite happily have any of her pictures on my living room wall. 

Mud And Ali Cherri

My quadriceps were complaining as I stumbled up the stairs to the next level. If ‘Remember, Somewhere’ had been traditional, then Ali Cherri’s exhibition was a bit more surreal. Walking into the gallery I was presented with five mud figures that were so bizarre, they reminded me a little of Francis Bacon’s  ‘Crucifixion.’ Cherri is a multi-media artist and the mud-theme continued with a wide-screen film of mud brick making in Sudan. This was a three-channelled video and quite an interesting visual display. This was quite a contrast with another of his displays that involved a simple slide projector projecting aphorisms on the wall, such as… 
‘I reach into nothingness

I am a fledgeling

yet

my wings are strong.’
Hmmm…okay.      

Behind the wide-screen monitors was, in my view, the most interesting display. This consisted of seven large heads of soldiers. Each head was placed onto a display pole and gave the impression that a decapitation had been performed and they’d been impaled on spears. This was obviously my imagination getting carried away since later research of ‘The Seven Soldiers’ revealed that they were intended to investigate that twilight zone between wakefulness and sleep where peculiar ideas pop into your head. Maybe I'd watched Apocalypse Now too many times. The final room had another film running. This was ‘The Watchman’ and centred on a soldier in a watchtower who was monitoring a conflict zone and finds himself drifting off into that twilight zone of slumber.   

I have to confess that the meaning of Cherri’s work flew a good distance above my head. His art was visually stimulating though and quite interesting, although probably not ones that I’d want to display in my house… even if I had enough space. 

Viewing Balcony And Restaurant

There was a viewing balcony attached to the outside of the building at this level and I wandered over to have a look. It certainly offered an impressive view along the Tyne and over the city. The stairs were out of action to Level 6 and so I took the lift up there. This turned out to be a big mistake since I found only the restaurant at this level. Since the stairs were out of action I had to use the lift to get back down again. In fact, there were plenty of other people too that wanted to leave the restaurant and we had to wait ages for the one working lift to find its way back up to the restaurant level. There then was an unseemly scramble as people tried to squeeze themselves into the lift. The weak, elderly, disabled and those with pushchairs were left behind at the Restaurant. It was very personal and claustrophobic in the lift and so I got off at the next level and walked back down the stairs to the exit. 

Despite my initial reservations, I had found the Baltic Centre an interesting place to visit. I have to admit though, that some of the displays were a bit bizarre and I didn’t grasp their meaning, but it did set get me curious about one or two things, which I guess was a good thing.