If you visit Darlington Library, open Monday to Saturday, up to Thursday 18th July 2024, we hope you’ll pop into the Art Gallery there to view and listen to the newly installed exhibition by artist Matt Denham, ‘Hot Contents’, which explores the relationships between the past and present industrial heritage of the North East and the climate emergency.
Matt Denham is a visual artist based in Newcastle. Starting with intimate stories of people and place, his video installation artworks reveal and connect global issues. He has worked alongside various environmental campaigners to create this exhibition, which imagines a near future where unsustainable growth and over-production has dramatically changed our landscape.
Taking the form of brightly coloured video installations, sound maps and living sculptures, the work in this exhibition explores possible futures through local sites of transition, spaces of resistance, and climate action that aims to shape a positive future.
Matt proposes that the society we live in has been built on the foundations of industry. and that in the North East, the industrial culture and landscape, from coal mining to steel working, textile production to large-scale engineering, is a significant part of our regional identity. Industry has played an important part in shaping our cities, towns and communities, and ‘Hot Contents’ considers aspects of the environmental legacy of this period in our history.
‘Hot Contents’ is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and information on the exhibition can be accessed in large print, braille, in Bengali, Polish and Romanian. Two works from Darlington Borough Art Collection informed by the North Eastern industry are on display alongside ‘Hot Contents’ and we hope you find the exhibition interesting if you come along.
