Middlesbrough Art Week returns from 28 September – 5 October 2024 with an eight-day packed programme of exhibitions, events and new commissions filling the streets in Middlesbrough town centre. Mark your Calendars and visit here to see the full festival programme.  

This fantastic festival showcases work by both established and upcoming artists, from near and far. Middlesbrough Art Week 2024 includes works by international artists Francis Alÿs, Kyriaki Goni and Karrabing Film Collective; new commissions by Natasha Thembiso Ruwona and Alia Gargum; performances by Amy Dover, Olana Light and a mass participation project called Uproot Collective. This year Middlesbrough Art Week been working with community leaders, migrant support networks and schools across the Tees Valley to form Uproot Collective. Uproot is this year’s festival hub at Pineapple Black. 

Look out for artist talks by acclaimed artist and writer Jace Clayton, civil rights activist and author Gracie Mae Bradley. Alongside seed harvesting drop in sessions where you can learn about wildflower seed harvesting and have a go at gathering some of your own seeds.

Within the festival Summat for the Bairns offers fun FREE creative and playful drop-in workshops for families and kids of all ages. Discover what is ‘growing on’ at the festival hub. With multiple workshop stations where kids of all ages can get creative using drawing, sculpture and design. 

Middlesbrough Art Week also sees the return of the North East Open Call and the New Graduate Award, both of which celebrate artistic practice across Tees Valley and beyond. Keep an eye out for new public artworks and participatory initiatives at this year’s festival, including Most Creative Station delivered by Navigator North, Comedown Comedy, SPARK and Words Per Minute.

Across Middlesbrough, visitors can expect an inventive and richly diverse programme of free exhibition and events by partner venues & cultural organisations including MIMA, Navigator North, Platform A, Hypha, Industrial Coast, Python Gallery, Eden Arts, The Word, 2b Creative, and Freestyle amongst many more.

CALL-OUT for talented young people for our MoveUP programme!

TeesDance and Darlington Hippodrome are looking for dancers aged 13 – 19, or up to 25 with disabilities, to take part in MoveUP 2024/5. This FREE programme at Darlington Hippodrome, takes place over 8 months to develop choreographic skills in showcasing your own dance creation on a 1000-seated auditorium stage in June 2025.

Find out more and how to apply via TeesDance’s website (linked in bio) https://teesdance.org.uk/move-up

Deadline to apply: Sunday 13 October, 5pm

MoveUP is produced by TeesDance, delivered in partnership with Darlington Hippodrome and funded by Arts Council England and Tees Valley Combined Authority.

The next exhibition in Darlington Library Art Gallery, opens on Saturday 28 September and is on display during standard Darlington Library opening times (Monday to Saturday) until Thursday 7 November 2024. It will include works from different decades of Roger Birchall’s life, including Late Sun, Oil on canvas,         2020, pictured above.

Roger is a 77-year-old artist, living in Darlington. After leaving art school in 1970 Roger had a varied working life mainly in education but he also earned a living for ten years as a graphic designer. He moved to Darlington in 2000 and was immediately impressed by the variety of landscapes and seascapes that you can visit so easily when living in the town. His response was to start painting again in a concentrated way. He regards his art education as vital to the way he works now but there are other influences. He says, ‘My ability to draw came from both sides of my family and oil paints were the commonest medium at that time but the way I combine these skills definitely depends on what I learned at art school’.  

As  well  as landscapes, the other part of his exhibition features portraits of friends and family some of which date back to the 1980s. Roger works from photographs which help him achieve likenesses but he is also very concerned to create an image that adds to the experience of seeing the person, even if you don’t know them.  

Roger advises Birchallreality ‘will be full of very approachable paintings that often contain small experiences we all can enjoy; light seen through leaves, a distant horizon or an old brick wall’, tries to do the ‘seeing’ for us and then attempts to duplicate that experience through the medium of paint. 

The latest exhibition at Darlington Library’s Art Gallery, Places In Time: The Art of Kenneth Steel , is open during standard Darlington Library opening times (Monday to Saturday) until late September 2024, and contains brilliant depictions of places which may be familiar to many visitors, including Durham City, High Force, Lindisfarne and Robin Hood’s Bay.

Kenneth Steel (1906-1970) was a consummate printmaker who found critical acclaim during his lifetime. Yet today the Sheffield artist and designer, remains a largely unknown figure, outside a small group of dedicated enthusiasts and loyal collectors.

This exhibition hopes to further his reputation, not only as an important twentieth century figure in the field of British printmaking, but also an exceptional artist and designer in the fields of both railway art and commercial art.

Thankfully for us his keen eye for detail, colour and composition has left us with a unique record of areas of the British landscape, and those visitors to the Art Gallery who’ve left comments in the visitor comments book there, have been fulsome in their praise of Steel’s work.

During the exhibition there will be an opportunity to view a Gallery copy of the Kenneth Steel. Catalogue Raisonné of Prints and Posters publication in the Art Gallery, with hardback copies of the publication on sale from the Hive at Darlington Library, and visitors can also try their luck at completing a jigsaw depicting one of Kenneth Steel’s works, with the original on display in the exhibition.

• I love this exhibition, great history.
• Wonderful stuff, the best exhibition since the gallery’s refurbishment.  Great to see Steel’s progression through the years and the range of his work and the catalogue is superb!  Well done for bringing this exhibition here!
• Thank you – excellent display.  Loved the artwork.
• Excellent exhibition – fantastic work.
• I love the line engravings/drypoint pieces – especially Elvet Bridge.  But what a fantastic artist steel was across a range of media.
• Most interesting.
• Super exhibition, love the different mediums Kenneth used, so expressive, making one feel they are at the venue, in the picture.  Stunning.  Extra bonus having the catalogue and line engraving book to peruse.  Enjoyed completing the jigsaw too! 🙂
• Born in Durham, the fine details on Framwellgate Scenes & Framwellgate  Bridge are truly amazing.  An exceptional exhibition.
• A feast for the eye – a delight for the senses.  Truly lovely!
• Most interesting, lovely painting.
• Fascinating.  Unique style – especially the line engraving. 
• Quite a range from a clearly very talented artist and beautifully lit, taking advantage of this wonderful building’s assets.  Best exhibition we can recall in Darlington. 
• A wonderful feast for the eyes.  What a talent. 
• The best exhibition in the Art Gallery for the last 50 years. 
• Superb exhibition, beautifully displayed and curated.
• A brilliant exhibition.  I have enjoyed it! 🙂
• Fabulous exhibition!
• Excellent opportunity to see such outstanding work.
• Interesting exhibition.
• This exhibition is superb in every way.  What a treat!

If you do pop into Darlington Library Art Gallery we hope you’ll enjoy this exhibition.

and and and also,

Sophie Seita

9-14 August 2024

*

a body might

tilt

cavort

peal

*

Sophie Seita’s solo exhibition and and and also presents a series of textile pieces that depict experimental graphic scores for imaginary queer voices and bodies.

Graphic scores are alternative forms of notation for sound and performance. They move away from the traditional notation of the five-lined musical stave in favour of more expressive, unconventional, and often abstract notations that bring art and sound, performance, and movement together. Given their experimental non-normative nature, the scores remain unfixed, in process, and open to interpretation by and for different bodies and voices.

In Seita’s textile installation, the scores capture so-called Klangfiguren, German for ‘sonic bodies’ or ‘figures of sound’, which is both a musical term and a literary stylistic device, which brings the senses of hearing and seeing closely together. These Klangfiguren are conceptual sounds or allegorical bodies. An allegory is a form of ‘veiled language’, an image or story that captures new concepts but never explicitly; or it’s a material object and visual representation which makes an idea or feeling visible and tangible. These allegorical bodies, then, represent a queerness we do not yet know. In the origin of the word allegory also lies a suggestion for how it may be used. It’s a Latin word that originates in the Greek and combines allos ‘other’ or ‘different’ and agoreuo ‘to speak in the assembly’. In performance, these scores find their other-speaking in a new assembly, in a different (queer) community.

Scores, for the artist, allow reflection on process, on bodies, and (il)legibility. Listening, sound,

movement, and performance in this project are not limited to normative understandings of how we can or should use our bodies. The scores can be interpreted by all bodies, all voices, in all languages and don’t assume a primary language, form of expression, or range of ability.

The work is informed by a drawing and sound workshop with queer young people hosted by Curious Arts, and the artist wishes to thank the young people for their curiosity and open-mindedness. It is also informed by the singing method the artist learned in Germany (The Lichtenberger® Method in Applied Vocal Physiology), and includes prompts inspired by the method’s playful and poetic somatic pedagogy.

The textile works will be accompanied by the artist’s own creative audio descriptions as well as a short performative text that imagines and translates what these scores could sound like and what kind of queer relations or desires they intimately perform.

***

‘Sophie Seita’s ‘creative audio description’ is a lush, poetic, evocative sister piece to the physical artworks. It offers so much more than ‘description, achieving inclusion through words that aren’t simply a translation of the work, they are the work, in another form…a form that works beautifully regardless of your level of vision. Strangely liberating, the artist’s words do not require a mental visualisation to enjoy her art, it’s all there, crafted in its own right.’

— Richard Boggie, visually-impaired North East writer

Find out more about Sophie’s practice here: www.sophieseita.com/

And here: www.instagram.com/sophieseita/

BIO: Sophie Seita is a London-based artist and researcher whose work swims in the muddy waters of language, and explores materiality, gesture, and the speculative potential of the archive. She regularly performs and exhibits work across multiple media, publishes books, makes textiles and graphic scores, leads workshops around voice-work, experimental writing, and queer performance, and teaches in the Art Department at Goldsmiths. Often working collaboratively, she’s expanding and deepening her ongoing socially engaged and conceptual project with the musician and conductor Naomi Woo, to give voice to untold queer archives, alongside other international artists, academics, activists, gardeners, designers, and writers, as part of The Hildegard von Bingen Society for Gardening Companions. Their recent activities involved a queer performance ritual in Xochimilco, Mexico City, a workshop in the art research garden at Goldsmiths’s Centre for Art & Ecology, and an irregular zine, called The Minutes. Seita’s latest book, Lessons of Decal (87Press, 2023), is a queer meditation on reading and listening; the things and experiences that leave an imprint on us in unpredictable, messy, and desirous ways. Currently, she is an Artist in Residence at Akademie der Künste (Academy of Arts) in Berlin.

Creative Darlington is keen to share exhibitions which explore the connections between language and visual art within the Art Gallery at Darlington Library and thank Darlington Culture Volunteers for their support in stewarding this exhibition.

The brilliant Blue Cabin who’ve led great activity in Darlington for a decade now are looking for a volunteer to support delivery of the This Is The Place music programme in Darlington from the Autumn 2024 term onwards. I understand they would ideally be interested in a volunteer who could be onboard for a minimum of 6 months so there is consistency for the participating families, but that they can be flexible should this become a barrier to volunteering. Further information below:

Darlington volunteer opportunity! 

Learn about how music-making can help attachment and see first hand its impact on care-experienced babies and children. North East charity Blue Cabin are recruiting for a volunteer to support their This is the Place programme in #Darlington. Find out about the role:  https://wearebluecabin.com/about-us/work-with-us/volunteer/ 

As part of the Arts Council England funded Your Library Story project, Darlington based author Lisette Auton is offering four free drop-in sessions where she’ll be writing in Darlington Library this summer, open to all ages, although children must be accompanied by an adult. No booking required, just drop-in and spend as long as you like anytime between 11am and 3pm on the dates below:

Monday 29th July in the Art Gallery at Darlington Library

Monday 5th August in the Art Gallery at Darlington Library

Monday 12th August in The Study at Darlington Library

Monday 19th August in the Art Gallery at Darlington Library

All sessions open between 11am and 3pm

So come and meet Lisette in the Library! During the summer holidays she’ll be writing in the library and would love you to drop in to join her. She’ll have pens and paper and prompts galore for anyone new to writing, or bring along your notebook and your work in progress to focus on. It’s an opportunity to have a chat about all things words related with a professional full-time writer who is a published author and playwright. Suitable for anyone of any age, though children must be accompanied by an adult.

About Lisette Auton 

Lisette Auton is the author of three children’s books published by Puffin (Penguin Random House UK) with a fourth publishing in 2025. She is an award-winning poet, a Tees Valley Combined Authority Artist of the Year 2024-2025, and writes plays for children and adults. 

Lisette is passionate about telling the stories she struggled to find – those that reflect her northern, working class, disabled and neurodivergent experience – and making sure that everyone can see themselves in, or are authors of, the stories that are being told. She’s an award-winning multidisciplinary artist based in Darlington, who does stuff with words as an author, playwright, activist, creative practitioner, filmmaker and performer. The focus of all her work is on place, process, and creative access and we hope you’ll enjoy catching up with her if you drop-in to Darlington Library this summer.  

01 Andrew Murie Houses Acrylic on board

02 Charlotte Kerr Winter Lion Acrylic on paper

03 Cheryl Cordier Journey Through the Valley of Beauty Fineline pen on paper

04 Fiona Goodlad Flower Fields Pen and Watercolour

The Art Gallery at Darlington Library is normally open to the public free of charge during standard Darlington Library opening hours (Monday & Tuesday 9am – 6pm, Wednesday 9am – 5pm, Thursday 10am – 6pm, Friday 9am – 5pm and Saturday 9am – 4pm, closed Sunday.

Forthcoming exhibitions in the Art Gallery at Darlington Library

• Group Exhibition, the Community Arts Project , 23^rd  July – 6^th August 2024

• and and and also, Sophie Seita, 9^th August – 14^th August 2024

• Places In Time, The Art of Kenneth Steel, 17^th August – 26^th September 2024

• Birchallreality, Roger Birchall Retrospective Exhibition, 28^th September – 7^th November 2024

• Recycled, Reused, Revealed, Helen Winthorpe-Kendrick, 9^th November – 19^th December 2024

• Group Exhibition, Darlington Society of Arts, 21^st December 2024 – 7^th February 2025    

Our next exhibition will share work from the artists whose images are shared above, alongside other members of the Community Arts Project (CAP). We’re delighted to welcome CAP back to the Art Gallery, at Darlington Library. Their previous exhibitions have always proven popular with visitors, and their new exhibition, whilst short, will share a fantastic variety of original work, from their artists.

More about The Community Arts Project

The Community Art Project is part of Darlington Borough Council’s Day Opportunities within the Adult Learning Disability Service. It provides an opportunity for people with learning disabilities to try out and pursue various visual arts activities with guidance and encouragement from a professional artist.

People normally attend one day each week and its open to anyone who has an interest in trying out arts activities, even if they have never done so before. It’s geared towards each person’s needs and interests and aims to encourage people to make their own choices and decisions, to work at their own pace and the best of their abilities. Service users are encouraged to develop and expand their work and level of ambition as their confidence grows. The sorts of activities that Cap involves are; oil, acrylic and watercolour painting, drawing, sculpting, pottery, printing, lino-cut and mono-printing, photography and digital art but it aims to facilitate as far as possible, whatever ideas people generate and express.

CAP regularly stage exhibitions which provide genuine motivation and momentum to the project. Seeing their work presented in a professional manner gives people a real sense of achievement and participation in a wider world along with a visible presence in the community. CAP service users have had their work exhibited locally, nationally and internationally, in locations including Billingham, Bishop Auckland, Brighton, Darlington, Glasgow, London, Middlesbrough, Munich, Newcastle, Newton Aycliffe, New York, Stockton, and Woking ……. so far. CAP are always interested in hearing about and discussing new opportunities to display their work in different settings and formats, see contact details below

CAP artists won first and second prizes in the 2019 Outside In National Open Exhibition – judged by Grayson Perry amongst others and five artists formed part of the Earth Vision project that toured various venues in Germany, Austria and Italy. CAP artwork has also been included in numerous online exhibitions and galleries and publications including ‘Outside In; Exploring the Margins of Art’ by Marc Steene. CAP artist Victoria Bowman has recently been nominated and shortlisted for the Paul Hamlyn Artists Awards.

Following relocation from The Bridge Centre for Visual Arts in March 2024, The Community Art Project is now based at:

• Links, Brinkburn Road, Darlington, DL3 6DY

and

• Foundations, Salters Lane, Darlington, DL1 3DT

Contact and further information for The Community Arts Project

Telephone 01325 468877

Email Laurence.ward@darlington.gov.uk

Visit the website www.darlington.gov.uk/communityart

TEES VALLEY LEADERSHIP PROGRAMME | Summer & Autumn 2024

Leadership Skills Days

Booking is now open for the next round of leadership skills days taking place September – November 2024. These stand-alone training days are packed full of useful tips and takeaways that you can apply to your work and leadership, no matter what the context.

If you work in the Tees Valley cultural sector for an organisation, independently or as a freelancer, skills days can help you to enhance your skills, build confidence and expand your network.

They are led by an inspiring range of Clore Leadership contributors who all have their own unique expertise to share with you.

• Working Effectively with Groups | Emma Haughton

17 Sep 2024, 10-4pm | The BIS, Hartlepool

• Re-up! | Gaylene Gould and David Kam

17 Oct 2024, 10-4pm | ARC, Stockton

• Communicating with confidence | Sarah Cartwright

12 Nov 2024, 10-4pm | Hippodrome, Darlington

Head over to the Tees Valley leadership Programme page to find out more about each Skills Day and how to book your place!

Tickets per skills day are available on a flexible pay what you decide basis with a recommended rate of £10 + VAT for individuals; £25 + VAT for organisations. Clore are pleased to continue offering freelancer bursaries towards loss of earnings incurred due to attendance at a Tees Valley Leadership Programme training event.

Mentoring

Clore are offering the opportunity for a further six creative professionals in the Tees Valley region to access mentoring. You will be matched with a mentor who can act as a sounding board to help you build confidence, navigate a current professional challenge or to plan next steps within your career.

There will be a half-day online briefing on 9 October 2024 for all mentees followed by 3 x one-hour online or in-person sessions with your mentor.

If you would like to be matched with a mentor, just complete the brief application form telling Clore more about yourself and what you hope to gain from the experience.

Deadline for applications is Monday 2 September 2024.

Do you think you could be a Mentor?

Do you have skills and expertise that you would like to share with creative and cultural professionals in the Tees Valley region?

Are you:

• A good communicator
• A good listener
• Open to sharing learning and insights from your own professional experience
• Able to see the bigger strategic picture
• A creative problem solver
• Committed and reliable

Clore are inviting expressions of interest from leaders who are interested in being a mentor. Please get in touch with Clore by Monday 2 September 2024 if you’re able to offer your expertise and time.

Elaine Vizor recently held her solo exhibition, How Do You Like Your Photography?(With or Without Rules) in the Art Gallery at Darlington Library and we’re delighted to share news of an exhibition she and artist June Wainwright currently have on display currently at Bowlees Visitor Centre below.

BETWEEN THE SHOWERS

Bowlees Visitor Centre Gallery, Upper Teesdale, County Durham, 1 – 31 July 2024

A Duo Exhibition by Photographer ELAINE VIZOR & Artist JUNE WAINWRIGHT

A collaborative exhibition of photography and art taking inspiration from the North Pennines National Landscape. Friends, Elaine Vizor and June Wainwright have, since the Covid lockdowns when they were allowed to meet outside only, developed a practice called ‘Art Outside’ when they would meet outdoors to draw, paint and photograph what they saw. Sometimes Elaine’s photography inspired June to paint and similarly June’s paintings inspired Elaine to photograph differently.

Being together encouraged both artists to look, explore and enjoy their own crafts alongside each other. Some of the works in the exhibition are examples of this mutually supportive and complementary art and photography.

Elaine said, “My work includes examples of cameraless cyanotype botanical prints; some straight camera photography and some digitalart pieces inspired originally by working with the Barnard Castle and Teesdale Art Society. I started to apply digitalart to my own original images as a metaphoric bridge between art and photography.”

Working as a freelance photographer Elaine, delivers workshops in basic digital photography; cyanotype printing with flowers, foliage and found objects; mindful seasonal photography walks which involve photographing ‘on our doorsteps’ throughout the seasons, looking for beauty even in the bleakest of conditions.

June said, “Having grown up in Tyneside I moved to Upper Teesdale thirty-five years ago. I live and work immersed in the rural community, its fells, becks, forces, plants, birds, farmers, gamekeepers and its many sheep and cattle.  I use art to express my emotions to connect with the environment. Many of my works are in acrylics on canvas completed in the studio following opportunities to sketch in pencil or watercolour in situ and I also use photography to support the process especially during poor weather. Like many local artists I also enjoy using dry needle felting to create landscapes.”

June’s work reflects the shifting realities of the landscape – the heavy cloud, reflections in water and the changing seasons marked with the Swaledale Tup Sale at Middleton.

Elaine said, “With June I hope visitors will enjoy the collaborative and complementary combination of art and photography. It’s not a competition. Art and Photography, like the Artist and Photographer, can be good friends, work together, support, appreciate and inspire each other.”

Simon Wilson, Programme Manager at the North Pennines National Landscape team,  said: “We are always pleased to have opportunities to showcase local artists, such as Elaine and June, who are inspired by what they see around them in the North Pennines. Hopefully our visitors will enjoy seeing the way both have interpreted familiar views and the changing colours and textures of nature through this exhibition.”

Between the showers, is on show at Bowlees Visitor Centre, in the gallery accessed via stairs, until 31 July, open daily from 10am to 5pm. There is a lovely café too and great views, walks and waterfalls all around.