Pease, Butler & Spence

Pease, Butler & Spence ‘Pease, Butler & Spence - Radical Non-Resistance & the Art of Transgression’

Tomorrow, Monday the 25th of March is the last day of the Place, People & Living Memory exhibition at the library in Dar...
24/03/2024

Tomorrow, Monday the 25th of March is the last day of the Place, People & Living Memory exhibition at the library in Darlington.

Last two days. Don't miss out.
23/03/2024

Last two days. Don't miss out.

The final days of our current exhibition are upon us. Don't miss out and get yourself down to the Crown Street Art Galle...
22/03/2024

The final days of our current exhibition are upon us. Don't miss out and get yourself down to the Crown Street Art Gallery in Darlington Library.

Following the opening event last night on location in Darlington we are delighted to be able to share the work Bridie Ja...
09/02/2024

Following the opening event last night on location in Darlington we are delighted to be able to share the work Bridie Jackson has contributed to our exhibition. Follow the QR code [ or this youtube link if that's any easier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2O_rr0jN4i0 ]

‘Comme je trouve’ – ‘As I find’ A docusong by Bridie Jackson and Josephine Butler College, Durham University.

This piece, created in collaboration with Josephine Butler College, explores the key themes, achievements and questions raised by the life and work of Victorian social reformer Josephine Butler, reflected upon through a contemporary lens.

For the piece, Jackson interviewed a diverse range of voices from the College community, including visiting lecturers, College leaders, students and trustees, about the significance of their namesake, reflecting on her incredible legacy and its impact on both the College and wider society. She then composed and recorded original music inspired by themes within the interviews, interspersed with soundscapes and new arrangements of historical songs within the public domain, to create a sonic framework for the interviews and stories.

Ikuko TsuchiyaMy practice-based research explores ideas and methodologies of empowering individuals, and bringing awaren...
02/02/2024

Ikuko Tsuchiya

My practice-based research explores ideas and methodologies of empowering individuals, and bringing awareness of dignity, humanity and diverse lives of people through my art practices with the medium of photography.

Ikuko Tsuchiya (born in Japan) is a practitioner of art-photography and teaching art in the north-east of England. She was the Jo Spence Fellow hosted by Northumbria University (2000-03). Influenced by Jo Spence’s idea of photography practice as therapy, Ikuko has been exploring the idea and practices in both art and healthcare contexts since her fellowship. ‘Theatre team’ is from the photography project ‘Images of Trust’, which was her first collaborative project with the team of Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (2000-03). It culminated with an exhibition and the publication of the book ‘Images of Trust: a year in the life of Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust’ (2004). The project received prestigious awards, from Nikon Salon in Tokyo (2005) and the Combined Royal Colleges Medal from the Royal Photographic Society in London (2012).

Tereza StehlikovaTereza’s work is informed by her ongoing exploration of the role of all our senses and our embodiment i...
01/02/2024

Tereza Stehlikova

Tereza’s work is informed by her ongoing exploration of the role of all our senses and our embodiment in communicating meaning, often using narratives to help activate imagination and provide a framework.

Tereza Stehlikova is a Czech/UK artist and educator. She holds a PhD from the Royal College of Art, where she researched the tactile language of moving image. She works primarily in moving image and participatory performance and is also head of Visual Arts Department and Vysoká Škola Kreativní Komunikace, Prague. Tereza’s work is informed by her ongoing exploration of the role of all our senses and our embodiment in communicating meaning, often using narratives to help activate imagination and provide a framework. Beyond this, the core themes in her creative practice are built around our human relationship to landscape and place in general, while exploring how our environment can become an extension of our inner worlds. Since 2012 Tereza has been working on 4 Generations of Women. The project has resulted in more than 10 short films shot over the years, staging small family rituals involving the women in the artist’s female line. The process of performing these rituals, as well as the subsequent editing and sharing of the films has been a way of generating, recording, and processing shared experience. Another ongoing project is Ophelia in Exile. Through exploring the fictional character of Ophelia, a woman who has been quarantined in her home and now believes herself to only exist on the screen of her own computer, the work questions our over reliance on the ever-present screen and the alienation from our own bodies which this creates. In 2020 Tereza launched an online arts journal/platform Tangible Territory, featuring essays and articles by established artists/authors from the world of arts, science, philosophy, all centred around the role our senses play in creating meaning in art and life. Her work can be found on her research blog: https://cinestheticfeasts.com/

Jo Spence“Available for divorces, funerals,illness, social injustice, scenes of domestic violence, exploration ofsexua...
31/01/2024

Jo Spence

“Available for divorces, funerals,illness, social injustice, scenes of domestic violence, exploration ofsexuality and any joyful events”

Commissioned Photography
‘How do we take a story like Cinderella out of the archives, off the bookshelves, out of the retail stores and attempt to prise out its latent class content? Its political and social uses?’ Jo Spence. A question highlighted in the ‘Fairy Tales and Photography’ exhibition of her work at the Centre for British Photography, January - May 2023.

A work on show at the exhibition is a reproduction of a page from the New York Times, publicity for the 2013 MoMA exhibition titled ‘Jo Spence: ‘Work (Part III) The History Lesson’.

Nicky PeacockObsessive trawls of the unconscious, mysterious sickness, body autonomy and pseudo-science converge in her ...
30/01/2024

Nicky Peacock

Obsessive trawls of the unconscious, mysterious sickness, body autonomy and pseudo-science converge in her commissoned sculpture, with a nod to Dalís disembodied jewellery of the 1940s.

We can confidently place Nicky’s work at the present-day end of a trajectory that began with Freud, and surrealists such as Agar, Breton, and Bellmer. Nicky has been working with dolls and mannequins for the last thirty years. Obsessive trawls of the unconscious, mysterious sickness, body autonomy and pseudo-science converge in her commissoned sculpture, with a nod to Dalís disembodied jewellery of the 1940s.

Nicky is a multidisciplinary artist and writer. Previous incarnations have included drummer in a Riot Grrrl band, fashion editorial artist, Brontë Parsonage writer in residence, published photographer, and curator of participatory and confessional arts. She currently lives on Teesside with a begonia and the ghost of two cats. Harriet Martineau’s life was dogged by ill. health. As a child, she lost her hearing, sense of smell and taste, and endured physical pain (posthumously diagnosed as a uterine tumour) for much of her life.

Much of Nicky’s childhood was spent away from school and peers, through poor health and subsequent psychosomatic and autoimmune disorders.

Both turned to alternative treatments - mesmerism, homeopathy, fasting, kinesiology, psychoanalysis, as well as careful confinement to the home - in search of a cure. As an adult, the theme of sickness and isolation found its way into Nicky’s work over and over again. An affinity was struck with Martineau; fiercely singular women, transgressing invalidism, utilising art, literature, and philosophical inquiry to transcend physical confinement. Indeed, both women created significant pieces of work entitled, The Sick Room, albeit 154 years apart.

Alicia PazAlicia’s work is informed by her personal experience and offers a reflection on transcultural representation a...
29/01/2024

Alicia Paz

Alicia’s work is informed by her personal experience and offers a reflection on transcultural representation and identity. Paz explores cultural hybrids, representations of family, and the complexities of kinship and lineage in a globalised world.

Exhibited Painting
In this painting titled The Lake House, the almost-bare branches evoke a stark, autumnal and perhaps “retro” atmosphere. Family members are represented by a set of doll-like suspended figures, inspired by an ensemble of vintage Italian puppets. Their stillness transforms them into spectators. Silently they observe and await the moment when they’ll be brought to life, when they can potentially be pulled, twisted, shaken or dropped, raised or lowered. Who pulls the strings, who has the power in this ménage of crimson marionettes? Necklaces and strung beads operate here as formal and allegorical connectors between psychological tropes, between dramatic personae. Gravity contributes to the shapeliness of their curves, the indolence of their gentle swing.

Pat Naldi In “theoretical space” as Jo Spence exclaimed, “no-one can hear you scream”, so walk out the door and SCREAM, ...
28/01/2024

Pat Naldi

In “theoretical space” as Jo Spence exclaimed, “no-one can hear you scream”, so walk out the door and SCREAM, SCREAM, and SCREAM again.

Commissioned Essay & Video
“I am part of all that I have met” as written by Alfred Lord Tennyson in his poem Ulysses, encapsulates some of my thoughts in writing the essay on Jo Spence. If we are lucky, in time, we arrive at a stage when circumstances around us of a life lived precipitates a time of reflection; to acknowledge and identify that we are the sum of all our experiences and people we have met. Jo Spence’s work came from her lived life, and The Final Project (1991-1992) came from her impending death. For this, she looked to her past and used negatives from her extensive archive. In writing this essay on Spence, making public the content of our tutorial reports is a means through which for me to reflect on the person and artist that I have become; the how and why.

In the same way, the video work The Future is a Time After the Present (2024), reflects on the journey from one stage of life to another. Shot on location in Dungeness, a promontory on the Kent coast, a figure traverses a salty pool of water created by the sea tides amongst the shingle. The figure resorts to swimming across to get to the other side. I first visited Dungeness as a teenager in the autumn of 1983. It was the first field trip our tutors took us on at the start of my undergraduate fine art degree course at Maidstone College of Art. Forty years later I find myself returning to this place where I entered a new phase of my life all those years ago to make a work in hindsight of the person and artist that I have become.

Karen MelvinRevisiting past ideas is a bit like recycling and finding new uses for things, things that mighthave been f...
27/01/2024

Karen Melvin

Revisiting past ideas is a bit like recycling and finding new uses for things, things that mighthave been forgotten

Commissioned Photography
Jo Spence and Rosie Martin opened a can of worms for Karen Melvin, after attending their workshops in the 1990s looking at particular family photographs which she always thought were perfectly ordinary and charming. Once she understood the nuances beneath these idyllic projections, she began constructing imagery around feminism, fairy tale archetypes and domestic relationships. She made photographic paper cut-out images of friends dressed up and then inserted them into real still life tableaux in the garden, the kitchen, the studio, to be photographed with a large plate camera. The ideas around often hidden social and personal contexts have informed her work ever since, even moving into recent large montage paintings reflecting on climate change, loss of species, set against the every day narratives of contemporary life and taking place in the context of a garden.

Karen Melvin lectured in photography at Cleveland College of Art and Design, was a Northern Arts advisor on photography, had solo exhibitions in Jakarta, Indonesia and then accross to Key West, Florida, Australia, London, Newcastle, Hexham, Slaley. Recent solo shows include Offcuts - Homing In, Small House Gallery, London; Torn Photos, Healey Church, Northumberland; Flying Falling, the Customs House, South Shields, Tyne & Wear; Heaven and Earth, Tom Blau Gallery, London; Collaborations with Claudia Sacher include Breath of My Garden, installation at Gibside NT, Gateshead; Picnic at Stone Circle, Ladycross, Northumberland; No.3, installation, High Green Arts, VARC and Great Northumberland, Tarset.

Bridie JacksonImmersive voice centred workthat I refer to as Docusongs‘Comme je trouve’ – ‘As I find’A docusong by Bri...
26/01/2024

Bridie Jackson

Immersive voice centred workthat I refer to as Docusongs

‘Comme je trouve’ – ‘As I find’A docusong by Bridie Jackson and Josephine Butler College, a constituent college of Durham University.

This piece, created in collaboration with Josephine Butler College, explores the key themes, achievements and questions raised by the life and work of Victorian social reformer Josephine Butler, reflected upon through a contemporary lens.

For the piece, Jackson interviewed a diverse range of voices from the College community, including visiting lecturers, College leaders, students and trustees, about the significance of their namesake, reflecting on her incredible legacy and its impact on both the College and wider society. She then composed and recorded original music inspired by themes within the interviews, interspersed with soundscapes and new arrangements of historical songs within the public domain, to create a sonic framework for the interviews and stories.

Bridie Jackson is a composer, producer and sound artist based in the North East of England. She creates immersive, voice centred work that she refers to as docusongs, where she aims to uncover and examine unheard or underheard stories through combining different sound elements including original music, recorded interviews and archive footage. Her most recent piece, ‘Bees, Bees, Hark to Your Bees’ about ancient traditions of bee keeping, was exhibited at Woodhorn Museums as part of the exhibition series, A Northumberland Menagerie, by visual artist Bethan Maddocks, commissioned by Museums Northumberland.

Jackson also composes and produces bespoke musical scores for theatre and dance productions. Recent credits include ‘The Little Prince’ for The Customs House, the touring contemporary dance piece, ‘Jumpers for Goalposts’ for Meta4 Dance and Changing Relations ‘A is for Amy’.

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