Newcastle day 4

I had big plans for today. I was going to visit the BALTIC gallery and the Sage Gateshead and then head out to Wallsend and South Shields.

When I got up this morning the day was looking a bit grey, but not too bad. It was completely different when I got out of the hostel.

Newcastle suffers from quite a strong breeze. Today it was absolutely freezing. I think the wind comes in straight off the North Sea, so it has a serious bite. I was actually wishing for my gloves, it was that cold.

I headed out and went straight to the BALTIC gallery, which overlooks the water (so the wind was even stronger!). It is a very modern art gallery. Normally I'm not a fan of modern art. I find it is often bizarre and very Avant-Gard. I was happy to find that I was wrong.

The first exhibit was 2 sculptural pieces. They were both life size trees. One was standing and the other was fallen. From a distance it looked like the trees were covered in flesh coloured leaves, but when you got up closer you could tell that they weren't leaves, but were in fact the heads of different animals. I know it sounds really weird, but it was very interesting and didn't look as disgusting as it sounded.

The second exhibit was a woman who drew pictures of the development of life at the cellular level. The pictures were very childlike and innocent. There was also a second part of the exhibit which was a white room with several mirrors with the same images from the drawings in the centre. We had to wear shoe protectors to go into the room. What was really interesting was that my reflection in the mirrors appeared purple, but the reflection of the other person in the room was orange. It was very strange and intriguing. I would love to know how it worked.

The final exhibit was a multi-artist exhibit which was based artists who use other people as their medium. It was quite an interactive exhibit. One thing you noticed straight away was a series of text being projected onto a wall. There was a woman (obviously an artist) off to one side who was producing a stream of writing regarding the different people in the room and the way they reacted to certain parts of the exhibit. That was very interesting to watch, although I must admit that she produced quite a few typos and I reckon I could have produced much more interesting information!

Another part of the exhibit was a video from Poland. What the film maker had done was gathered together several small groups of people. The groups were: Catholics, a group of young people supporting a Polish only Poland, a Jewish group, and a group of young Socialists. Then each group came into a large room separately and painted a large painting showing their beliefs. Then over a series of 4 meetings, the groups came together and were allowed to add to each others images in any way that they wanted.

It was extremely entertaining. As you can imagine, hostility broke out very quickly between the groups. There was no actual violence, but it wasn't far beneath the surface waiting to explode. One group would deface the others work and so that group would retaliate and then someone would get really pissed off and would set fire to one of the other group's paintings. Each week got progressively more combative. The film maker did not intervene, merely recorded what happened at each meeting. Of course neither group changed their opinions about each other in any way, in some ways they seemed to become more focused in their beliefs. There seemed to be no point to having these groups meet other than to observe the outcome. It was very interesting to see how these people reacted as individuals and how a group mentality overcame all of them and directed their actions.

It is certainly an exhibit I would see again.

Next to the BALTIC gallery is the Sage Gateshead. The Sage Gateshead is an entertainment/theatre complex. The building has the most amazing design and shape. Externally it is all glass and seems to flow along the landscape. In a lot of ways it looks like a worm or a caterpillar that is slowly crawling across the landscape. It is rather hard to describe so I will try to get some photos up soon.

I wandered around the Sage Gateshead. I was interested in just seeing what it looked like from the inside and also seeing if there was anything interesting being performed over the next week that I would like to see. Unfortunately there wasn't anything very interesting on.

My original plan had been to leave the Sage Gateshead and to head over to Wallsend and South Shields, but it was just so cold and windy and miserable that I couldn't handle it anymore. I decided to call it a day and head back to the hostel. I have quite a lot of time in Newcastle, so it shouldn't matter if I have one short day.

It is nearly summer over here, but you would never guess it. To me it feels like winter. I'm looking forward to actually experiencing a bit of heat. Can you believe that I actually said I was looking forward to hot weather?! That will probably change once we have a few hot days!