Reading Week

During our reading week last week I took a small trip to Newcastle. Whilst there I visited the Baltic Art Gallery which all in all I was ver impressed with. The building itself is very impressive as it used to be an old flour mill, providing it with many levels and plenty of space, the perfect setting for art work. There were three main exhibitions on including a small one from legendary fashion designer Malcolm McLaren.
Photographer Martin Parr took over two levels with his exhibition named Parrworld. The photographs on the first floor were extremely insightful and gave inspiration from every day occurances. They were mainly of people at a horse racing ground, ladies with there fancy outfits on and men with there suits however the way Parr had captured them and the composition of the photos was a lot more interesting than it first sounds. My favourite of this collection was a photo of someones carpet with people knees and glasses of wine sitting on it. As this is always what you would see at one of our house gatherings on the floor but you would never think of taking a photo of such a mundane thing, but it really worked at showing the atmosphere, time and place. Moving up to Parrs next level you can view a range of objects, photographs and books from Parrs own personal collection which is very interesting. Whilst looking round this I felt connected to him as an artist as I hoard many objects and books that may seem pointless, but they looked brilliant as an exhibition. There were glass boxes filed with watches and clocks that all had either Borack Obamas, Sudan Hussein or Osama Bin Ladens face in them. I found it comical but at the same time it had meaning, like time was important to when these important figures were going to act.
Korean artist Kim Sooja took over another of the levels with her first solo artist. The large room had 8 large screens on the walls, 4 on each side where all you could see was busy streets with people walking towards the camera. However all the streets were in very different parts of the world such as Mexico City, Nambia and Egypt. It was mesmerising to watch as many different cultures and people walked towards you, giving an insight of what the place, people and culture of that place are like. I could have watched it all day.
Definatley worth a visit.