Friends of the Hatton,
Lectures
Since 2022
Lectures take place on Saturdays at the Learning Room of the Hatton Gallery and are open for members and the general public.
Autumn Programme 2023: Public Art - Art in the Social Context
30th September: Prof Wolfgang Weilder (Newcastle University)
Contemporary art has always had a changing and often challenging relationship with public space, the surrounding architecture, as well as the urban context and the people therein. The temporary time-based and site-specific works of Wolfgang Weileder offer a new approach to question our understanding of the urban environment and the interactions we have with it. In his presentation he will give an introduction to a selection of his international sculpture and photography projects.
Wolfgang Weileder is a visual artist and sculptor based in Newcastle who has exhibited internationally for the past 30 years. Best known for his large-scale site-specific installations in public spaces, that create new, temporary buildings, his practice and research are concerned with exploring how we engage with public space and architecture, and our negotiation of civic and social space.
Wolfgang has been Professor of Contemporary Sculpture at Newcastle University since 2006.
28th October at 1pm: Dr Julie Crawshaw (Northumbria University) – Practice, placements, and planning
Eventbrite booking
In relation to artists’ placements and the role of artists in urban and rural planning this talk will explore what we might mean by ‘practice’ and the potential of practice(s). To trace practice as it takes place in different formations and scales this storied session will draw from ethnographic collaborations between artists, academics and planners in Berwick upon Tweed and The Holy Island of Lindisfarne amongst other examples.
Dr Julie Crawshaw holds an undergraduate in Fine Art and PhD in Planning and Landscape. Her interdisciplinary research combines the fields of art and planning and increasingly art and organisation also. She is Associate Professor in the Department of Arts at Northumbria University where she is Head of Subject for Arts Practice and Conservation. She is author of ‘Art Worlding: Planning Relations’ (2022) published by Routledge.
25th November at 1.30pm: Prof Vee Pollock (Newcastle University) – Public Art and Urban Cultural Regeneration in the UK: Gateshead Riverside Park
Eventbrite booking
Unbeknown to many, Gateshead Riverside Park is the birthplace of cultural regeneration in the UK. Experiencing the economic and social impacts of post-industrial decline, in the late 1980s the town embarked on what is now a typical path of cultural regeneration. It hosted the National Garden Festival in 1990 (a Conservative Government initiative to transform the economies and identities of declining places), transformed the former industrial BALTIC flour mill into a contemporary art gallery (2002), constructed the landmark Sage Gateshead (now Glasshouse) in 2004 and ingenuously engineered Millennium Bridge (2001). Gateshead is probably best known for Antony Gormley’s emblematic Angel of the North (1998), itself embodying a phoenix-like rise from a former coal site, and yet what is less known is the pioneering and forward-thinking scheme of public art that gave the Council of this small town the confidence to embark on what was to be an era-defining scheme. The site of the Garden Festival and much public art has since been neglected but is now itself subject to regeneration, this talk will place Gateshead Riverside Park in the context of urban cultural regeneration in the UK and Europe and discuss the innovative approaches being taken to secure its future.
Vee is Dean of Culture and Creative Arts and Professor of Public Art within Fine Art at Newcastle University.
