Exhibition opening times:
Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th January 12noon – 5pm
Saturday 1st and Sunday 2nd February 12noon – 5pm
Preview: Friday 24th January 6pm – 8pm
This show at 36 Gallery brings together the work of Evelyn Cromwell and Jenny Mc Namara, the pair work collaboratively at the Spaghetti Factory, a curatorial duo. This is the first time they have shown their work together outside of a group show.
Cromwell is interested in fictioning utopias and contemplates the labour that may be overlooked or deemed insignificant when creating perfect worlds. The work in this exhibition looks specifically at potholes, the act of filling them and where they fit in to the utopian vision. And the construction and maintenance involved in creating our future landscapes.
The mechanics of vision are a central theme in Mc Namara’s work: the way that a 2D image of a 3D environment is projected onto the retina and is built back up into a 3D representation of the world by the brain. She likes to take the patterns made in her sculptures and bring them back into 2D through photography, print and painting. How we experience shape and colour is important to her and she encourages audience involvement by manipulating the modular way the eyes and brain process vision.
The act of seeing and approaching the world is very different for Cromwell and Mc Namara. The work is all about how they see space. Mc Namara experiments with optics, surface and colour to create pattern machines in space. Cromwell sees our public environment with a critical eye, contemplating different utopian visions and focusing on the insignificant or “overlooked”. The works in this show are the product of different ways of seeing and looking: one as an immediate response, the other questioning the purpose of the spaces we see everyday.
The Spaghetti Factory is a curatorial duo which began as a series of exhibitions in a house in Central Newcastle. It’s now a satellite project, collaborating with existing spaces to programme workshops and exhibitions. They’re currently working with Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens to put together three exhibitions. The Spaghetti Factory aims to work with artists at the start of their practice and to show a range of experimental work.
The former 36 Lime Street Gallery was established in 2009 as an artist run space to provide a platform for emerging and established artists to experiment and take risks with new work. Selected by committee from an open call, 8 proposals are selected and exhibited throughout the year.
The gallery space continues to provide a platform as 36.
