It hardly needs to be said: this year’s exhibition of work by graduating artists on the BxNU MFA takes place in the midst of highly unusual times. Loss and Looking is testament to how five individual artists, often working in supporting and collaborative relation to one another, might help us plot a course through the changed circumstances we find ourselves in. It is an exhibition that variously reflects back on times past, upon things lost, even as it simultaneously looks forward, oftentimes with hope. It shows how persistence and creative adaptiveness can flourish even in desperate times.
Loss and Looking has been organised in partnership between Northumbria University and BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art.
Below is a short introduction by each artist about the work they have produced for the show.
Aastha Bairollia
Self-Portrayal, Geographic Locations, Nature, Storytelling, Memories, Emotions and Feelings…
Folk with Contemporary…
Words with Colours…
Real with Imaginary…
The viewer is encouraged to take their own emotional journey with me…vivid, evocative, fascinating, brightly coloured, dramatic, memorable…
Eva Hopper
To step around a corner and rediscover yesterday consumes my every day, memories stick.
Time passes but my thoughts remain transfixed by the past, and how its traces flow
through into my tomorrows.
They Lay Where They Fall, has materialised through my reflective nostalgia
for an otherworldly liminal space,
a space that incapsulates both the love and loss of the familiar.
Will Hughes
Will Hughes is a Multi-Disciplinary artist. Their work is conceptually driven by lived experiences as a queer, non binary person in the UK. They explore human themes such as touch, belonging and sensuality, through the use of everyday and constructed objects, as well as lyrics which title the works. The work seeks to seduce the viewer through materials and the often slow mechanical repetitive movements. Building layers of imagery, pop culture and materiality into the work.
Christine Partridge
Working across painting, photography, sculpture and video, my work follows multiple threads that entangle around and through our relationship to the natural world.
Dana Smith
Dana Smith is a British transexual artist based in Newcastle.
Her installation explores, through computer-generated imagery, the effects of gendered violence in contemporary society.
A companion sculpture, ‘Assets’, probes ingratiation with a masculine virtual order.
Please be aware this exhibition contains an artwork with language and thematic concerns that explore the effects of gendered violence in contemporary society. There is no visually explicit content. Please speak to BALTIC Crew for any further information or guidance. We advise under 18s visiting are always accompanied by a parent/guardian/carer or by their peers.
