Durham Art Gallery Exhibitions

Important Notice for Visitors

After 40 years, Durham Art Gallery is to be re-wired. To allow this work to be done as quickly as possible, the Art Gallery will be temporarily closed for eight weeks from Monday 14 April until Saturday 26 July. Please note that during this work, the DLI Museum, cafe and shop will be open as usual for visitors.

Saturday 26th July – Sunday 7th September

To celebrate National Year of Reading 2008 we bring a range of exciting exhibitions and events for all the family, which explore artist’s interpretations of traditional fairytales and folk stories that are loved by children and adults alike.

Folk Art and Fairytales

Folk Art and Fairy Tales brings together new and recent work by ten of the most talented artists and makers working in the UK today who are connected by their fascination with fairytales folk art and legends.

The exhibits range from minute sculpture to large-scale installation, and are created from an extraordinary variety of materials. Many of the artists work with discarded, throwaway materials, weaving magic from wire, paper, recycled toys, old books and used tins cans, bits of leather and fabric scraps, bird feathers and even teabags!

Folk Art and Fairytales is an exhibition that will surprise and delight all ages and provide mystery, humour and wonder in equal measure.

Artists exhibiting are: Julie Arkell, Su Blackwell, Samantha Bryan, Lucy Casson, Jennifer Collier, Lowri Davies, Rachael Howard, Carys Anne Hughes, Jayne Lennard, Cathy Miles.

“An Oriel Davies Gallery Touring Exhibition”

Sharon Wilson - Red

Artist Sharon Wilson has been working with different groups across County Durham over the past few months to help her create a magical gallery installation inspired by ‘Little Red Hiding Hood’

The resulting installation is a unique gallery experience and an innovative interpretation of this classic fairy story; exploring themes of the macabre, innocence and the big bad wolf!

Get Involved…

Sharon still needs more people to help with her exhibition. Come along to the gallery on the 5th, 19th, and 26th of August or 2nd of September to meet Sharon learn more about Little Red Riding Hood and make your own addition to the installation.

Drop in anytime between 11.00am and 12.30 and 1.00 and 3.00pm.

Chi Kwong Man

Chi Kwong Man is an artist and illustrator who creates large scale charcoal drawings exploring traditional fairytales such as Little Red Riding Hood and Snow White within the context of modern popular culture.

He also turns his drawings into amazing interactive computer based animations which you can play in the gallery.

Saturday 13th September – Sunday 12th October

Eleanor Moreton Durham Cathedral Artist in Residence 2008

Eleanor Moreton paints an imaginary world of woods, princes, Queens and cottages.

The princes come in a range of disguises - their inspiration ranges from Disney to Slovakian puppets. They are always ridiculous.

The cottages may be seen as claustrophobic, dark interiors; or more airy, illogical spaces whose walls seem to float apart; or they may be seen from outside, surrounded by woods, closed off, perhaps derelict. They are maternal spaces, at the same time protective and smothering, or fragile, dissolving.

She often chooses to paint buildings, homes. According to the artist “it is the homely itself which is frightening. It is like being buried alive. It belongs to the death drive”.

For the artist, the process of translating the initial image into a painting is an important part of her adventure.

The fairytale world that Moreton creates alludes to German Romanticism and psychoanalytic theory, both of which have explored the theme of the unhomely (or uncanny). But her position is always one of ambivalence, both desiring the imaginary and knowing that it is a desire that cannot be fulfilled.

Further works by Eleanor Moreton produced during her residency at Durham Cathedral can also be seen at the Reg Vardy Gallery, Sunderland from the 30th September until 31st October.

Saturday 18th October – Sunday 23rd November

Tim Brennan – The Great North

This atmospheric series of photographs by Tim Brennan explores how geography, personal memory and social history intersect. In the tradition of the seascape, the images depict the North Sea, where most of the North’s unmined coal still resides.

The photographs in the exhibition have been created using a low-resolution mobile phone camera which when enlarged beyond clear definition, the images become hazy and impressionistic, suggesting the more abstract works of Turner.

Tim Brennan is viewed as one of the most important artists to contribute to the social and political role of contemporary art particularly around minimalism, performance and land art. He is Programme Leader for MA Curating at the University of Sunderland.

Matt Sewell Home Fires and Deepdales -

Matt Sewell is an illustrator and artists originally hails County Durham in is currently based in London. His work draws on his rural heritage, fusing fairytale-like narratives, often-psychedelic landscapes and a symbolic treatment of animals.

Matt's favored media have changed through the years, his natural style finding itself equally at home on people's feet with his own range of Gravis footwear, on animated adverts for 3.

Matt has produced illustrations for The Guardian, 55 DSL, BBC and K-Swiss and hand-painted murals for organizations such as Puma, Selfridges, Magma and Topman in Oxford Street.

Saturday 29th November – Sunday 4th January 2009

Unpopular Culture: Grayson Perry selects from the Arts Council Collection

Grayson Perry was catapulted into the public consciousness in 2003 when he won the Turner Prize for his delicate coil pots adorned with drawings and text suggesting a range of subject matter. Perhaps less well-known is Perry’s work as a curator. Unpopular Culture highlights this aspect of Perry’s practice and offers his personal view of the Arts Council Collection: one of the foremost national collections of British post-war art, with over 7,500 works.

The show includes works by; Kenneth Armitage; Frank Auerbach; Ian Berry; Anthony Caro; Lynn Chadwick; Barbara Hepworth; L.S. Lowry; Henry Moore, Paul Nash; Eduardo Paolozzi; Martin Parr; Tony Ray-Jones and Homer Sykes as well as two striking new works by Perry himself.

Unpopular Culture examines a period in history which Perry argues was ‘before British Art became fashionable.’ The exhibition of more than 70 works by 50 artists encompasses a variety of media, figurative painting, bronze sculpture and documentary photography.

Unpopular Culture is accompanied by a catalogue that includes commissioned essays by Grayson Perry and Blake Morrison and a limited edtion silk headscarf designed by Grayson Perry available from the Gallery Shop

A Hayward Gallery Touring Exhibition from the South Bank Centre, London on behalf of Arts Council England.

Designed and Made

Designed and Made are an artist’s led designer / maker agency whose offices and gallery are located above the Live Theatre, on Newcastle’s Quayside. They provide support for designer / makers with develop the making, exhibiting and collecting of contemporary crafts across the North East.

Its members have received both international and national acclaim and are recognized as the leading North East based designer-makers.

Designed and Made member, Helena Seget, has curated an exhibition of selected works, offering visitors to the Durham Art Gallery an opportunity to view work at the forefront of its field.