Blog

  • FRANKIE & THE HEARTSTRINGS ARE OPENING A RECORD STORE!

    Frankie & The Heartstrings are opening a record store, Pop Recs Ltd, in Sunderland on 1st June. Located on Fawcett Street, in the heart of Sunderland and housed in what was formerly the area’s tourism office. Pop Recs Ltd will be home to a performance area, recreational space and as well as a gallery wall which will be utilised by Keith Pattison and Paul Alexander Knox.

    Read more here

    Image © Paul Alexander Knox

  • St. Cuthbert's Final Journey

    7 days ago we started our journey retracing St. Cuthbert’s final journey. We’re following the route taken by the 9th century monks as they flee from invading vikings with the body of St Cuthbert and the Lindisfarne Gospels. Catch up and follow our blog here.

  • and so it begins.

    Over the next few weeks I’ll be travelling over 1200 miles with author Richard W Hardwick, as we retrace St. Cuthbert’s last journey. I’ll be posting a few things here and there is also a blog which Richard is writing www.stcuthbertsfinaljourney.com
    The work will be exhibited in Durham this summer as part of The Festival of The Gospels, with subsequent tour of the North of England.

    Image: Guide Me, St. Cuthbert’s Isle, Lindisfarne © Paul Alexander Knox 2013.

  • Photographer Talk: Mark Power

    Friday 26 April 2013, 6.30-8.00pm
    The Mining Institute
    Newcastle Upon Tyne

    Photographer Mark Power will be coming to the NEPN to discuss recent projects, challenges in documentary practice and being a Magnum photographer. The talk will start at 6.30pm in the Mining Institute’s Lecture Theatre and will be followed by refreshments in the Library.

    As a child Mark Power discovered his father’s home-made enlarger in the family attic, a contraption consisting of an upturned flowerpot, a domestic lightbulb and a simple camera lens. His interest in photography probably began at this moment, although he later chose to do illustration – specialising in life drawing and painting - instead. He (somewhat accidentally) ‘became a photographer’ in 1983, working in the editorial and charity markets for nearly ten years, before he began teaching in 1992. This coincided with a shift towards long-term, self initiated projects which now sit comfortably alongside a number of large-scale commissions in the industrial sector.

    Power’s work has been seen in numerous solo and group exhibitions across the world and is in several public and private collections. He has published six books: ‘The Shipping Forecast’ (1996), ‘Superstructure’ (2000), ‘The Treasury Project’ (2002), ‘26 Different Endings’ (2007), ‘The Sound of Two Songs’ (2010) and ‘Mass’ (2013).

    Mark Power joined Magnum Photos in 2002.

    The event is free to all but booking is requested HERE

    Image: Pobierowo © Mark Power 2008

  • Ken Loach - Which Side Are You On (1984)

    Heartbreaking, heartfelt, and at times brutal documentary about the miners strike in England, featuring footage from my home town Easington Colliery. 1984, unknown to me at the time, was to become the year of my social and political awakening. I grew up in Easington and walked past these lines of police and pickets every day on my way to school. I shouted and threw stones at the buses carrying the ‘Scabs’ (strike-breakers), not quite fully aware of the situation. The events I witnessed that year will never be forgotten, and Margaret Thatcher will not be mourned.

  • The Miner and the Copper

    It is one of the abiding images of the 1984 coal strike - Guardian photographer Don McPhee’s picture of a picketing miner facing up to an officer. But what happened to the two protagonists?

    Find out here

    Image: Paul Castle (far left) and George ‘Geordie’ Brealey (right) at Orgreave in 1984. © Don McPhee

  • The Magnificent One: Philip Jones Griffiths

    “Taking real pictures for real people”

    Legendary anti-war photographer and author of Viet Nam Inc, Philip Jones Griffiths, gives the interview of a lifetime only 48 hours before he died in at his home in London on March 19, 2008. With a voice impassioned by courage and enriched by his legacy of love for people and for taking real pictures of real people, Philip imparts his final words of wisdom on the subject of photography and sexuality.

    Rare interviews with iconic photographers and people who loved him bring the most eloquent and clear headed anti-war photographer back to life. This movie is an hommage to being real in a time when documentary photography has fallen off the pedestal. This is the way and these are the words that matter.

  • There’ll be some glasses raised tonight all over the North of England at the news that Margaret Thatcher is finally dead. Cheers, and may she rot in hell.

    *The Strike of 1984 – 1985 shook the foundations of British society, tearing apart traditional mining communities. In August 1984 Keith Pattison went to Easington Colliery to record the events there and remained until March 1985, photographing from behind the lines a community rallying together against implacable opposition. Pattison frames a narrative sequence of images from the optimism of August through to the deepening pessimism of winter, to the final vote to return to work.
    * quote from No Redemption by Keith Pattison & David Peace.

    I grew up in Easington and walked past these picket lines every day on my way to school. I shouted and threw stones at the buses carrying the strike-breakers (‘Scabs’), not quite fully aware of the situation, or that 1984 would be my social and political awakening. The events I witnessed that year and have shaped my outlook, and Keith Pattison’s photographs were pivotal in my decision to become a photographer.

    This work is a powerful and emotional glimpse at the lives of the proud people of Easington, and I urge you all to take a look at it.

    You can see more of Keith’s work here

    image: Week 28 Easington Colliery, Top of Seaside Lane.
    Easington Mechanics with Banner. © Keith Pattison

  • NEPN Reading Group: John Darwell at Hatton Gallery

    11 April 2013, 6.00-7.30pm
    The Hatton Gallery
    Newcastle upon Tyne

    Join us at The Hatton Gallery to meet John Darwell to discuss his current exhibition ‘After Schwitters.’

    The ‘Reading Group’ format invites informal discussion, reflections and refreshments.

    John Darwell has travelled to sites particularly relevant to the life and work of Kurt Schwitters including Elterwater, the Isle of Man, Hanover and Norway to produce his own photographic responses to these places. The results are exhibited at The Hatton Gallery until 20 April 2013.

    The Hatton Gallery is home to Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbarn wall, which is on permanent display at the gallery. The event is programmed in partnership with The Hatton Gallery.

    Places are free but limited, so please book HERE
    John Darwell is an independent photographer working on long-term projects that reflect his interest in social and industrial change, concern for the environment and issues around the depiction of mental health.

    To date he has had seven books of his work published, of which the most recent are ‘Dark Days’ (Dewi Lewis Publishing 2007) documenting the impact of foot and mouth disease around his home in north Cumbria, and a twenty five year retrospective ‘Committed to Memory’ (Tullie House Museum & Art Gallery 2007).

    Previous books include ‘Legacy’ (Dewi Lewis 2001) an exploration of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, and ‘Jimmy Jock, Albert & the Six Sided Clock’ on the Port of Liverpool (Cornerhouse 1993).

    His work has been exhibited, and published, widely both nationally and internationally, including numerous exhibitions in the UK, the Netherlands, Italy, the USA, (Houston Foto Fest, New York and San Francisco) Mexico, South America and the Canary Islands, and is featured in a number of important collections including the National Museum of Media/Sun Life Collection, Bradford; the Victoria & Albert Museum, London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

    In 2008 he gained his PhD for research into the visualisation of depression for his work entitled ‘A Black Dog Came Calling’. He is currently Senior Lecturer in Photography at the University of Cumbria in Carlisle.

    Image: Bag in Fence from Hannover © John Darwell

    www.johndarwell.com

  • ‘Candyfloss & Crucifixes’

    The narrow cobbled streets are crammed with people in various states of reverie and revelry. The air is frighteningly thin due to the high altitude, hoards of people, heavy incense and the grease rising from deep fried foods. Vendors yell over the chaos of children and celebration. The night is dizzying, chaotic and nearly impossible to navigate. And then, as if the mute button were pushed, a hush engulfs the throngs as the first of an endless stream of gory crucifixes begins to round a corner. This is Taxco, Mexico. This is Semana Santa, Holy Week.

    See more here

    Image from Candyfloss and Crucifixes © Paul Alexander Knox 2005

  • Bangladeshi Independence Day

    26.03.2013 - Celebrations and remembrance at Sunderland’s Bangladeshi Community Centre.

    © Paul Alexander Knox 2013

← Older