As a group we visited the Baltic centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead to gain first hand research of installation projects on display by real artists.
On the ground floor was an installation called ‘It has to be this way2’ by Lindsay Seers, it is an exploration documentation of the misconception and reservations generated from a mix of factual history and recollected memories. The story it follows is of the disappearance of Christine Parks, she was the artists stepsister, it retraces her journey to Ghana where the slave forts line the coast. The actual installation was a model of one of these forts that you could walk into where a circular screen played the film on the floor. There were also two large shapes outside the fort that kept making appearances in the film, a 3d black star and a 3d red diamond.
I really liked the way you could step into the piece of work, it made you feel linked into the project itself and involved in the story. The way the screen was set out really helped with this too, looking down through a sort of spy hole.
On the first floor there was a live art workshop taking place, you were able to construct your own brick out of card and then decorate it using either paint or pens, expressing something you love. It gave me the idea to potentially use something physically interactive as an installation for my own work.
The second floor was closed but the third floor held an exhibition of George Shaw’s work, ‘The Sly and Unseen Day’ which is a collection of paintings from 1996 to present day, they were made using Humbrol enamel and looked really effective.
