The Auckland Project
Apr. 28th, 2018 02:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustLast Wednesday, durham_rambler was in Bishop Auckland at a Northern Heartlands conference on planning as a participatory art; I went along for the ride, and to spend a day mooching around Bishop Auckland, which is full of excitement these days.
The transformation is still a work in progress. The Tower is under construction:
due to open in July; the castle is undergoing serious renovation, and won't reopen until December; the colourful hoardings along one side of the Market Place promise a gallery of Spanish art, opening in 2019. There are banners everywhere welcoming people who are here for Kynren. The woollen flowers - and foodstuffs -
are left over from last weekend's Food Festival, which we might have visited (we have enjoyed it in other years) had we not been coming to Bishop Auckland today.
I had a happy morning visiting the shops. They, too, speak of a town in transition: too many empty properties (some of them rather desirable), rather more charity shops than is entirely healthy (though you won't hear me complaining about this) and a handful of galleries, of which my favourite was the Pineapple Gallery, and not just because, after we had been talking for a while, the gallerist (that's what it says on his card; his name is Tom Gibbons) pulled out a chair, put on the kettle and made me a mug of coffee. I bought some small gifts, and admired the prints of Sarah Venus. Also Mr Gibbons' bright yellow desk.
After lunch (a 'savoury cream tea', which means that the scone was a cheese scone, the cream was cream cheese, and the tea was coffee - I approve of this innovation) I spent the afternoon at the Mining Art Gallery, the part of the Auckland Project which is currently up and running. A fine piece of Victorian Gothic, formerly a bank, now houses an exhibition whose nucleus is one private collection. It's an interesting fusion of art gallery and social document, some of the paintings visually arresting, others eloquent as a window into the miner's life. I won't say I liked Nicholas Evans' Jesus in the Midst, but I stood and stared at it for some time, the patterns of the rock and fabric gradually resolving into human figures. A couple of Norman Cornish pastel sketches of a miner with a drill had more life than I usually find in his scenes of life above ground (the men at the bar, the fish and chip waggon) and I'm glad to have seen them.
If the day had been warmer, or if I had been less weary, or the way better signposted, I could have gone for a walk in the Castle grounds; instead I took myself to the local Wetherspoons (the Stanley Jefferson, in honour of Stan Laurel, who lived in Bishop as a child) and read Lindsey Davis's Nemesis one of my charity shop finds.
durham_rambler was in Bishop Auckland at a Northern Heartlands conference on planning as a participatory art; I went along for the ride, and to spend a day mooching around Bishop Auckland, which is full of excitement these days.The transformation is still a work in progress. The Tower is under construction:
due to open in July; the castle is undergoing serious renovation, and won't reopen until December; the colourful hoardings along one side of the Market Place promise a gallery of Spanish art, opening in 2019. There are banners everywhere welcoming people who are here for Kynren. The woollen flowers - and foodstuffs -
are left over from last weekend's Food Festival, which we might have visited (we have enjoyed it in other years) had we not been coming to Bishop Auckland today.
I had a happy morning visiting the shops. They, too, speak of a town in transition: too many empty properties (some of them rather desirable), rather more charity shops than is entirely healthy (though you won't hear me complaining about this) and a handful of galleries, of which my favourite was the Pineapple Gallery, and not just because, after we had been talking for a while, the gallerist (that's what it says on his card; his name is Tom Gibbons) pulled out a chair, put on the kettle and made me a mug of coffee. I bought some small gifts, and admired the prints of Sarah Venus. Also Mr Gibbons' bright yellow desk.
After lunch (a 'savoury cream tea', which means that the scone was a cheese scone, the cream was cream cheese, and the tea was coffee - I approve of this innovation) I spent the afternoon at the Mining Art Gallery, the part of the Auckland Project which is currently up and running. A fine piece of Victorian Gothic, formerly a bank, now houses an exhibition whose nucleus is one private collection. It's an interesting fusion of art gallery and social document, some of the paintings visually arresting, others eloquent as a window into the miner's life. I won't say I liked Nicholas Evans' Jesus in the Midst, but I stood and stared at it for some time, the patterns of the rock and fabric gradually resolving into human figures. A couple of Norman Cornish pastel sketches of a miner with a drill had more life than I usually find in his scenes of life above ground (the men at the bar, the fish and chip waggon) and I'm glad to have seen them.
If the day had been warmer, or if I had been less weary, or the way better signposted, I could have gone for a walk in the Castle grounds; instead I took myself to the local Wetherspoons (the Stanley Jefferson, in honour of Stan Laurel, who lived in Bishop as a child) and read Lindsey Davis's Nemesis one of my charity shop finds.
