Byth's PUBlic art with a difference
Nick Jones goes south to visit a gallery with true community interest at heart
THERE'S A DREAM of an old police station in Blyth's Bridge Street, complete with chained mastiffs, carved, a belfry… and even a spirelet!
Pevsner rates it the best building in town. Architect, John Cresswell. Date, 1896. Style, Italianate Gothic. Think a smaller version of a very different station, Giles Gilbert Scott's St Pancras, built 1876.
Leaving plenty to the imagination - Nick Jone's 'arty' shot of Blyth's ornate cop shop
But it begs the question, WHY? Was Cresswell one of the Chief Constable's best mates, or perhaps Blyth was a hotbed of crime or, worse, sedition? Looking across the street, I suspect the latter, for here was a rather grand late XIX century hotel, The King's Head.
I imagine shady foreign gentlemen purporting to be in the market for high quality coal closeted in the bar. Fifth columnists perhaps, latter-day Roundheads or Jacobites plotting the downfall of monarchy, empire, or both?
Except a canny Northumbrian chief constable clearly rumbled them, commissioning what must be the grandest clink in the north-east. Or did he?
Evelyn Cromwell's 'Peeping Tom', a PUBlic window display in a local café
Fast forward to 2024, and what do I find? The King's Head, no less, still there, but, after morphing into a public house, it's now a café , + EDable, an architects' practice, + PLYable, makers of unique and playful furniture and more, + VISable Thinking, to help visualise complex problems, + an art gallery called rePUBlic, a play on repurposing the p-u-b. All code, surely? But for what?
Walking round the gallery, and seeing the work of sculptor and artist John O'Rourke, I'm back in dreamtime. His carved heads and torsos of miners are outer shells, hiding and protecting unseen interiors with hidden chambers, and their associated layers of meaning and interpretation.
So "The Northumbrian Miner", carved in oak, is a microcosm of the macrocosm of the mine itself, complete with headstock, cage, and shaft descending through the ribcage - down into the physical interior but also into the depths of psyche and soul.
John O'Rourke's 'Northumbrian Miner' carved in oak
Here too is a maquette for a dominating, landmark sized version for Bedlington Bank Top overlooking the river Blyth; a monument to honour and remember miners and their families. In this and a companion oak-carved piece, "Earth Astronomer", an archaic term for an alchemist, transformer of base metal into gold, O'Rourke explores alchemical opposites: inner and outer, above and below, overt and covert, and, the Holy Grail, conjunctio, their union. AKA psychologist Carl Jung's "Enantodromia", only resolved when an extreme state transforms and rebalances.
Think night to day, dark to light, war to peace, or, here in Blyth, decline to regeneration. Back in 1961 Blyth shipped more coal than any other port in Europe, before north sea oil scuppered mining and the fossil fuel that powered Britain's industry; at a high price to people and planet, and great profit to the few.
Nowadays, this post industrial part of Northumberland has a sadness; it's a lost soul of a place looking for a new identity and the redemption that would accompany it. EDF's plans for Blyth 2 Floating Offshore Windfarm may be one answer but, in the meantime, sticking with things going round and round, I'm reminded that seemingly cranky concepts make REVolutions, and that REVolutions often result in the application of democratic principles, and even new REPublics (keep up you at the back!).
And so it is proving, thanks to the inspiring couple behind all that goes on inside The King's Head – architects Claire and Mags Margetts.
Fundamental to their approach is a belief that design and architecture should be about people, places and their communities. Combine that with their generosity, vision, energy and commitment and you have a powerful catalyst for positive change.
The gallery has been set up as a social enterprise Community Interest Company, offering space, facilities and a free programme of exhibitions and events, not just for artists and makers, but also for meetings, TAI-chi classes, and more, including working with the Heart of Blyth programme, offering creative workshops to help improve the well-being of local people, and hosting the Bede Academy end-of-year show.
Then there is the PUBlic Window a project set up as an antidote to the dark days of lockdown, to display ART in unexpected spaces to increase public engagement. These are four free standing micro-galleries, which can be installed anywhere.
Artist Evelyn Cromwell's piece, "Peeping Tom", on display in the café , uses the medium of glass and the process of darkroom photography to explore how windows within windows can contribute to layers of perception, creating or dissolving barriers in space or time. Next? Studio and workshop spaces and accommodation to enable residencies. Here be good alchemy! Or should that be ALChemy?
republicgallery.co.uk johnorourkeart.com
