New workshops added to accompany our ‘Water and People’ exhibition!
WATER AND PEOPLE
Exhibition dates: 23rd March – 13th April 2024
The Gallery and The Show Case
Due to the popularity of our ‘Water and People’ exhibition, we’ve added two new sessions to the accompanying ‘Confluences’ programme – a series of creative workshops bringing people together to discuss the material, social, cultural, and political aspects of our relationship with water.
‘Water and People’ is a group exhibition exploring our ways of seeing, experiencing, and relating to water. Through painting, sculpture, poetry, sound, and embroidery, the artists explore how we communicate about water, and whose voices are heard in conversations around water security, river health, and climate change.
Alongside artwork flowing from the River Tyne and North East of England, we present creative outputs from community-focused research from UKRI GCRF Water Security and Sustainable Development Hub by our partners in Colombia, Ethiopia, India and Malaysia.
The new sessions consist of two painting and drawing workshops with Aidan Doyle. The aim of both workshops is the study of two paintings by Georges Seurat from 1884, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte and Une Baignade, Asnières, to suggest ways of making a visual interpretation of participants’ personal perceptions of the river and its activities.
CONFLUENCES CREATIVE WORKSHOPS
These workshops are now available for booking via Eventbrite.
‘WATER, PAINTING AND DRAWING’
Workshop #1 – Painting: A Sunday on La Grande Jatte
Wed 10th April, 10am-1pm (BOOK HERE)
Georges Seurat employed the technique of pointillism. This combines brushstroke techniques to the application of colour theory where juxtaposition of points of pure colour mix together in the viewer’s eye when seen from a distance, bring vibrancy to the painting.
After taking a short time to look at reproductions of both paintings workshop participants are invited to suggest ways in which they themselves interact with the river banks for leisure, sport, recreation or work based activities.
We will make some coloured studies and affix these to reproductions of the paintings.
Workshop #2 – Drawing: Une Baignade, Asnières
Wed 10th April, 1:30pm-4:30pm (BOOK HERE)
The painting of a suburban, placid Parisian riverside. The railway bridge and industrial buildings set the scene and tell the story that his bathers are working men and boys. The artist again used pointillism with a ‘hot’ colour palette to imply the shimmering warmth of a summer day by the Seine. The heat haze fades the industrial forms.
Again using the Seurat paintings as a point of discussion and departure participants will be inverted to walk a short stretch of the river with a simple sketchbook and daring implements to look at how people along its banks enjoy the amenity of the river within the context of its urban and post-industrial setting.
