If you’re stuck for something to do this weekend and fancy something a little more edifying than necking Buckfast outside Nandos and fighting with the emo kids, you might want to head along to the Late Shows, the sixth ‘culture crawl’ staged in the city, and the biggest yet. Since its inception in 2007, the event has grown constantly, to the point where this year 55 venues are taking part, throwing open their doors late into the night on Friday and Saturday (19th-20^th).

Part of the nationwide Museums At Night weekend, The Late Shows is the biggest (and local regional pride demands we suggest, the best) event of the lot.

Friday night is all about Ouseburn, with 11 locations open until 11pm. As well as exhibitions and art workshops (at 36 Lime St, Mushroom Works, Holy Biscuit and Northern Print, amongst others), there will be music and visuals from upcoming and established artists at The Biscuit Factory and a vintage tea party at the anything but vintage Toffee Factory, with music from the wonderful Lady Koo & Her Kooky Kitchen.

At Seven Stories, we’re told childrens’ book characters will come alive, while street theatre outfit The Time Bandits will be lurking around Ouseburn Valley for a Jack The Ripper themed show. There’s everything two-wheeled at the new Newcastle Cycle Hub and an art / architecture collaboration at Ouse Street Arts Club, a new shipping container-based site at the bottom of the valley.

On Saturday, as well as the Ouseburn venues staying open again the rest of the Newcastle / Gateshead area gets involved, and while some of these events have entry fees, if you grab a Late Show glow stick there are plenty of reductions and offers. Among the dozens of events – many the usual mix of exhibitions, tours and workshops – a few things stand out: there’s circus skills to learn at the Discovery Museum, while tours of the ‘electro-acoustic machinery’ artwork-cum-tidemill are available to those who book.

There will be open studios, installations and performances at the Baltic’s new Baltic39 space in High Bridge St and all sorts of curious happenings at the main Baltic, including a choral version of A-Ha’s Take On Me. The Sanctuary has street art, B-Boy street dance demonstrations and live hip hop, while The Sage has everything from a ukulele jam to a tribute to legendary Los Angeles songwriter hotbed The Troubadour, featuring local talents like Natasha Hawes and Matt Stalker. DJ collective Soft Rocks are at the Star & Shadow to 5am, and World Headquarters are offering cheap entry as well. There’s a bar screening of Raiders Of The Lost Ark at the Tyneside Cinema and African house and electro from DJ Vamanos at Shipley Art Gallery. There’s also… well, why not download the brochure?

The Late Shows gets underway this Friday.

We’re considerably better read than both our spelling and general demeanour would let on here at KYEO. The only problem is that we’re not given the opportunity to talk to you about book as much as gigs, or art, or funny gifs. Which simply makes us all the more delighted to have come across Tremors, the story of life in post-earthquake Japan, written by local author Paul Broadhead, and illustrated by Let’s Buy Happiness songstress Sarah Hall.

Telling the personal tale of Paul’s trip out in the immediate aftermath of one of the greatest humanitarian disasters in living memory, Tremors has recently been released in both e-book, and real life paper formats. I caught up with the author to find out the story behind the story.

First of all , what made you want to keep a journal of your experiences?

I’ve travelled quite a lot and always kept travel journals so there was no big decision to keep one this time, so it’s actually something that I would have done regardless of whether there’d been an earthquake or not. I keep journals for personal use; partly due to a poor memory if I’m honest. Sometimes little extracts or stories of real-life experiences can work their way later into a piece of fiction but on this occasion, it seemed very much like this was the story.

Given how sureal living through something like that must be, was it ever tempting to write the book away from the first-person, and possibly turn it into a work of fiction based around your experiences instead?

Not really. When I got home from Japan, I realised there was a story here that should be told and to me the ‘hook’ was always a personal account from someone in a strange land at a strange time. At times it is an intimate story, especially in regards to the personal relationships, so a temptation could be to turn it into maybe a romance-in-troubled-times story, but to me that would have trivialised the nature of what was happening in Japan at the time. I think some of the most interesting stuff for readers will be the differing media portrayals of the situation and I think it hits harder in terms of the seriousness of the situation as being an actual historical document or period piece.

You’re a writer by trade, but how did keep ing a journal like this differ from the styles and processes of writing you’re more accustomed to?

I’m afraid that I’m actually merely an office monkey with aspirations of eventually paying the bills with my writing, but it’s certainly different to the fiction I’ve written. If you were to write an entire book in three weeks whilst travelling, your head would be stuck in your notepad and you’d miss the feel of what was going on around you. So it’s important to come up with a method that works for you. I’d never remember everything so I made notes when I got the chance and took plenty of photos then fleshed it out and tried to make some sense of it all when I got home, whilst still trying to maintain the feelings that I was having at the time. That’s important when writing up a journal I think; don’t appear wiser than you were at the time. You have to reflect the innocence you had in the moment or the moment will be lost forever.

Had you known before you flew out, what you now know about about what would happen and what you’d experience, would you have gone? Would you have done anything differently?

Absolutely. Never for a second did I consider not going. Whether it’s the writer and need for adventure in me or not I don’t know, but if anything the situation made me more determined to go. Friends joke that if I’m off on my travels, then that country had better be warned. Japan at the time of its worst natural disaster, I was in Thailand when they had the political uprising and protestors took over the airports and I’ve been to Israel which is always on edge but it was just a week after they attacked a Palestinian boat and tensions were particularly high. I can’t think of a single thing that I would have done differently, though you can never know too much of a country’s dialogue before visiting.

When, and why, did you decide to try and have the journal published? How did you go about doing that?

When I got home and started fleshing things out I realised that it could work. But I realised there was a story when I was following the media portrayals of what was happening. There were two very different versions of events between the media back home and the Japanese media. I just had to make sure I could reflect that. I went very much down the DIY route that is publishing these days. I’d been in touch with Bangkok Books – who specialise in books about Asia – before with a novel I’d written called ‘Butterfly Me, Butterfly You’, which was set in Thailand but reading it now, I’m glad that never came about as I wasn’t ready as a writer. It’s not ideal; there’s very little, if any, money to be made and the promotion is completely left to the author but publishing houses are feeling the recession as much as anyone and the chances these days for new writers are very few and far between.

Even once accepted, a book can get stuck in development hell for years and I thought this had to get out there whilst the earthquake was still fresh in people’s minds, which was why I always had the one year anniversary in mind for its release. It was a lot of hard work at times but I made it so it was very worthwhile. I’m also a bit of a luddite; I love the feel, the touch and the smell of a book. I love turning the pages so I paid for my own print run which the publishers organised. They sort out the Amazon and other sales distributions too but I’m sure there are plenty of other similar publishers out there or if you have the time and the knowhow, you can put your own stuff out. Charles Bukowski put out his own stuff until he was nearly 40 and that was before the days of the kindle. It’s been a learning experience and it’s great to say I’ve had a book published, but for the novel I’ve been working on for a couple of years, ‘Release’, I’d prefer to go down a more traditional route.

Sarah Hall of Let’s Buy Happiness fame did the cover art for you, how was it she came to be involved in the project and what do you feel her work adds to things?

I had an image that I originally wanted to use but after an initial positive response from the designer, it fell through fairly close to submitting the final edit to the publishers so there was a chance the whole thing might fall through. I’ve been a huge Let’s Buy Happiness fan for a couple of years and always liked Sarah’s artwork that featured on their records so I was thrilled when she said she was interested. I came up with the idea for the Manga style artwork and already had the ruptured flag concept, but Sarah took those ideas and did something wonderful with them. I can’t stress how massive that was because it’s the first thing people see before they pick up a book and read it. In a way, I really hope people do actually judge my book by its cover.

How does being “home” feel after the events in the book? What perspective has it given you on day to day life? Do things like paying a gas bill or getting a hole in a sock feel considerably more trivial in comparison?

To a certain extent, I think we’re always changed by these experiences, even if we don’t realise it. We’re a sum of our parts, the things we’ve done and the people we’ve met. If we don’t take anything from these situations, be they positive or negative, then it’s a waste of time. Travelling is the greatest learning experience I can think of. Educating ourselves is how we become more tolerant and understanding of other nationalities and will ultimately make for a better world. I think the most important thing to remember, in order to give ourselves perspective, is that life continues after the experience. I left Japan’s troubles behind but Japan’s troubles haven’t left them behind. There’s still a story to be told after the final page has been turned.

Tremors – Travel Adventures In Post-Earthquake Japan by Paul Broadhead is available now, both in e-book and in paperback.

It is rare these days that we hear of a group of creative, sociable and entrepreneurial youngsters reinventing mostly unused areas of cityscape to proactively occupy their time and, in many cases, to make a living for themselves; this according to Michael Jeffries, Geography Lecturer at Northumbria University is due to the fact that the council views skaters as a feral and unwanted presence.

First becoming aware of the skating subculture when a skateboarder flew over his head as he was leading a walking tour of the city’s 60’s architecture, Jeffries soon found himself emerged in what he describes as a hidden world that exists parallel to the Newcastle that is experienced from the general public. After examining city planning documents Jeffries saw a struggle for power in the city, and believes that the reason the skate subculture is viewed as a nuisance is due to the fact that they use the city in a way that doesn’t cost them money, and therefore get in the way of the ‘valued customer’.

Having become involved with the local skate scene and developing academic research to suggest that the city should be investing in helping sustain the scene rather than attempting to design them out – he tells me that Gateshead council recently invested £11,000 in a skate park because the public felt safer when the skaters were around occupying themselves, as opposed to groups of loiterers. Skating gives them something to occupy their time and keeps them creative, with many young people pursuing careers in creative fields like photography, the arts, music, blogging and web design.

Jeffries believes that these youngsters are to be celebrated and promoted rather than hidden away from the public eye, and is out to break the stereotypes of both the skater as a wasteful inconvenience and the city as a town for drinking and hen parties.

The latest incarnation of his PlayToon initiative sees things culminating in a week long exhibition of photography and video from Wednesday 16th to Wednesday 23rd May, including a day of live action skating and free running on Saturday 19th all at the Holy Biscuit gallery in Newcastle’s Ouseburn Valley.

See the PlayToon exhibition from Wednesday 16th to Wednesday 23rd May and witness some of the live action during PlayOut at the Holy Biscuit, Newcastle on Saturday 19th May, as part of the Late Shows programme.

The River Tyne is many things. A river, for starters, an unwalkable divide between the twin monarchies of Newcastle and Gateshead, an endless barrel of inspiration and metaphor for Jimmy Naill, a home to several species of fish and fish-like Asda trollies, and now, believe it or not, it’s also a musical instrument.

You heard.

As part of the Cultural Olympiad, the same initiative that recently brought us that amazing rainbow over Whitley Bay at the beginning of the month, Owl Project and Ed Carter have teamed up to bring this floating musical artwork to the banks of the river.

Powered entirely by a giant, specially built water wheel, the electro-acoustic machinery measures current, flow, salinity, and every other changeable element of the water environment to produce both data and sound for the exhibition. There’s a bubble synth, and a box that makes thunder, it’s like going canal boating for Dr Seuss’ stag-do.

There’s also a whole host of special events planned to coincide with the exhibition, with artists from the likes of Field Music, to Seb Rochford as well as BBC’s Frozen Planet sound expert Chris Watson, all showcasing a range of ideas which have been inspired by ~Flow. There’s also the customary guided tours, talks, and workshops for the more considered floating-art-music-science fans amongst you.

Specially commissioned, and free to all visitors, ~Flow will stay on the NewcastleGateshead Quayside throughout the summer as part of Artists taking the lead, one of twelve public art commissions funded by the UK Arts Councils and celebrating the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

~Flow opens its doors to the public this Sunday (25th) from 11am, and then runs every Wednesday – Sunday, 11:00 – 17:00, until September 30th. More details on the website.

While the name Robert Walser may be a little obscure for some, the Swiss writer has been a huge influence on a long list of literary, artistic and philosophical figures – from Franz Kafka to Billy Childish, the 20^th Century novelist and poet’s work has only recently been translated into English, spurring international interest in Walser’s work and generating a wealth of new art, writing and critical discussion.

It’s this legacy that the Festival Robert Walser, taking place from Monday 19^th until Sunday 25^th March and curated by Newcastle-based artist and writer Paul Becker, aims to explore.

The exhibition Apropos The Kissing Of A Hand – taking place at Vane Gallery on Pilgrim Street in Newcastle from Friday 23^rd March and running until the end of April – forefronts the festival and attempts to highlight Walser’s impact on a wide range of contemporary artists. Perhaps most poignant, is singer, guitarist, poet and artist Billy Childish’s painting of a photograph showing Walser lying dead in the snow (Walser remained in mental health institutions for the last thirty years of his life, his sudden death happened while he was walking in the snow in the grounds of the asylum). Childish’s paintings of the author’s body convey a sense of the visionary significance he discovered in Walser’s writing.

“A lot of interest has developed from those readers, writers and artists who have come to Walser’s incredibly modern and idiosyncratic use of language for the first time”

Another highlight of the exhibition features Roman Signer’s unique filmed examples of slapstick events or experiments that co-opt everyday objects, causing usually static things to react in startling, explosive ways. Often, as Roman demonstrates, in a similar way to Robert Walser’s prose, where inanimate objects are suddenly imbued with metaphorical desire and emotion.

In addition to the exhibition, a series of talks, readings and performances will complement the festival. Readings of a collection of short stories take place at Newcastle City Library on Monday 19^th March; readings of Walser’s poems and lectures exploring themes in his writing take place at The Lit & Phil on Wednesday 21^st March; and theatre performance entitled More On This Later features at the Culture Lab on Friday 23^rd March.

Festival curator Paul Becker explains why these events are must-sees in March’s already bulging cultural calendar: “All our ideas have come from monthly open public meetings and readings here in Newcastle, and a lot of interest has developed from those readers, writers and artists who have come to Walser’s incredibly modern and idiosyncratic use of language for the first time. We’re a group of enthusiasts with a great deal of love for Walser’s unique writings and we’d love to spread the word a little further.”

Festival Robert Walser takes place from Monday 19^th until Sunday 25^th March across various venues in Newcastle.

What the hell just happened? One minute I was in the Baltic going up the lift enjoying a nice view of the Tyne, enjoying the sunny but cold afternoon whilst considering going for a liquid lunch somewhere with a nice view of the river, the next I was having my senses fucked raw by Elizabeth Price’s exhibition Here. I’m not all that sure what to write about this as my retinas are still recovering. It’s like David Lynch turned Clock Work Orange’s cinema scene into a fine powered and did it up the nose.

The exhibition is made up of three equally what-the-fuck inducing films,

User Group Disco is 15 minute head fuck of spinning cups and other spinning commodities in a floating darkness, with dark moody electric music blaring out, with a dark post apocalyptic narrative playing across the screen in a text set that looks like it came from a 80’s computer. The silence works just as well as the parts with music or low ominous rumblings, then The Human League’s Take On Me crops up over the speakers in some remixed fashion and confuses the hell out of everyone even more. The area around the screen is dark. Like true dark that you only get in caves or other places that have never felt natural light, which adds to the bleakness of the piece.

Choir seems to have a bit of a multiple personality disorder; part church, part music video, part response to a fire. It is deeply rhythmic with images, blue prints and digital renders of churches changing to a clapping beat. This later changes to sixties music and a whole load of cut up music videos mainly seeming to consist of dancing women. Feels like half exhibition, half really fucked night at Brighton Beach.

West Hinder’s name is in reference to part of the English Channel where the MV Tricolor sank in December 2002, taking its cargo of 2897 luxury cars down with it, gutted. It has similar dark moody music to User Group Disco, less Take On Me. I don’t know if that is a good or bad thing. According to the narrative the cars on board computers gain consciousness developing feeling and desires. Which is probably explains the Skynet digital voice speaking its poetry in a similar fashion to Radiohead’s Fitter, Happier. This is what I imagine GLaDOS would have make if she had gone to art school.

This Exhibition is a rollercoaster of brain sodomy; it will forcibly fuck your eyes and ears in a similar way to have you’ve seen those lasses ridden in that rough American porn that you feel guilty for watching after you’re done. You might enjoy it, you might not, but it certainly is an experience.

Elizabeth Price’s Here exhibition is currently on at BALTIC Centre For Contempary Art and runs until May 27th.

The last time I really saw anything to do with the Mojave Desert, I was playing through Fallout: New Vegas, hanging out with Elvis cultists, and trying not to get shot in the face by Mad Max style gangs. Andrea Zittel’s exhibition brings my eyes back to this hot wasteland showing us viewers how life through a sort of self-rule could work. So a little like Fallout, but with less gangs, mutants and robot armies and more art.

The most striking piece in the exhibition is the Wagon Stations partly due to the physical presence of their size, partly because they are pretty fucking cool. The idea was to build a structure to accommodate visiting artists capable of holding up against the elements, with room to safely sleep in and be small enough to be built without permits or other legal hassle. They are, in fact, sort of super tents. The artists who lived in them have customized each one of these Wagon Stations over time, so naturally they’ve become filled with books and other items. It’s a pretty awesome idea for communal living, like little micro bedrooms. It would suck in the rain, but they were made for living in a desert so at a wild stab in the dark, I’m guessing that doesn’t happen all that much.

Lay of My Land is also a pretty cool piece, which is sort of a massive 3D map of the area in which the artist lived. The whole thing is completely white and huge. It sort of reminds me of those maps that you hand in the command bunkers in old war films where female intelligence officers with sticks pushing along formations of plane of tanks, whilst some General with a better moustache that you will ever grow barked orders over an old telephone.

The Crochet works are pretty awesome. Artwork made out crochet? Crochet is like knitting’s outspoken geeky younger brother, making art, and pretty damned good art out of is like out doing every hipster on the planet at once. The Bodily Experience of a Physical Impracticality is probably the piece that I preferred out of them, an nice big crochet starburst in contract with its fellow pieces. Given the fact that the rest of the exhibition seems to be about an alternative style of living, I think Andrea Zittel might be the patron saint of hip.

In Short this is a pretty interesting exhibition, with good art and a nice idea for living outside of the box. Even more so if you feel that there is a small chance you might be in the Mojave or a similar desert when the coming nuclear apocalypse hits, as it might just give you a few ideas how to survive whilst you’re fighting over the last few tins of cat food.

Lay of My Land is currently on at BALTIC Centre For Contemporary Art until the 20th of May.

All things considered, it’s been a pretty good few months for BALTIC. The fallout from a hugely successful Turner Prize exhibition has been one of national acclaim and increased regional profile, with record attendance figures and a palpable feeling of an arty revival. Not being the types to sit idly by though, they’ve cobbled together with Northumbria University, the Arts Council, and Newcastle City Council to unveil a brand new exhibition space, right in the centre of town.

BALTIC | 39, so called because of its address at 39 High Bridge street, has been dubbed “a new cultural hub for contemporary art” opens its doors on the 5th of April, precisely one month away from today. Right now though, various planners, builders and designers are scurrying away to turn two floors of grade II listed warehouse into a vibrant community for budding and established artists.

Thankfully Godfrey Worsdale, the BALTIC director, knew a lot more about what was going on that I did, and very kindly gave a few minutes of his time to talk us through it.

“I can see why people might wonder why a gallery the size of BALTIC might need more space but there’s two very important things in this for us. The first is the partnerships with the likes of Northumbria University, the artists in residence in the building, with other studio complexes and art organisations in the area. There’s a lot of potential to use this space to help develop and strengthen those partnerships.

The other thing it gives us, is a space with a different dynamic. It gives us an opportunity to be more experimental, to let us try things we maybe can’t or wouldn’t try in BALTIC. It allows us to review the way exhibitions happen and how artists and galleries work together, and it opens up opportunities for artists to drive the decisions we make and try things that they might otherwise struggle to find a home for. There’s a great experimental context here.

It also gives us access to serious academic research and the opportunity to interact with the undergraduate community, the postgraduate community, doctoral research, as well letting us develop something for the wider public to engage with. Right in the heart of Newcastle as well.

“If a really interesting third year student comes up with an idea and proposes to use the space then let’s do it. You know what they say in football; if you’re good enough, you’re old enough”

It might surprise a few people to hear, but it was actually quite easy to bring all four organisations together like this because we’re all faced with the same realities of this difficult economic climate. I think what we all understand is that the way forward, and the way to deal with these challenges is to work together. Some of our individual parts can make us all stronger and everyone can benefit from a sharing of knowledge and resources.

Partnerships are never all plain sailing. But the people involved, the personalities involved, the ambitions involved mean that we’re all working together for the region.

Ultimately we want to see artists take risks here. Honestly, I don’t know precisely what that means, but that’s why it’s important. If we knew what artists were going to do here it wouldn’t be exciting to see it happen. Our is simply to give them a space to come into, innovate, take risks and achieve things. We can be far more flexible here than we can be at the BALTIC.

In that context we can have students and professional or international artists sharing the same space. It creates a conversation and even allows us to bring in other art forms, we might have DJs, musicians, critical writers, whoever. They can all add something different to this and that’s why we’re not going to put any boundaries on it.

There’ll be nothing saying that if a really interesting third year student comes up with an idea and proposes to use the space we won’t be able to. If we think it’s a great idea then let’s do it. You know what they say in football; if you’re good enough, you’re old enough.”

BALTIC | 39 will officially open its doors to the public on Friday 6 April at midday. More information at www.artscouncil.org.uk

It could be the finest tribute to Pink Floyd, if only it had anything to do with Dark Side Of The Moon. Starting tonight, for 5 nights, the coastal sky will have a big naff off lazer shooting over people’s heads.

Global Rainbow, part of the Cultural Olympiad, is the work of American Artist Yvette Mattern and will be visible from St Mary’s Lighthouse and down 8km of North Tyneside coastline (so long as it’s a clear night).

The UK premiere of this lazer show is the first of a series of events all centered around the Olympics. Alison Clark Jenkins, the regional director of Arts Council England, said: “Not only is the project delivering art on a very large scale to many thousands of people, but it’s welcoming an international artist to the region, and is the culmination of a great deal of careful planning and creative programming. This is just a taste of what’s to come over the course of what is set to be a groundbreaking year for culture in the North East.”

The switch is flipped tonight from 6pm until midnight.

You couldn’t avoid it. The Turner Prize dominated for its nearly three-month spell. The country’s biggest contemporary art prize had its first outing away from a Tate gallery when it came to BALTIC in November, and for only the second time in 27 years it could be seen outside of London.

By all aims and ambitions, audience numbers were a huge success. A very precise 149,770 people came to BALTIC to see the toss-up between what’s either the best selection of contemporary art in the country, or, as that bastion of culture the Daily Mail proposed when Martin Boyce was announced as the winner, the possibility that “a load of rubbish has won the Turner Prize (again).”

At the time there seemed to be a lot of people that sounded just like my Nana; “it’s a whole load of tripe”. Before BALTIC hosted the competition, the Turner Prize had an average 80,000 visitors each year. With nearly double the amount of people coming to BALTIC, and a focus on attracting a new audience that had never had this yearly national debate between brilliance or crap on their doorstep, was there ever a danger of people going to see the very best of British contemporary art and leaving a legacy of detachment and being put off for life?

“The answer to that is quite complicated,” explains Dr Christopher Whitehead, senior lecturer at Newcastle University, “you might think that if people just don’t understand it then they’ll refrain from ever having anything to do with contemporary art again, but in actual fact it doesn’t really work like that.

“What we’ve often found in our research, looking at places like BALTIC, is that actually people who don’t like the art that they see can turn into repeat visitors. It allows you to say ‘well a three-year-old could do that’ and it means you’re not aligning yourself with that fine art world, you’re setting out an identity for yourself that you don’t appreciate this kind of thing. People actually like being a little bit angry about it so it doesn’t turn people off in a black and white way that you might think.”

To paraphrase the good doctor, the key here is to ply the visitor with information, give them a leg to stand on and a way to get into the art – galleries have to “reach out to people and break down this culture of silence that we’ve had around contemporary art, where you are supposed to just go and look at it and immediately understand it, and if you don’t the feeling is that you don’t belong to a particular part of society.”

“I think all those things must reflect well on BALTIC for the future, but I think one of the big challenges of hosting Turner Prize gives you is where do you go from here?”

It was certainly key to BALTIC, and the Tate’s aims, of decentralising art. If people have to go to one place, typically London, then we’ll never get away from Brian Sewell’s 2003 comments, that the north isn’t ‘sophisticated enough’ to truly understand important exhibitions – an attitude that won’t really change unless flagship exhibitions are spread around the country.

Godfrey Worsdale, BALTIC’s director, said: “I think we were lucky because the timing coincided with the Turner Prize probably being at a bit of a turning point. I think it needed a slight change or a review and the Tate was very, very true to their ambitions of being a genuine national institution to contemporary art, and they saw this idea of taking this national prize out of London and bring it to the nation to reach new audiences.”

One of the most important legacies of BALTIC hosting the Turner Prize is that it clearly demonstrated the demands for art to come to people – it never quite feels like national engagement if the whole nation has to go to the same place year after year. The record breaking crowds dissolve the idea of people going just for novelty’s sake, too – it’s wanted and successful.

“We genuinely created a strong and large audience for the Turner Prize,” Godfrey said, “and I think all those things must reflect well on BALTIC for the future, but I think one of the big challenges of hosting Turner Prize gives you is where do you go from here? The Turner Prize has been to BALTIC as a one off, so what do we do about that and how will it affect our programme going forward? What we will continue to do is to strive to bring the greatest contemporary art in the world to Gateshead, and we’ll strive to continue to help artists get their new ideas in front of the public because that’s really important.”

So despite my ill founded logic that people seeing something as crap would turn them off to all new contemporary art, the Turner Prize has realigned itself as a debate that should be around the country.

BALITC’s clear demonstration that national galleries need to engage with regional centers “is a growing trend at the moment, and hopefully something we’ll see more of,” as Dr Whitehead comments. “I do think it’ll help in some regard, and now they have it outside of London every alternate year, that’s giving a boost to the regional art centers. It also reflects the fact that there is a lot of activity here. The other thing I would say, whilst being very positive to the arts scene in the North East, we have had swinging cuts to the arts with particular casualties like the Side Gallery, so we have to remember that it isn’t all roses.”

The Stairwell Gallery, the in-house exhibition space run by art regeneration specialists Empty Shop, is on the verge or launching its latest project The Scaled House. Produced by local artist Julia Tyron, The Scaled House is a series of intricate photographic sculptures that look to “question what can be found to be secure, unwavering and enduring”.

With that in mind I bent the ear of Nick Malyan, one of the brains behind Empty Shop to find out why this is definitely more than some nice pictures on the stairs.

To the uninitiated, what is The Scaled House?

The Scaled House is the latest site-specific installation in Empty Shop’s Stairwell Gallery. It’s been created by Newcastle based artist Julia Tryon, who is an artist we really admire, and features sculptures made of large blown up photographs. The name of the show The Scaled House comes from the image that the photographs portray, an abandoned house that’s been left to decay and at the centre of it is this wonderful red staircase . Tryon says that staircase was what inspired her to start thinking about our Stairwell space where we only exhibit site specific installation art.

You mentioned that Julia Tryon is an artist Empty Shop admire, why is this?

Julia’s an artist we first came across a few years ago when she submitted to one of our open call exhibitions. She produced the most beautiful, detailed sculptural piece that was so small if fit inside a standard picture frame. It was a piece of art that really reflects what Julia is all about, an absolutely fierce attention to detail and instinct for line and shape that’s combined with a modesty that’s rare in artist of her quality.

That’s very similar to what Empty Shop set out to do in the very beginning, quietly changing the art world by giving artists a platform to show their work in surroundings that don’t have the ideological baggage of a white cube.

Can you tell me a little about The Stairwell Gallery? What is it? Why was it set up? What sort of exhibitions does it tend to host?

The Stairwell Gallery is a space in our building that we programme in a very particular way; site specific, commissioned installations. As with everything we do it’s not a traditional white cube gallery space. When we first moved into this building we loved the shape of the stairwell because it’s been carved up and then redistributed in the way only old buildings can be. So it has unusual angles throughout it and a high ceiling out of all proportion to the rest of the space, it also has loads of natural light and one of the best views of Durham cathedral going, so we produced our own postcard of the first ever installation we had in there, just to show it off a bit. There’s also the fact it’s first space people see when they come into the building so it makes sense to throw them an immediate curve ball by presenting something that isn’t on a canvas, in a frame or even on a plinth – that’s very unusual in Durham.

Previously we’ve shown an original series of wall paintings by James Adair and an installation of hanging sculptures made using fake hair and clay by Cardiff based Spike Dennis. The other key thing is that we leave all the work up for a good few months so it gets to become part of the architecture of the space and changes with time. With Spike’s work people came in and were immediately freaked out by these hanging hairy tendrils but within a few weeks regular visitors were just walking straight through them.

The Scaled House is on display at The Stairwell Gallery Durham, and the launch party is Friday the 20th January at 7pm. More info on the event here.

When the average soul thinks of Ronnie Wood, his or her mind may wander to legendary tales and memories of his role in The Faces, The Jeff Beck Group and a 35 year reign as guitarist in arguably the biggest rock ‘n’ roll band of all time, The Rolling Stones.

What many music fans and curious tuned into Ronnie Wood’s spectacular hell-raising off the field antics sometimes fail to recognise, however, is the 64-year-old’s fierce passion for the visual arts and a lifelong dedication to painting and drawing his chaotic vision of the world.

Before beginning his musical career in the 1960s, Wood received formal training at Ealing College of Art and, throughout the years, the artist and the musician has produced an electric and intense collection of his whirlwind life and time on the road with a strutting, enigmatic Mick Jagger and rock’s greatest single body of riffs, Keith Richards.

KYEO caught up with the man himself at the unveiling of his new limited edition collection at the Castle Fine Art Gallery in Birmingham’s ICC to find out more about what really drives one of the world’s most creative minds.

The Famous Flames Suite and The Stones On Stage – Got Me Rockin’ collection is now visiting Castle Galleries throughout the UK.

For more information check out www.washingtongreen.co.uk/