April 23, 2026

Newcastle Art Galleries

For a Northern industrial town with a history of grime and depravation, Newcastle does have rather a fair share of art galleries. After the slight dissapointment of much of the town centre we ended up in the Laing Gallery which was rather an unexpectedly good experience. Focussing as it does on art from the Northeast (though sadly seeming devoid of Tiller) it included a lot of evocotive work, both depicting Northeastern English life and the fantasies of some of those painting there..

As in my trip to Leeds Art Gallery recently I gave quite a lot of interest to the techniques of the oil painters – from the stippling of Garvie, to the classic strokes of Parker and Hedley to the insane piling on of Auerbach, whose EOW Nude I recall from The Tate.

Henry Straker – Staple Inn, Holborn, City of London 1923 (Detail)

The Laing also hosts Chris Killip’s Exhibition – The Last Ships. This is an incredibly poignant body of work, impressive in scale – the sheer size of the ships towering over the terraced houses, bittersweet in it’s intensity showing the way the ship-building communities were eviscerated, and the latent hope shown by the children peering at the ships over the walls, young adults with the mopeds. This spoke very much to my own explorations of red brick wildernesses in Leeds. As a modern body of work I did not want to photograph this – but it is well worth seeing.

John Martin – The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Detail)

My highlight was John Martin’s The Desruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. I have always loved Martin’s work, having discovered the Plains of Heaven sequence on an art trip with school. Coming from Hexham, his work is well represented in the Laing and seeing more of it has been a great inspiration.

John Martin – Arthur and Aegle in the Happy Valley (Detail)

I was also very taken by Len Tabner’s “Cowbar and East Breakwater Staithes, Heavy Seas in the Harbour Mouth, Early Evening which at 81 x 137 cm is huge for a work in watercolour and pastel, and also a (sadly the name and artist misremembered) huge woodbock print, of easily 3 metres in length.

Len Tabner – Cowbar and East Breakwater Staithes, Heavy Seas in the Harbour Mouth, Early Evening (Detail)

Though strictly in Gateshead there is also the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art which is (as it suggests) contemporary… I’m not a huge fan of installation art in general, but I enjoyed For All At Last Return, a group exhibition exploring fragile marine ecosystems, coral reefs, and the deep sea.

The view from the top viewing gallery is worth the visit too.

I was also very taken by the staircase – creating art in Architecture, with floor and ceiling mirrors creating in infinite depth and height – it’s quite mindblowing.