Only one Sunday Sun..!
THIS may be the first time the Sunday Sun has featured in a major exhibition at Baltic, Gateshead’s big centre for contemporary art. But hang on a moment! While the masthead clearly says The Sunday Sun, that doesn’t look very much like the newspaper which has been published every Sunday in the North East since August 31, 1919.
It has got comic strips all over the front page, for one thing.
And neither is it the right shape. Your Sunday Sun is a tabloid while the Sunday Sun being read in bed in the exhibition at Baltic is a broadsheet.
The truth of the matter is that this Sunday Sun features in a major new exhibition at Baltic by Canadian artist Rodney Graham, 68, who was born and still lives in Vancouver.
Speaking at the gallery this week he explained that the newspaper in the photograph is a facsimile of a 1937 edition of The Sunday Sun, as published by the owners of The Vancouver Sun, a daily newspaper dating back to 1912.
He was delighted to find there’s a Sunday Sun published in the North East. “Really? I didn’t know that,” he said with a smile.
It is an added point of interest for visitors to Baltic where the exhibition Rodney Graham – That’s Not Me opened this weekend.
The title is explained by the fact that the artist makes himself a character in the giant photos he takes, shot in a studio on huge and meticulously built sets.
There are photos of him in a Western scene and as a lighthouse keeper and one series of photos features facsimiles of period newspapers such as The Sunday Sun.
In the age of camera phones and tiny screens, the enormous photos, displayed in wall-mounted light boxes, are jaw dropping.
“I guess I started doing these around 2000,” he said.
“I like the quality of these light boxes. The light pushes you away and the detail pulls you in at the same time.”
The artist, who last exhibited in the North East in 1993, said he enjoyed playing characters in the photographs, wearing hired costumes and posing with props.
While he works with professional photographers who actually take the shots, the vision and the detail are Rodney Graham’s – and those hands seen holding the jolly comic edition of The Sunday Sun will certainly be his.
Rodney Grahem – That’s Not Me includes the light box photos and also silent film installations. It covers two levels of Baltic, on Gateshead Quayside, and runs until June 11. Admission is free. RODNEY GRAHAM