A new chapter for 50-year-old gallery
NGCA SETTLES INTO NEW HOME WITHIN NATIONAL GLASS CENTRE
The region’s oldest contemporary art gallery is settling into its new permanent home.
Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art (NGCA) was forced to find a new location to showcase artistic talent after the closure of the City Library and Arts Centre in Fawcett Street 18 months ago.
After securing capital funding, it opened its doors at its new home within National Glass Centre last weekend.
Though it’s housed within the centre, the gallery has its own 3000sq/ft space and its own programme of exhibitions.
Since its redevelopment in 2013, National Glass Centre has attracted 200,000 visitors a year and it’s hoped the NGCA’s new home within the centre will introduce a new audience to contemporary art.
The new gallery has been created with the support of University of Sunderland, Arts Council England and Sunderland City Council, and in its first 18 months it will celebrate British artists whose work has been created on continental Europe.
The first exhibition in the new space is Material Sight, by Fiona Crisp.
The display features footage and photographs from Fiona’s time spent at scientific spaces not open to the public: Boulby Underground Laboratory near Whitby, Durham University’s Institute for Computational Cosmology and Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, the world’s largest underground laboratory for particle physics, housed inside a mountain in Italy.
Speaking to the Echo, she said: “Material Sight is the result of an intense research project with three different world leaders in their field for fundamental science. I’m not a scientist, but I was interested in the fields of science which are difficult for lay people to get their head around.
“These are three sites which are not accessible to the public, such as the Boulby site which is a mile underground and the laboratory in Italy in a mountain, which is like something out of James Bond. I found a paradox between the physicality of the spaces and the invisibility of the science.”
Material Sight is running at NGCA until May 13.