Songs of the Sea
21 July- 30 October
Preview: Thursday 21 July, 6-8pm
Laura Belém, Susan Collins, Johanna Keimeyer, Richard Marquis, Luca Pucci, Anna Welsh and Robert Ord Page
Focusing on the sea as a metaphor for storytelling, this exhibition explores remarkable stories of personal experiences of the sea, both real and mythical, through contemporary artists' work in glass and photography, historical artefacts, archive ships’ logs and sound recordings.
‘Songs of the Sea’ is inspired by an Irish folk song The Parting Glass – popular in the early and late 1800s relating the melancholic parting of ways it was often played or sung at the end of a gathering of friends.
Artists’ work includes Richard Marquis’ Razzle Dazzle Boats, which make use of the eye-catching camouflage technique pioneered in WWI with the aim of confusing the enemy, and Susan Collins’ series of photographic prints from herSeascape project at Bexhill-on-Sea, which show images of the sea taken from a live stream of footage at various points on the south coast.
Local stories from Sunderland are told through the work of artists Robert Ord Page and Anna Welsh. A painting of a North Sea Collier by Robert Ord Page reflects on his days working as a merchant navy seaman during WWII. Anna Welsh's illustrated book, Roker (20 Yards to the Beach): A Collection of Local Curiosities represents the variety of life along the Roker Coastline.
