4th - 12th September 2021

VARC, Highgreen, Tarset, Northumberland NE48 1RP
Featuring Andrew Burton, Robbie Coleman & Jo Hodges, Sam Douglas, Shane Finan, Catriona Gallagher, Bridget Kennedy, Emily Ketteringham, Kate Liston plus films about the artists’ work by WeLove Media
Sun 5th, Sat 11th & Sun 12th Sept 11 – 3pm

Minibus from Newcastle available on Sat 4th Sept, bookable via VARC’s website or eventbrite link here
The two year, multi-partner ENTWINED:Rural.Land.Lives.Art. programme will culminate this September with an exhibition at VARC’s home at Highgreen, rural Northumberland NE48 1RP. In this exciting, multidisciplinary show curated by Cynthia Morrison-Bell, you will find work of the ENTWINED artists installed in the barns and outbuildings around the estate.

The exhibition opens on Saturday 4th September and will run until Sun 12th September. All welcome!

NORTHERN FOCUS SHORTS 

Halo Showroom Cinema 3 Sun 13 June 14:45 - Sun 13 June 16:02 

Incidental phone videos from the artist’s camera reel are edited into the poetic form of a villanelle. Portrait-format clips - filmed to send to distant loved ones or to capture instances of caught attention - show fragments of events that lie between movement and stasis. Two lives between two countries follow an A-B-A rhyming structure, with sequences of birds in flight appearing as repeating refrains. Swallows above an Aegean beach at sundown and a murder of crows against northern skies, streetlight glow by motorbike and puddled lanes by bicycle; a hand clasping a leaf and sunlight over bare knees in transit. When and why do we choose to capture such moments? Can a life be lived between places in a year of lockdowns and the end of freedom of movement? Video Villanelle (for distance) reflects on changing relationships to home during lockdown. 

Video Villanelle (for distance) will be followed by an in-person Q&A with Catriona Gallagher which will be live-streamed from the cinema to Selects.

Saturday 24th April 2021 

We are pleased to welcome a limited number of visitors in person to this Work in Progress Open Studios event at Highgreen on Saturday 24th April 2021. The open studios will feature works in progress by Catriona Gallagher, artist in residence at Highgreen since July 2020, and Shane Finan, artist in residence during April 2021 with Northumberland Wildlife Trust’s Kielderhead Wildwood project. The event is free to attend, but it is essential that you book one of the available time slots for your visit, using the Eventbrite online booking system, or by contacting lorna@varc.org.uk who will be able to book a time on your behalf. 

Catriona Gallagher and Shane Finan are part of the ENTWINED: Rural. Land. Lives. Art programme. Work shown as part of the Work in Progress Open Studios day will be documented and hosted online for those unable to attend. The ENTWINED programme will also culminate in an exhibition in September 2021.

The Room Projects, Paris. 8th - 10th January 2021. Created and Curated by The Room Projects in collaboration with LUX 

no — body’s room investigates, researches, and brings together video artworks that reflect on the idea of the “cannibal image”. The image is seen as a “living body” that nourishes itself with other images. The screening will show works that establish a dialogue between the representation of the human body and the moving images, following three sub-categories: Skin, Biting and Chewing, Viscera. Each category will screen works of contemporary artists alongside three “guest” archive video artworks of LUX that will be announced one day before the screening.

29th Dec 2020 - 10th January 2021. Online exhibition 

Given the social constrains we are all facing, Snehta decided to develop a virtual version of its annual Salon exhibition to make it accessible to every single one of you. While it was difficult to showcase new artworks in the exhibition, the team selected works from the depot to present you a well curated experience. The exhibition takes place literally in a Kypselian Salon, that being Ag.Zonis’ apartment where some of the participating artists and former residents have lived and stayed there during their residency at Snehta. 

Artists Irini Bachlitzanaki, John Bicknell, Amalia Charikiopoulou, Aristea Charoniti, Florent Frizet, Catriona Gallagher, Ioanna Gouma, Steven Harvey, Elsa Henderson, Eva Isleifsdottir, Ismene King, Vasiliki Koukou, Dimitra Kousteridou, Vasiliki Lefkaditi, Eleanor Lines, Theodora Malamou, Nikos Mantzios, Tommaso Mauriello, Zoi Moutsokou, Pantelis Pantelopoulos, Sofia Papapolyzou, Iris Plaitakis, Lucas Recchione, Joseph Stokes, Augustus Veinoglou, Su Wang, Apostolos Zerdevas, Stathis-Alexandros Zoulias 

Team: Project management, concept: Augustus Veinoglou, 3D design, scripting, visual ramifications: Christos Bourantas, Project assistant & press: Simone Niarou, Snehta coordination, Graphic design & photography: Tommaso Maurellio, Snehta internship programme, Erasmus+

Thresholds is a digital exhibition that explores the impact of Covid-19 on relationships to home. Curator Aidan Moesby commissioned artists Sonia Boué, Lindsay Duncanson and Catriona Gallagher to develop new films and photographs in response to their experiences of 2020. The exhibition includes an essay by writer and academic Jade French co-commissioned with Corridor8. This exhibition is organised as part of Aidan Moesby’s curatorial associateship with MIMA through our partnership programme with DASH, MAC and Wysing Arts Centre. This national partnership supports the development of Disabled curators.

An online panel discussion is hosted by Disability Arts Online on 28 October, 18.00 – 19.00.

October 9th-17th 2020 *POSTPONED* 

Shane Finan, Tadhg ó Cuirrín, Catriona Gallagher Curator/organiser: Shane Finan Venue: St. George’s Hall, St. George’s Church, Tubbercurry, Co. Sligo 

In a year when the human role in our environment has never been so pronounced, these artworks about humans and nature form a timely event in rural north-west Ireland. The works include an interactive light installation that responds to the behaviour of visitors, a film that will be screened at intervals, and watercolour paintings of plastic landscapes. Booking is necessary to attend the exhibition to comply with COVID-19 restrictions. Supported by Creative Ireland Programme Sligo (2018-2022).

Laterale Film Festival, September 28-29-30th 2020 Cinema San Nicola, Cosenza, Italy. 

‘Have you ever heard the wind blowing through some uninhabited houses? It changes the perspective and they seem not so empty anymore; something has left a trace, but you have arrived just a moment too late. And yet, who can say that what we believe to be lost is something apart from ourselves? This is the meaning of a visitation to a lonely house by a woman. The knowledge of that trace changes, little by little, her way of living; it is a slight but decisive perceptible slipping. Along with her, we go after a ghost who lives in a written page. This recollection switches from the paper to her thought. They will be able to meet, the woman and her followed spirit, where the wind has disappeared, under a ceiling of sky.’ - Laterale Film Festival 

Catriona Gallagher has been with VARC since July on her 10 month ENTWINED:Rural.Land.Lives.Art. residency and so it is around this time that we’d normally be welcoming you to Highgreen for an open studio event. As we are currently unable to host this in person, Catriona will be recording a virtual open studio tour which you can watch online and then join us for a live chat afterwards. 

This event will take place on Weds 30th September, 10am-11am. Please email helen@varc.org.uk to register your interest. On registering, you will also receive access to an exclusive showcase of Catriona’s films.

ENTWINED:Rural.Land.Lives.Art. 

Over the ten months in Northumberland, I will be researching perceived categorisations of the natural, manmade and wildness. I will be looking at systems of knowledge, control and management of nature locally, identifying such traces in the landscape alongside more collaborative practices and rituals performed on the land. Working with local people will be key and I’m hoping to develop collaborations with performers to include local voices, dialects and bodies. Mapping such patterns, whether physical or informational, will constitute my beginnings in drawing and writing, which I anticipate will progress into moving image over the course of the residency. I plan to begin with an open ended approach to the Ecology of Place and see what strikes me as pertinent and holds my interest when immersed in the locality.