Day out to BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art

Me, Kate Kneen, Brett Richardson and Sarah Hedley decided that we would take the morning off and go visit some galleries for our blog and to spend some time viewing contemporary artists that might help inspire or motivate us with our current projects. We decided to go to the Baltic before heading into Newcastle.

On the first floor within the Baltic was an artist called Sofia Stevi, an artist who makes paintings, sculptures and large works on paper and fabric. Her drawing inspiration comes from literature, philosophy and the everyday, her works bring together a wide range of references, from the writings of Victorian poet Christina Rossetti, to found images on Instagram, the work was very diverse. She uses sweeping lines and bold vibrant colours that describe the form with a sense of playfulness and animation. Her paintings capture fleshy fruits and soft body contours with a cartoon-like expressiveness. Most of her works were on cotton fabric, the works evoke the domestic but have a charged eroticism. I found it quite interesting to walk around, I don't consider myself a painter but I enjoyed how the work was painted, it was quite free and loose, the marks were gestural. The imagery itself was a little bit lewd, seeing things that may or may not of been there, definitely playing around with the idea of desires.

On the second floor was another female artist called Serena Korda, featuring her work called "Missing Time" , Korda works across performance, sound and sculpture reconsidering aspects of communion and tradition in our lives. Korda has explored planetary harmonics using homemade radio telescopes to pick up the sound of our galaxy. The particular frequencies derived from the planets, otherwise known as the ‘Music of the Spheres’, were believed during the Renaissance period to have a direct effect on the human psyche. Inspired by these different ways of listening, the potential healing power of sounds and their use as a way of communicating, Korda has created a series of large ceramic dish-shaped portals that act as sound resonators. I found this entire section of the Baltic to be the most interesting, this idea of resonance, this drowning noise that buzzes and reflects off the painted ceramic plates, was really interesting, it was quite scientific which was cool. The dishes themselves were painted and had fascinating patterns which took patterns from the carpet./rug that was presented on the floor.