Newcastle’s Side Gallery to close unless new funding secured

Pioneering documentary images gallery, which has hosted the likes of Chris Killip, Tish Murtha and Mik Critchlow throughout its 46-year historical past, faces everlasting closure with out public assist

Newcastle’s Side Gallery has introduced it would close on 09 April, citing “vital funding cuts and the cost-of-living disaster”. Unless extra funding is secured, the gallery will close completely after 46 years in operation, it introduced on 04 April. A Crowdfunder with a goal of £60,000 is now lively, with the intention of reopening the house to the general public in September 2024. 

Positioned on Newcastle’s Quayside, Side Gallery has promoted and hosted documentary images and movie for over 4 many years. Arrange by the Amber Movie & Photography Collective in 1977, Side’s mission is to be “an agent for change by the fee, exhibition and preservation of world-class visible tales that spotlight social issues and have fun numerous lives and landscapes throughout the North East, UK and the globe”. The gallery misplaced its Nationwide Portfolio funding – awarded to practically a thousand arts and cultural organisations by the Arts Council England – in November 2022. 

The gallery has been exhibiting images because the 70s by group reveals, commissions and single-artist surveys. Born in a transformed alleyway within the then-neglected Quayside area, the gallery was formed by the likes of Ian Macdonald, Tish Murtha, Markéta Luskačová, Izabela Jedrzejczyk and John Davies. Early exhibitions within the Seventies and 80s included Northern View, that includes Daniel Meadows, Nick Hedges, Derek Smith, Ken Baird and AL Coburn; Tish Murtha’s Juvenile Jazz Bands; a Diane Arbus survey in 1981; and Wendy Ewald’s Portraits & Goals in 1986. 

Side and the Amber Collective have performed a major position in documentary images of the post-industrialised north of England. The gallery was co-founded by Chris Killip, who served as its director for 2 years and exhibited extensively at Side, together with his Seacoal, Isle of Man, and Askam and Skinningrove collection. The gallery’s deep group ties allowed photographers like Mik Critchlow to make work regionally with the information it will be displayed sensitively and accessibly. 

The gallery briefly closed in 1991 after a dispute with Northern Arts (now a part of Arts Council England), who had decreased Side’s funding from £120,000 to £25,000 two years prior. In accordance to Side, the disagreement centred on Northern Arts’ need for Side to develop into “a generalist images gallery and Amber’s curiosity in growing community-based photographer-activists”. The house reopened in 1992 as an augmented touring venue, permitting exhibitions together with Graciela Iturbide’s Juchitán, Mik Critchlow’s Seafarers, and Eugene Richards’ Beneath the Line to tour venues throughout Northumberland and County Durham. 

The touring coverage resulted in 1996 when Side centered on on-site exhibitions drawing by itself collections. Into the 2000s, the gallery continued to fee initiatives specializing in the post-industrialised north-east, together with the Coalfield Tales collection – that includes works by Martin Figura and Graeme Rigby – whereas additionally internet hosting exhibitions of images responding to international occasions. Chris Steele-Perkins’ Notes from Afghanistan was displayed in 2000, with Simon Norfolk’s Afghanistan: Chronotopia following two years later. Heidi Bradner’s A Decade of Conflict in Chechnya arrived in 2005, with exhibitions on Bangladesh’s independence, The Caucasus and images within the GDR additionally following. 

Current exhibitions at Side embrace Massive Coronary heart, Sturdy Arms, Anne Helene Gjelstad’s photograph essay depicting ladies’s lives on the Estonian islands of Kihnu and Manija, and A Wounded Panorama, pictures from Marc Wilson’s six-year journey throughout 20 international locations documenting the aftermath of the Holocaust.