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Tyne International Video Exhibition
City of Newcastle
Exhibits included in this international exhibition 'Time and Tide' were
placed in many different locations through the City of Newcastle. The video
installation section, which we were invited to design, was confined to a
disused warehouse building on the quay of the River Tyne. All of the buildings
surrounding the warehouse, in what had once been a dense dockside area,
had recently been demolished, and the ground was being prepared for an extensive
commercial development. The building's most interesting quality was that only a quarter of the ground floor had windows, and was brilliantly lit, while the rest was in darkness. In our design, visitors entered the light area, located themselves and then walked into the increasing darkness to view the work.
The interior was powerfully stark and controlled, with all the hallmarks
of an industrial building. Embedded within this however, we discerned a
more natural space, which could be exacerbated in the design, resulting
in a dichotomy of spaces in which to install exhibits. A large-scale long-playing video by Bill Viola was screened in the loading bay, announcing the exhibition to incoming visitors. Four monitors showing the same short videos were attached to a bay of columns so that visitors could view the same works simultaneously on different screens. The layout was not sequential, with seating arranged sporadically where medium length exhibits were sited so that, as in a city, visitors could become side-tracked, recover their direction and map their own sense of the place.
Completition date: 1993
Client: Tyne International
Photographs: Mark Pimlott
