Slowly We Rot

Gordon Dalton                                                             26th September - 7th November 2024

Gordon Daltons work focuses on a small stretch of coast that includes places of personal importance including Runswick Bay, Staithes, Port Mulgrave, Skinningrove and ending in Middlesbrough, overlooking the UK's first Freeport. The work in Slowly We Rot has a disinterested curiosity that is both critical and celebratory of these places. They are viewed equally with disdain and affection, reverberating ad-infinitum between a familiar and a strange apprehension of this haunted land. The paintings act as 'parafictions' about place attachment. They are portals to another time in the past, present, or future where a slow violence is inflicted upon these landscapes.

Legacy                                                                    Lothar Götz, Emma Bennett, Loucey Bain                   1st August - 5th September 2024

In 2014 Platform A presented a solo exhibition of the work of Lothar Götz. The idea was to have Götz mentor an emerging artist with a visual language with some similarities to his own.  Götz shared some of his techniques and ideas with the mentee during the installation. The emerging artist then went on to establish herself as a significant practitioner. That mentee was Emma Bennett. Her work has since developed in terms of colour, composition and scale and, like Götz, regularly makes reference to architecture. Legacy brings recent work from these two artists together for a visual conversation that is augmented by the work of an emerging artist and new mentee, Loucey Bain. Bain’s brutalist plasterboard sculptures bring physicality to the ideas of Götz and Bennett. The outcome is a three-way visual dialogue around colour and form underlined by the importance of strengthening professional relationships as the legacy continues.

Between Here and There
Lesley Hicks                                                                23rd May- 4th July 2024

‘Between Here and There’ showcases the work of Lesley Hicks, presenting a creative process juxtaposing drawing and performance within a collaboration between a human female and non-human web cameras. Initiated by an encounter with a road traffic website that monitors the conditions of roads countrywide in Iceland, the project began with a series of drawn responses to grainy roadside imagery and has since developed into the artist involving her own body in the Icelandic landscape. Reflecting on the constructions of subjectivities in relation to contrasting experiences of landscape which draw upon conditions of detachment, embodiment and sexual difference, the work moves towards a renewed understanding of what it is to look at, and represent, images of landscape now.

Perpetual Arrival  
Isabel Albrecht, Morrissey & Hancock, Silvia Lerin, David Batchelor, Rana Begum, Eleanor Wood, Thomas Vinson, Nathan Cohen, Mikael Fagerlund, Andy Harper, Michael Samuels, Jyll Bradley, Mark Francis, Eric Butcher, Eric Cruikshank.  
28th September - 9th November 2023

Perpetual Arrival conceives of the creative process as a continuum punctuated by a series of moments – or arrivals – when circumstances converge to result in something that is generally agreed to constitute a work of art. We pursue our lines of enquiry, research our subject matter, marshal our evidence, manipulate and explore our materials. Periodically we arrive at something that is often treated as though it were a conclusion, but the reality for many of us is actually that it is just one point of arrival among a lifetime of similar arrivals and departures. We move on to create other points of arrival. Arrivals can act as a break, a chance to take stock, to stand back and learn from the intervening time and process. Then we move on. 

Dust 
Jo Sperryn- Jones
29th June– 10th August 2023

Jo Sperryn-Jones’ practice explores the experience of ‘breaking’. Initially, this was an investigation into why breaking several bones, through mountain biking, affected her aesthetic preferences. This opened up a multi-faceted response to breaking, loss and celebration, embracing a cycle of life, change and chance. Loss and union combine as a response to both recent bereavement and marriage.

Drawn Together
Lesley Hicks, Nick Kennedy, Richard Forster, Christina Hesford, Brígida Baltar, Linda Karshan, Trevor Frankland, Jack Whitten.
20th April – 1st June 2023

Drawn Together is a collaboration between Platform A Gallery and MIMA. Four artists connected to Platform A, whose practice has a strong relationship to drawing, are paired with works from the MIMA collection.

BOOT
Suzy Babington, Tony Charles, Adam Gillam, Clive Hodgson, Kathy MacCarthy, Ida Nissen, Fabian Peake, Giulia Ricci, Neil Zakiewicz.
19th January - 2nd March 2023

Nine artists celebrate the working process and
through a wide range of practices share an
obsession with materials. Whilst leaning towards
abstraction, other subordinate narratives drift in
and at times overlap. 

ON GOING
Michaela Zimmer
13th October -24th November 2022

Michaela Zimmer’s artistic work concentrates on the visualization of physical movement, the aspect of reverberation due to repetition and the question of how its data can be transformed into artwork.

From Gesture to Geometry
Rachael Clewlow, Sarah Cooney, Lorraine Lawler, Ulla Pedersen, Theresa Poulton, Francesca Simon
1st September -  29th September 2022     

The practice of non-objective painting that erupted in the early 20th century was soon divided into two camps; gestural abstraction, that built upon the loose compositions of the post-impressionists, and geometric abstraction, that was inspired by Euclidean geometric shapes and rejected the notion of gesture and the trace of the artist’s hand.

South Bank to Southbank
Jo Stanness.
16th June – 29th July 2022

South Bank to Southbank is a project examining and celebrating the aesthetics of post-war architecture between London’s Southbank and South Bank in Middlesbrough. For her first solo exhibition, Jo explores the geometry, design and space of brutalist and modernist structures. Building on previous collages and paintings, this work investigates drawing in two- and three-dimensions, as well as ‘drawing’ with light and shadow. These 3D drawings borrow from the language of architecture and architects’ models. They reimagine existing buildings in a purely aesthetic sense. Here, unlike the original architectural agenda, form need not follow function.

Babel
Jonny Green
24th March – 12th May  2022

Jonny Green makes paintings of sculptures… Mad-men rendered crudely in plasticine and electrical tape or abject-looking re-animated brains adorned with filthy paper flowers and grubby clockwork parts. Each depicted object/character seems to be demanding recognition and validation from the viewer in spite of their manifest flaws, they seem to be trying to adorn themselves in an attempt to make their appearance more palatable. In contrast to the gleeful, almost slapdash making of the sculptures, their subsequent rendering in paint is meticulous.

Endless Dance
Nick Kennedy
4th February – 11th March 2022

For his second solo show at Platform A, Kennedy presents recent work in a variety of media including, drawing, painting and sculpture. Kennedy’s work playfully parodies science, the dominant ontological pursuit of our time, sharing its aim to unearth truths about the natural world and our relationship with it. The exhibition offers a reductive, abstract visual language drawn from a variety of interests including, horology, electrical circuits, symbols and glyphs, patterns in nature, X-ray crystallography imagery and quantum mechanics.

Ten Years 
Lorraine Brown, Alex Charrington, Tony Charles, Nicola Ellis, Jo Hamill, Alexis Harding, Annie O’Donnell, Will Hughes, Emma Bennett, Jo McGonigal, Mike Collier, Nick Kennedy, Phil Illingworth, Rachael Clewlow, Sally Taylor, Phil Gatenby, Francesca Simon, Roberto Picciau, Lothar Goetz, DJ Simpson, William Tillyer.
25th November - 4th January 2022 

A decade of exhibitions at Platform A Gallery has brought many interesting and exciting projects throughout some very difficult times, such as the fallout from the 2008 economic crash and, of course, the recent pandemic.

Looking Good and Feeling Fine 
Will Hughes 
26th August – 7th October 2021

For their first solo show at Platform A and in the North East, Will Hughes will show a selection of sculptural works which focus on material language, personal experiences and class.

Placed
Jonathan Chapman
18th September - 30th October 2020
My camera is my dog, it changes me from sad loner to purposeful flaneur. When I returned to this region, like a dog, I wanted to be outside exploring this new familiar place.

Flying Carpet
Leslaw Tetla
20 February – 2 April 2020 
LesÅ‚aw Tetla is interested in the fabric of the city as written onto its architectural modules. He examines the subcutaneous geometry that channels the movements of city residents, shaping their attitudes and types of behavior. In the new project, he creates sequences of paintings depicting the façades of traditional English houses in Stockton and Middlesbrough, which are now populated by immigrant communities.

Jo Hamill
22nd November - 7th January 2020
 
Gutter Words is a complex book work and the culmination of a 10 year enquiry which aims to explore the sculptural space of language, the book and its physical connection to the body. The written word and the book are mediated through an array of linguistic, design and typographic conventions which act as the safeguards to a tightly managed experience...
 
Materials
Annie O'Donnell, Phil Illingworth, Tony Charles, Emma Bennett, Alan Hathaway Lorraine Brown
27th - 29th September 2019
 
Exhibition for Middlesbrough Art Weekender

Platform A Gallery has developed relationships with artists who have established and developed their practice through an exploration of a variety of materials. Whether through paint, steel or plastic these artists have investigated a variety of artistic concerns and honed their ideas in diverse ways. Materials bring together and survey a selection of objects that have been displayed in the gallery space over a number of years in different exhibitions...
 
Nick Kennedy, Mary Yacoob, Rachael Clewlow, Francesca Simon, Duncan Bullen, Ben Gooding, Patrick Morrissey, Hanz Hancock, Wendy Smith
Curated by Saturation Point
20th June - 1st August  2019
 
THE NUMBER 8: The atomic number of oxygen, the bits in a byte, the primary planets in our solar system, the verticles in a cube…
 
Major Conversation: The Industrial Narrative
Bobby Benjamin, Connor Shields, Craig Oldham, Faye Hadfield, Hannah Leighton-Boyce, Helen Pailing, Kraig Wilson, Mary Griffiths, Nicola Ellis, Theodore Major
28th March - 9th May 2019
 
As heavy industry has declined in the North of England, an understanding of areas with strong industrial heritage and identity, have often been distorted....
 
Mike Collier
31st January - 7th March 2019
 
'Imitating with the mouth the fluid voices of birdscame long beforemen were able to sing together in melody and please the ear'. Lucretius (94-55BC): De Rerum Natura
This exhibition of pictures by Mike Collier and musicby Bennett Hogg was initially inspired by listening to a dawn chorus in a Northumberland woodland..... 
 
No Dark Things
Alan Hathaway
22th November 2018 - 8th January 2019

In his first solo show at Platform A, Alan Hathaway will present new work that explores his continued interest in abstraction.
Hathaway’s choice of scale, colour and manipulation of industrial materials, references and critiques historic approaches to monochromatic painting and minimalist sculpture, and places him squarely within current debates that present painting as a ‘non medium specific’ activity or as ‘post conceptual’...
 
Looking Down
Francesca Simon
4th October - 15th November 2018

Repeated patterns of existence are mesmerisingly submerged within Francesca Simon’s current paintings. The recent series of hinged triptychs is inspired by looking down at the world, noticing both the elusive and the systematic...   
 
Parallel Tracking
Phil Gatenby
23rd February - 29th March 2018
 
‘Parallel tracking: the curious case of abstraction…
This exhibition at Platform A Gallery shows painting work made in 2016 when undertaking an eight week Artist in Residence (AIR) placement at Das Spectrum artist led studios in Utrecht... 
 
Sally Taylor
9th November - 21st December 2017
 
‘What is it to draw? How do we do it? It is the act of clearing a path for oneself      through an invisible iron wall.’
This quote from Van Gogh sits handwritten on Sally Taylor’s studio wall, one of a series of prompts for her actions....
 
Rachael Clewlow
7th September  - 5th October 2017

Through painting and printmaking, Rachael Clewlow has created a visual language that reflects an obsessive attention to detail and a desire to map out her own experiences of the world....
 
Katy Cole, Annie O'Donnell, Sarah Tulloch
18th May - 30th June 2017

Category Error
 situates artists as initiators in the search for identity and attachment in an ongoing period of displacement and uncertainty. It continues the tradition of collage as a strategy for cultural critique and for making connections and transformations...
 
Tony Charles
10th March - 21st April 2017
Curated by Paul Carey-Kent
 
My guess is when you walk in to Tony Charles’ show at Platform A, you will think it is made up of painting and sculpture. You’d be right, but the twist is that you'll probably have them the wrong way round....
 
Emma Bennett
17th November - 5th January 2017
 
In her first solo exhibition at Platform A, Emma Bennett presents a series of paintings responding to the recent closure of a particular building in Middlesbrough.
 
Phil Illingworth
29th September - 3rd November 2016
 
Phil Illingworth’s practice encompasses the expanded fields of painting and drawing, three-dimensional works, and the conceptual... 
 
Push Me, Pull You.  
Alex Charrington 
9th June - 7th July 2016

In his first solo show for the gallery Alex Charrington presents a new site-specific window installation, shown here for the first time alongside a body of screen prints investigating colour, light and space...
 
24th March - 23rd April 2016

Platform A is delighted to present a significant new body of works on paper by Nick Kennedy in his first solo show for the gallery....
 
10 December 2015 - 14 January 2016

It seems pertinent that at this time in the history of iron and steel production in Teesside, Platform A should be presenting the artist Nicola Ellis...
 
Stable
Tony Charles, Alex Charrington, Jo Hamill, Nick Kennedy, Annie O’Donnell
10th October - 3rd November 2015
 
Stable brings together the artists of Platform A Gallery in a presentation that corresponds to the Localism exhibition opening the same day at mima....
 
Strange Strangers
Mark Peter Wright
11th September - 3rd October 2015
 
Mark Peter Wright works across sound, video, assemblage and performance. His practice critically explores the relationship between humans, animals, environments and their associated technologies of capture: playfully and poignantly animating the rituals and constructs behind what he calls these "humanimentical" relations.
 
8th May - 18th June 2015

Jo McGonigal's practice examines how the compositional and material components of painting affect the experiential basis of the viewer, not what the painting means but what it does...
 
Grounded
Emma Bennett, Scott Marks, Roberto Picciau,
Daniel Slater
6th March - 2nd April 2015
 
The creative manipulation of what might be considered as democratic materials and concepts seems fitting for an exhibition at Platform A, a gallery that has been informed and molded by the industrial heritage of its locality...
 
Annie O'Donnell, John Buckland Wright, G.Ramsey 
12th December 2014 - 29th January 2015

'At the heart of the notion of biography are questions about the links between people and things: about the ways meanings and values are accumulated and transformed.' (Gosden and Marshall 1999:172)
Twice Removed 
is the third exhibition in the series of pairings between Platform A artists and the MIMA Fine Art collection...

Making Matters
Andrew Bick, Katrina Blannin, Clem Crosby, David Ryan, Francesca Simon, Kate Terry
10th October - 20th November 2014

This exhibition looks at the relationship between the construction of an artwork and its physical presence...
 
Rick Copsey
11th July - 22nd August 2014 

A Sublime Confluence is a solo exhibition by Rick Copsey which presents new and recent works in the current Paintscape series, an extension of the Seascape series of 2010 – 2011...
 
Lothar Götz
2nd May - 13th June 2014

Whilst Götz’ practice ranges in scale from site-specific wall paintings and room-sized spatial installations to paintings and drawings, there is a clear coherence and dialogue across his body of work...
 
AV Festival 14: Extraction
Rossella Biscotti, Kevin van Braak
1st March - 31st March 2014 

Rossella Biscotti & Kevin van Braak's new work for AV Festival is part of the ongoing series of sculptures After four rotations of A, B will make one revolution (2009-2013), 
 
All Depth and No Substance
Richard Talbot
17th December 2013 - 30th January 2014.

A problem for art historians is that it is often those paintings that are held to be prime examples of the use of perspective in the early Renaissance, which, when looked at closely, defy the rules of perspective...
 
The Tyranny of the Picture Plane and Other Pressure Tools
William Tillyer
25th October- 5th December 2013
 
Exhibiting the work of William Tillyer at Platform A in parallel to his retrospective at MIMA presents an interesting challenge...
 
Lee Machell
12th July - 22nd August 2013

Interruption is a solo exhibition by Lee Machell in which a Duchampian lexicon of playful dissent pervades the space of Platform A.....
 
North South Divine
Exhibition display at Platform A Gallery and WW Gallery, London. 
Alison Wilding, Kate Davis, Annie O’Donnell, Phil Illingworth, Deb Covell, Tony Charles, Boa Swindler, Chiara Williams
3rd April - 11th May 2013 (WW)
17th May - 20th June 2013 (Platform)
 
WW and Platform A are pleased to present North South Divine, an exhibition of works by eight artists across two cities situated at the North and South of the country, featuring Alison Wilding, Kate Davis, Tony Charles, Deb Covell, Chiara Williams, Boa Swindler, Phil Illingworth and Annie O'Donnell.....
 
James Brooks
1st March - 11th April 2013

James Brooks uses radio, film, television and paper-based media sources, of varying cultural status, as starting points to make drawings, prints, audio, and video works. His practice implements a variety of slight to laborious interventions as a means to realize esoteric manipulations of the original source material.....
 

Annie O'Donnell
7th September - 13th October 2012

‘One launches forth, hazards an improvisation. But to improvise is to join with the World, or to meld with it. One ventures from home on the thread of a tune. Along sonorous, gestural, motor lines that…graft themselves onto or begin to bud ‘lines of drift’ with different loops, knots, speeds, movements, gestures, and sonorities.’ Giles Deleuze and Félix Guattari......

 
Alexis Harding
15th June - 28th July 2012

Fill Line is the first solo exhibition in the North East of Alexis Harding’s paintings. The exhibition will feature eight representative works dating from 2004 until 2012 and include a new temporary, wet, site specific painting.....
.
 
James Benning
1st March - 31st March 2012.

As part of AV Festival 12, Platform A presents MILWAUKEE/DUISBURG by James Benning..... 

Painting by Object
Edmund de Waal, Tony Charles 
13th January - 22nd February 2012

The first in a series of Platform A pairings that connects Platform A artists with works from the MIMA collection, brings together works from Tony Charles and Edmund de Waal.....

New Works
DJ Simpson
20th October - 2nd December 2012

The British artist DJ Simpson has developed a singular and remarkably consistent series of paintings over the last dozen years.....

Fuze
Richard Forster, Kraig Wilson, Deb Covell,
Annie O’Donnell, Adam Clarke, Tony Charles
28th July - 17th September 2011

FUZE’, the inaugural group show opened on 28th July at Platform A’s newly refurbished gallery space within Middlesbrough Railway Station...
 
 
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