New Book
Made in Newcastle: Visual Culture
Reviewed by Bev Bagnall
The common thread in this collection of essays is an exploration of the ways in which architecture, art, fashion and commercial design, film and television have reflected or influenced social changes here in the recent past and their impact on what we think of as local identity. The influences at play on fashion, retailing, architecture and fine art education in the 1960‚s are examined. The story of Amber Films, the company which since 1968 has invaluably documented local life, is contrasted with the made-for-television images of the last ten years, whether through the images used in news programme titles or films like “Our Friends In The North”. The ways in which the area’s past is presented to us are explored, as portrayed at Segedunum and Beamish. Finally Tyneside’s “Artistic Renaissance” is questioned. Is any of it, including The Angel of the North and recent public art, deep-rooted and genuinely local? Are the exhibitions at the Baltic only there because they are “international art” and it is important to the region’s image to be seen to be showing them?
The topics are interesting in themselves, sometimes controversial, and should fulfil the book’s claim to be written to appeal to a wider audience. The writers are academics however and sometimes it does show in the use of references and the introverted vocabulary of sociology (did you know you experience “embodied pleasure” when you go to the cinema?). A stronger editorial touch might have made the general reader’s job easier in such places but the book succeeds in raising talking points and throwing much different light on the developments of the years it covers.
City and County
February 2009
