ARTIST ROOMS Vija Celmins

3 February - 4 May 2024 

Celmins (b. 1938) produces mesmerising, exquisitely intricate drawings and prints of natural phenomena. This exhibition, presented in partnership with Tate and National Galleries of Scotland, draws from the remarkable body of Celmins’s work in the ARTIST ROOMS national collection, and features some of her most extraordinary works on paper. Celmins’s highly executed images capture space and time on a two-dimensional surface. Her work is based on photographs of nature – from the infinite expanse of the night sky and the vastness of the sea to the delicate intricacy of a spider’s web. 

Ceri Lewis, Senior Curator, ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland, said: “We are delighted to be collaborating with the Hatton Gallery again. Vija Celmins is an extraordinary artist whose mesmerising work combines exceptional craftsmanship with conceptual sophistication, with a career spanning more than five decades. ARTIST ROOMS is all about bringing great art to towns and cities across the UK, free of charge. Through partnerships with local museums and galleries such as the Hatton Gallery, we can create new experiences for audiences, and ensure young people in particular have access to world-class international art.”

Katie Cuddon: A is for Alma

3 February - 4 May 2024 

Cuddon (b. 1979) is an artist living and working in Newcastle upon Tyne. A is for Alma is Cuddon’s first solo exhibition in Newcastle for 15 years and presents work created since she gave birth to her daughter in 2018. The works explore the union between mother and child and the emerging dialogue between them. 

Cuddon’s clay sculptures resonate with the instinctive experiments and gestures of childhood. She sees clay as a material associated with the early experience of shaping matter as a child, perhaps with Play-Doh or plasticine, materials ‘made to mimic clay’. 

The exhibition’s title, A is for Alma, evokes the ABC books read to small children. In the exhibition, Cuddon exhibits for the first time a clay alphabet of hand-modelled letters. These are different from the other sculptures in the exhibition, which embody an intense emotional closeness. The letters are by contrast immediately recognisable as signifying language, an unreliable construct of the ‘adult’ world that threatens to intrude on this intimacy. They have also been bitten and torn to hint at the complex relationship with language that this intrusion stirs up. 

The exhibition explores the private realm occupied by a mother and child as somewhere on the edge of the outside world.  

Katie Cuddon said: “The relationship you have with a small child is incredibly physical. I felt extreme emotions and confusion: was I one or two people? It’s a really interesting place to think about sculpture from.” 

Curating Art MA

About suffering, they were never wrong 

9 February - 15 May 2024 

MA Curating Art students will present a sequence of three related exhibitions in February, March and April - May. The project partners 12 artists from 12 different countries with 12 historical artworks from the Hatton collection. It reveals how artists across time and space have pictured the pain or suffering of others, by re-examining the history of emotions. 

Julie Milne, Chief Curator of Art Galleries at Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums, said: "We are thrilled to announce our second collaboration with ARTIST ROOMS following the Hatton Gallery’s major redevelopment in 2017. We are also excited to work with artist Katie Cuddon on her first solo exhibition in Newcastle in 15 years and to celebrate the talents of Newcastle University MA Curating Art students. Our winter-spring programme is a rare opportunity for visitors to encounter three remarkable exhibitions running simultaneously.” 

All exhibitions are free entry, with a suggested donation of £5. For full details of opening times, events, and facilities available, please visit the website: https://hattongallery.org.uk/ 

Press release adapted with thanks to Tyne and Wear Museums and Archives.