‘We are Blyth Star’ showcases the creative talents of a group of adults with learning disabilities and mental health needs. You can see it at RePUBlic Gallery. Launched in 2021, RePUBlic Gallery is a contemporary gallery and community space located in the…

Ooh! A 500-year-old lane in Newcastle city centre has been transformed into an urban art gallery. Nice! I’ve cut through Forth Lane near the Central Station on many an occasion, usually stumbling into, or out of, The Forth pub. But now I’ll have cause to …

Artist Mary Watson has been leading weekly workshops at the National Glass Centre for armed forces veterans and their families, which has led on to a real eye-opening exhibition. Participants at these sessions with Mary Watson ranged in age from eight to …

Michael James McCormack has created three pieces of work in response to The Bowes Museum’s collection that can be seen on flagpoles on the terrace at the front of the Museum in Barnard Castle. Naturally, if you’re an artist tasked with responding to one o…

The Redcar Contemporary Gallery features some of the most striking art you’ll find anywhere in the north-east. I love this piece by Samba – an artist collective made up of three women who went back to university to study Fine Art in their 50s in order to …

…Gallagher & Turner’s Christmas show. A diverse bunch of artists are selling their delectable pieces at the gallery this December, which is handy if you’re looking for a special gift. I love the paintings of Imogen Hawgood (that’s her ‘Las Vegas Pioneer C…

Woodhorn Museum are marking the end of its year-long programme celebrating ninety years of the Pitmen Painters with a new exhibition focussing on the early years of the Ashington Group. Entitled ‘Coalface Drawers’ this show really is something. It feature…

The Story – the knockout visitor attraction, which opened in Durham earlier this year (pictured) – has been a roaring success, and its latest visitor attraction sees them exploring the experiences of children and young people at different points in histor…

The Laing Art Gallery is exploring over 200 years of landscape painting in the north of England and Scotland in their new exhibition ‘Romance to Realities: The Northern Landscape and Shifting Identities’. If there’s one thing that we’ve got an abundanc…

There’s a peculiar rupture in the work of Deborah Grice, with her landscapes – which invoke the 19th century romantics – seemingly infected by modern, graphic forms. See them at Biscuit Factory from this November. I love a bit of incongruity and Deborah G…

From the spectacular light trail AGLOW, to a Nativity scene that has to be seen to be believed, The Auckland Project are pulling out some real crackers in the run-up to Christmas. I’m not religious but I do love a Nativity scene. I mean, who doesn’t love …

‘Towards New Worlds’ sees fifteen artists exploring their experiences of seeing, hearing, feeling and sensing the contemporary world. You can see it at MIMA in Middlesbrough. Each of the artists involved in this show is disabled, D/deaf and/or neurodiverg…

Textile artist extraordinaire Sue Bowhay Pringle is showing her incredible work at Bailiffgate Museum & Gallery in Alnwick from October onwards. Most of the pieces in Sue Bowhay Pringle’s new show are abstract but look closely and you can sometimes find s…

‘Kith and Kinship’ at the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle highlights some works by Norman Cornish and LS Lowry that have often been overlooked. If you’re looking for a representation of tenderness in an artwork, then I doubt you’ll find a much better examp…

‘Fixing Time’ is a major retrospective of the work of documentary photographer Ian Macdonald, which is being held in two galleries in Sunderland. I love this image of canteen staff having a catch up at the end of their shift at a Redcar blast furnace in 1…

The Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art is drawing on its well-appointed collection of photographic works for a thought-provoking group show. Simon Roberts’ ‘Let This Be A Sign’ collection of pictures is the culmination of work created over the period f…

Reimagine the wonder of wetlands and nature through the eyes of the UK’s best-loved illustrator: Quentin Blake. Head to the wonderful WWT Washington Wetland Centre where you can collect an illustrated guide full of Quentin Blake’s drawings and then set of…

‘Essence of Nature’ at the Laing traces the radically different approaches to British landscape painting, from the mid-Victorian era through to the 1920s. This exhibition kicks off with a real bang with the Pre-Raphaelites’ ideal of ‘truth to nature’ – re…