Middlesbrough Art Week 2025 (MAW25) embraces the theme In All Possible Worlds… It “dares to imagine a future shaped by creativity, resilience, and hope. [It] embraces this uncertainty, offering a space where we see and feel through one another’s eyes… providing space for mutual support and creative nourishment. “
MAW’s imagined future is a massive leap in the current deluge of fear, vitriol and corruption. An almost unimaginable mirage in the perpetual storm of war, anger and desolation but… perhaps to imagine the impossible is the only antidote? Perhaps it’s the only way to swing the pendulum in the other direction and welcome a dappling of sunlight amid the squall?
For leftie, “woke”, perpetual fretters, like me, who are only just holding on, MAW is a much-needed salve in the narrative (and reality) of fire and brimstone.
Edel O’Reilly, Executive Director, of both the new Auxiliary art-space (at the heart of a growing arts community), and Middlesborough Artweek explains: “it’s a festival for artists, an open forum and supportive community to present and share complex works together” and this perfectly encapsulates the festival and its ethos. The salient sense of community and the reimagining of how things can be done, rather than a stoic clinging to tradition, are what make the festival so refreshing. A prime example of this is the North East Open Call: In The Real. Sensitively curated by Penelope Payne, she tells me that artists can apply with a snapchat or an Instagram link and then it’s up to the panel to do the hard work in finding the work and ideas. This subversive flip of hierarchy is, for me, ground-breaking. It’s also a hugely inclusive act- taking down the barriers of time, fear and art-talk which exclude so many.
Any practicing artist will associate with this monumental task of filling in the screeds of questions and proposals for open calls and the common reward of tumbleweed in reply. Liam Slevin, Festival Director, laughs at the absurdity of replying individually to every applicant but that’s exactly what Penelope does. Despite the time and preposterousness of this notion, she doesn’t dismiss the feelings or work of those who have applied because her time is more important, she replies to everyone!
And these small and gargantuan acts of subversion, in the march of the heartless art business, have paid off dividends because it has culminated in a visually and ideologically invigorating show which “invites us to scrutinise contemporary worlds”.
Notable is Erin Dickson’s highly rendered and hugely engaging film, featuring the voice of her 7-year old neighbour, Jessica. Blanketed in stark white the film explores the neighbourhood through the eyes of a child explaining who lives at each house. The camera mimics the melody and stuttering of the little girl’s voice and bleeds into some kind of magical realism when Jessica picks up her house and takes it to the location she will live in when she is older. This familiar attachment to your home as a small child is nostalgic but it’s Dickson’s beautiful portrayal of Jessica’s unprejudiced and unfettered narrative that makes her work so heartwarming.
Of note too, are Kitty McKay’s sculptural works which highlight the absurdity and inaccessibility of public transport through playful and challenging assemblages of metro seats and fittings. Paired with distorting lenses in which the audience can never see themselves accurately we are immersed in the marginalised world of the disabled community.
A highlight of the festival are the oozing, fleshy figures, rendered from resin and wax, in Andrea Hasler’s installation Residual Echo (Top Image). Presented in collaboration with MOTHEROTHER the work explores family connection and “the visceral tension between attraction and repulsion, intimacy and exposure.”. A conjoined couple and their children- oversized gluttonous globules with protruding wound-coloured limbs- sit atop a lake of bloody fabric. The figures are distant but connected through a nervous system of gold chains- simultaneously symbolising the greed of capitalism. Shrouded in a soundtrack of monastic chants and Swedish yodelling, reflecting the artist’s own heritage, this seems the climax of the complex work O’Reilly refers to.
Another must see is Weapon & Wound which explores culture as, well… a weapon and a wound. It questions how this shapes our identity, communities and perception of the world. The work ranges from Corbin Shaw’s haunting work constructed of a body bag and duct tape Union Jack (my words not anyone else’s) paired with a distressed and smoke-stained St George’s cross. Like many of Corbin’s work it explores British culture through symbols but unlike many previous iterations this piece bares no slogan. It speaks for itself. It expresses something far more melancholic and final. This work imbodies the raw tensions of a country divided by bitterness and hatred. What end or death it signals is up to you.
Richie Culver’s film and sound contribution in this show delves deeper into this idea of identity. Through a sputtering collage of original music videos and confessional monologues the film explores fatherhood, mental health and offers a masculinity which is honest and vulnerable, one which is self-aware and open. It offers a masculinity which we so desperately need and one which young boys and men can associate with.
And it doesn’t just seem to be an arty bourgeois imposing it’s will at the cost of the locals either. O’Reilly explains that locals might come in with the ‘What’s this sh!t$?” attitude but leave, after a verbal tussle, with something quite different. This engagement is in part due to the exhibitions being situated in vacant retail units -so much more accessible and inviting to the general public than a white cube- but is also testament to the warmth of Slevin, O’Reilly and their team.
And it’s in all this humanity, warmth and empathy that I see that chink of light. It’s in the thought and care and focus on people that there is the possibility of a brighter day and a nudge of the pendulum.
So move over old-guard, Middlesborough Artweek is here to show you how it’s done! And they are doing it with style and a smile on their faces.
Middlesborough Artweek 25th September – 4th October @middlesbroughartweek
