7XSEVEN
Fri 30 June ~ Sam Judge
Sat 1 July ~ C DYER + Jack Sullivan
Sun 2 July ~ Blimey Collective
Mon 3 July ~ Beth Johnson
Tue 4 July ~ Leah Roberts
Wed 5 July ~ Jordon Quinn
Thu 6 July ~ NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL ART
7XSEVEN is a series of one night exhibition openings happening each night of the week between 30 June & 5 July here at The Auxiliary. With summer in full swing, we’ve built a lovely garden gallery pod that will host artists nominated by local organisations working in different mediums, with painting, photography, sculpture and print on show. So feel free to come by, grab a drink, some food, sit by the firepit and enjoy the sun, between 5-8pm each evening. Location, The Auxiliary, 31 Station Street, Middlesbrough, TS1 1SR.
Fri 30 June ~ Sam Judge
Sam Judge is an emerging british artist. Following a career in design working for clients such as V&A and Royal Academy of Arts, Sam has now turned his hand to painting. Working from his studio in North Yorkshire, he primarily works with paint on various materials and supports.
This series on show at 7XSEVEN, titled Undoing/Doing, is an ongoing series, created alongside the creation of other works. It is born out of a response to the climate crisis; an enquiry into waste reduction and reuse of studio detritus. I run my practice with as little waste as possible, that requires the repurposing of materials, which are cut, sewn and reassembled into new works. This process brings into question “what is deemed to be ‘approved output’ from an artist’s studio?” In my case, the repurposing of materials broadens the possibilities of what work I can produce whilst simultaneously operating a more sustainable and environmentally-conscious practice.
Sat 1 July ~ C DYER
C DYER is a multidisciplinary fine artist living and working in Teesside, whose eclectic practice explores the overlooked fringes and details of society, subcultures, and his surrounding environment through digital and analogue image and mark making.
Authorless Bricolage
A series of 102x 135.5mm Fujicolor crystal archive print collages, 2023
Authorless Bricolage is a term first coined in 2014 as a means to accurately delineate recurring visual traces within the public domain, created over time simply through existence; though not to exclude the deliberate interventions or actions of some.
Through the lens of abstract expressionism and collage, the aim is to document and archive these surface interventions along with the recurring, yet fleeting, shadows often cast upon them within the public domain.
Being mindful that in most, if not all cases, the outcome is simply a decisive moment and it will continue to change.
Reframing and recontextualising the collection within the gallery as a means to encourage the viewer to appreciate the beauty in the everyday, while simultaneously providing scope to recognise that their interpretation is reliant on this new found context.
www.c-dyer.co.uk
@fullywaste
Sat 1 July ~ Jack Sullivan
Born in Middlesbrough, 1999, Jack Sullivan currently resides in South London where he works as a print technician and continues to make photographs on a daily basis, using both digital and analog photographic techniques. His practice is informed by his surroundings, peers and the punchy colours found in cult cinema; Sullivan focuses on fleeting moments of the everyday, veiling them with the camera’s flash and creating a surreal composition.
Showing at 7XSEVEN | Words about work: Four digital photographs, taken between 2021 and 2022
Sun 2 July ~ Blimey Collective
blimey! is a female led Darlington based artist collective who work across a diverse range of creative practices. Artists include Carol Sommer, Amanda Marshall, Nicola Golightly and Vicky Holbrough. The collective is a catalyst for artist led activity, using an adaptive and responsive approach in bringing individual voices together to celebrate contemporary visual arts practice in the region.
A few lines about the work on show at 7XSEVEN: ‘Please Do Not Bend’ came out of a Dover Prize Award for creative research that began during Covid. Between May 2021 and August 2022 blimey! collective held a series of online and in person meetings where we talked together, via Zoom and exchanges of letters, about the idea of collective practice. This was followed by an in person sharing and reading of the letters, and a skill sharing session with Bettie Hope from female led artist collective 'Let Us Eat Cake'. For 7xSEVEN, the four of us will inhabit the space, exploring collective practice during the event, and sharing the audio and visual work that came out of ‘Please Do Not Bend’.
@blimeycollective
@nic.golightly
@vickyholbrough
@cartography_for_girls
@ajmarshall666
Mon 3 July ~ Beth Johnson
Beth Johnson is a Scottish artist who has called Teesside home for the last 12 years. Beth’s background and formal training in Architecture from the University of Strathclyde, can be seen throughout her work in it’s structure and influence; of geometric shapes and infrastructure as well as its juxtaposition with the nature surrounding it. Self-taught, in embroidery, Beth’s art practice concentrated on traditional forms of the craft but more recently moved to development and experimentation; playing with the media she stitches through, including the exploration of embroidering concrete with light. Her artistic practice over the last few years has lead her to be included in group exhibitions including Baltic’s Open Submission 2020 (shown in 2021) and commissioned to work in collaboration with other artists to transform an empty shopping centre space as part of Stockton International Riverside Festival in 2022 as well as coming together with like-minded artists to form Wild Vision Collective who work together on socially engaged art projects.
Beth has four school aged children and loves to share her love of art with them… even if they’d rather be playing football!
Tue 4 July ~ Leah Roberts
Leah Roberts | My art practice responds to the relationship between spoken word and reality, using real life experiences. Through my art, I focus on the feelings portrayed by turning it into spoken word. I use illiterate powerful words, which personifies the emotions endured when writing and creating work.
Wed 5 July ~ Jordon Quinn
My name is Jordan Lee Quinn, In my traditional art practise I work with a mix of colours, roughness, textures, forms and marks to explore and experiment with visual tensions between abstract and figurative themes. Using a blend of traditional acrylic painting on canvas and a more DIY, graffiti, punk / primary school child art class aesthetic. Currently developing my visual language and experimenting within multiple subject matters to test how I ‘see’ it and reflect that in my work. I work using canvas, cardboard, abandoned cupboard doors, stickers, acrylic paint, alcohol and ink markers, oil pastels, big crayons and a mindset to make mistakes and then fix those.
Branching off this I am working on a series of adjacent projects within fabrics and 3D digital installations. But they aren’t ready yet!
Work showing,
The works are a continuation of my artistic development and sort of visual journal of mood and expression regardless of subject matter in the piece. Currently working on introducing more cubist language into my workflow and overlapping elements and motifs used through all. I take each new subject as a way to develop the way I ‘see’ the world and let that inform how I move forward in that piece or the next. The theme of ‘seeing’ the world subjectively, working to re-contextualise visual elements and collage them into, on top of and around other elements in the focal plane. All the works have deliberate attention payed to playing with the tensions and balance of the piece.
www.mellonkauli.org/beyondmellon
@_beyond_mellon
Thu 6 July ~ Now That’s What I Call Art 3
OPENING THU 6 JULY 6-9PM
SHOWING UNTIL - SATURDAY 22ND JULY 2023
THURSDAY - SATURDAY, 12 - 4PM
This might be the third Now That’s What I Call Art, but it is its first time in Middlesborough. It is the collaboration of Spaghetti Factory and System Gallery, two northeast artist-run projects.
This group exhibition features one artwork or set of artworks from 74 artists at all stages. Rather than an open call where submissions are selected through some potentially arbitrary selection process, exhibiting artists responded to an ‘open invitation’ and were welcomed on a first-come first-served basis.
This approach was born from the understanding that culture is a public commodity and so all people deserve the opportunity to engage with it at all levels – including artist, curator, critic, and whatever else. Similarly, this exhibition works with the assumption that ‘genius’ does not come from great minds working in solitude, but rather creativity is always to some extent a collaboration. That is to say, it is the result of a mind connected to other minds.