More Than A Word
Newline Graffiti & Young People
17 April – 23 May 2010
This exhibition will be the first of its kind in the North East exhibiting the work of young people alongside professional artists.
More Than A Word explores the identity, individualism, thoughts and feelings of young people from across North and South Tyneside, using street art and a fusion of traditional sign writing techniques.
More Than A Word, is the collective work of young people ages 5-19years old, who over the course of 2 months worked with professional Graffiti company Newline to produce this thoughtful, expressive, dynamic and relevant exhibition.
This exhibition aims to challenge stereo typical perceptions of graffiti, why it is produced and for what purpose. It aims to explore how scrawls, tags and ultimately graffiti is More Than A Word. That is form of self expression can often be for a number of reasons; sometimes just for the thrill, for the artistic endeavor, for adventure, for cathartic reasons but ultimately it’s a personal reason - a human touch on created landscape / medium. And sometimes, it’s for no reason at all, just to mark, inject, enhance man-made landscapes through form, colour and passion.
This vibrant and engaging exhibition is accompanied by a film depicting the processes involved in reaching the final exhibition. Produced by Andrew Hagan of Mainstream Films, this documentary style film captures the action as well as the more gentle thoughts and conversations between young people, their peers and artists about self expression and identity.
New Line Graffiti were approached to develop a project for Level 1 BALTIC performance space. The resulting project and exhibition which was up for 2 weeks was seen by some 4000 people.
New Line Graffitti and specifically with the support of Development worker Reuven Fletcher, at that time of Newcastle City Council, worked effectively to make a provocative and contemporary display encompassing the four large walls of the Performance space at BALTIC covering 60-70 running metres of wall space.
They worked quickly to deliver an ambitious project that encompassed the whole of the Performance space, and over the course of 4 days transformed the space. Through their negotiations some 15 different urban and Graffiti artists were represented in a truly significant display of contemporary graffiti. Most of the artists who took part in the project wished to stay anonymous. It was through New Line Graffiti as a mechanism for communicating and delivering on all aspects of the exhibition. (Contracts, materials, equipment etc.) Dynamic set of presentations, cleverly worked out between a variety of crews and urban street styles from across the city
Proficient and effective, they delivered a startling and punchy exhibition in a short space of time and to a tight budget. The artists were committed and responsible and responded to the opportunity with a professionalism that was important to see.
Great involvement, and speedy resolution following complex relations. I would heartily recommend them to anyone wishing to deliver a contemporary urban street art project in the city.
Alessandro Vincentelli, Acting Head of Programme
BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art
Power-Art Works 2007
New Line worked on arranging another North East first in the world of exhibitions. in 2007 We decided to work with a wide range of local artists to give them a venue to sell their work on canvas.
After working closely with the owner of the gallery New Line arranged to have the space for a around a month and a half in 2007. We were given an outside space which we could do with as we pleased as well as several of the largest walls inside the gallery on which to hang work.