Dalek, witch and Spiderman – new at the NGCA
Spare time passions revealed in colourful Sunderland show
“I’ve a feeling this is going to be a popular show because there’s something in it for everybody,” said Nick Malyan, chief executive of Sunderland Culture, standing beneath a textile picture of two penguins and within extermination range of a Dalek.
The exhibition at the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art (NGCA) is Come As You Really Are, produced by Artangel but attributed to artist Hetain Patel and showcasing the work of lots of local makers and modifiers, crafters and collectors who responded to his call.
The result is this whimsical cornucopia of creativity comprising things you wouldn’t normally expect to see in the same public space – especially one dedicated to something as seemingly high-minded as contemporary art.
Except Hetain Patel doesn’t think contemporary art should be that way.
He told his preview audience this was a show designed to get underneath “all the industry stuff” that made the art world inaccessible to all but a chosen few.
It “shouldn’t just be for artists and designers. It’s for all of us, just part of our humanity, the desire to express yourself, to make something, to modify something or create or collect something.
“This show is about having almost the audacity to dedicate some time outside work - or care giving or the ordinary stuff we’re made to do - where you decide, you make the rules and you take control.
“Art galleries and museums, society tells us, are where we show stuff that’s important and is the high culture that we should all respect and bow down to.
“Typically it’s very rarefied. Only a few people get to do that so in a way this project is about trying to gather all the stuff that’s just happening anyway.”
What he loved about hobbies and hobbyists, he went on, is that “you can’t stop us. You don’t need this show or me or Artangel or galleries or museums.
“You kept doing it before the show and you’ll keep doing it after. That’s what I love, the power of that… the power of people. People are not the same but we can be together in this space and celebrate each other and what we do.”
Hetain may have an artist’s CV but he sees himself at one with the hobbyists. Later he confided that the idea for the show sprang from his sudden urge to see all the world’s home-made Spiderman costumes in one room. “How amazing the energy from that would be!”
His own meticulously made Spiderman costume perches above the exhibition, looking down at viewers and throwing a dramatic shadow on a wall.
Anyway, reasoning that most of the Spiderman costumes were in America, he had a re-think and came up with hobbies of all kinds. “At the core of them are so many things we have in common.”
Tony Stevenson, managing director at Artangel, explained that this was less a touring show than an idea, and what had made it a reality was the trust and commitment of 13 partners, all in different locations and committed to expressing that idea in a different way.
The first manifestation of Come As You Really Are was in Croydon last year. Venues to come include Blackpool (whose version opens on March 29), Barnsley, Inverness and Wolverhampton.
In none of those places are there likely to be quite as many – if any – Sunderland football shirts or memorabilia recalling a famous FA Cup victory in 1973.
And quite possibly no Dalek.
Keith Lawler and his family share their Sunderland home with a Dalek called Bruce, named after the mechanical shark deployed in the filming of Jaws which kept breaking down.
Like film director Steven Spielberg, Keith also thought at one point his Dalek would never be ready for action.
“I like building things and I’d always wanted a Dalek,” he said.
“I started building it in 2010 and it did eventually take over the kitchen. But I focused on one small piece at a time and finally had it ready for my son’s and daughter’s school fete in 2015.”
Where better to celebrate the 10th anniversary of that event than at the NGCA where Bruce was a big talking point on preview night – partly because, as he admitted himself, Keith just loves talking about his Dalek.
He told an interested crowd how he’d made Bruce using mesh from waste bins, halved Christmas globes and scraps of wood and metal, but always with authenticity the goal.
He put on a convincing Dalek voice and said he’d got a friend from the “Dalek community” (believe there is such a thing) to install an amplifier so when he’s inside and propelling himself around with his feet, “Flintstones-style”, there can be no mistaking his cries of “Exterminate!”
Except he tended not to do that when Bruce was fundraising for the likes of Macmillan Cancer Support or Grace House which works with disabled children, young people and their families.
Removing Bruce’s head, he showed the autographs adorning its internal woodwork, including those of past ‘Doctors’ Peter Davidson, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy, and also Dick Mills, a member of the pioneering BBC Radiophonic Workshop which created the Doctor Who soundtrack.
Both Bruce and Keith were in good company because not far away was Dean Turnbull with his witch.
Dean happens to be exhibitions officer for the NGCA but in his spare time he has a dark passion for Halloween, which fortunately is shared by his family.
Even before he’d had a chance to apply to Hetain’s call-out, NGCA curator Jonathan Weston had said: “Can we have your witch?”
“I’m a sculptor but we’re really big on Halloween,” Dean told me.
“I only made the witch last year. I’d made a sign beforehand, saying ‘Witch House’, but I didn’t actually have a witch so I decided to make one. It is papier-mâché but I got a recipe off YouTube and used cement to make it waterproof.”
Each year since his children were young, said Dean, they had given their garden a macabre makeover for the month of October. The Halloween just gone, the home-made gravestones and other spooky things were presided over by the witch, which survived unscathed.
The neighbours, he said, always entered into the spirit of the venture, or at least hadn’t objected.
Once October’s done, the artefacts are stored away, some in the loft and some in Dean’s Halloween shed.
The exhibition has brought together all sorts of collections and creations and I was particularly taken with Evie Hancock’s fabulous 3D advent calendars. “She makes a new one every year,” said Hetain Patel, impressed.
Next door you’ll find a big screen where you can sit and watch all the ephemeral stuff with which the people of Sunderland fill their spare time. There’s dancing and wild swimming, all kinds of pastimes.
And upstairs near the reception desk of the National Glass Centre (the NGCA is on the riverside ground floor) you’ll find a reminder of the brilliant work done by the Caravan Gallery run by Jan Williams and Chris Teasdale.
On their website they describe their role as documenting “the reality and surreality of the way we live today” and explain that their little yellow caravan is “a mobile exhibition space that engages with people and places ‘normal’ galleries might not easily reach”.
They were in Sunderland 10 years ago and have been invited back to show some of the photos they took back then, capturing the sort of things that you’ll never see in promotional brochures but which say a great deal about us as human beings.
Put it this way, you’ll rarely visit an exhibition where there’s as much laughter or shrieks of delighted recognition.
Possibly only in a Caravan Gallery show will you see a photo of a forlorn looking bra hanging on a peg with an accompanying note saying, ‘DO’S THIS BELONG TO YOU, LADIES??’ and requesting that the owner contact steward, stewardess or bar staff.
Even 10 years on, it’s a breath of fresh air and the perfect partner for the Artangel show downstairs.
Opening the exhibitions, Nick Malyan pointed out that the NGCA is the region’s longest existing contemporary art gallery, having been in the city, albeit in a few locations, for 55 years.
With the National Glass Centre condemned, which seems to me like a travesty, uncertainty also hangs over the NGCA. Let’s hope something can be resolved before too long.
Come As You Really Are runs until July 5 (although overlapping partner exhibitions extend into 2026) while The Caravan Gallery: Sunderland Pride of Place Project – 10 Years On can be seen until May 10. Find details of both on the NGCA website.