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3/7/2003

Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen

Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead

Konttinen?s The Coal Coast, presents a series of colour photographs of landscapes which explore the eerie aftermath of pit closures in the North East of England. Konttinen?s work focuses on the coastal stretch between Seaham and Hartlepool, which at the beginning of the 20th Century was one of the most densely industrialised areas in Western Europe and one of the world?s major centres for the deep mining of coal.
Deriving from 3 years? intensive observation and photography of the metamorphosis of County Durham?s ?black? beaches, the artists work is a kind of post-industrial fossil hunt.

?Coal-black sand frosted with sulphur, purple rocks of burnt shale, pebbles luminous with iron dioxide. Embedded in reinforced concrete, among the seaweed, the nuts and bolts of a deposed industry are rusting into riotous colour. A lone segment of a ventilation duct crouches on the beach like an exotic seashell, while a miner?s boot quietly disintegrates in the clay? The landscape is most eloquent in its post-industrial silence.?
Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen

Finnish photographer Konttinen has lived and worked in the North East since the late 60s and her work is principally concerned with the region, its residents and its landscapes. Perhaps best known for her book, Byker (1983), a seminal portrait of the terraced Newcastle community, her photographic projects have made a significant contribution to documentary photography over the past thirty-five years.
The current exhibition and book form part of Amber / Side Gallery?s Coalfield Stories; a book to accompany the exhibition will be available in the BALTIC Shop from July 2003.

Sirkka Liisa Konttinen

Born in Myllykoski, Finland, in 1948, Sirkka Liisa Konttinen began taking photographs at the age of twelve, inspired by her aunt Oili, who was a skilful amateur photographer. She developed a keen interest in documentary photography and later studied film making in the UK, enrolling at the Regent Street Polytechnic film school in London. Whilst there, she met Murray Martin and a number of other fellow students, with whom she formed the Amber Collective in 1968. The collective moved to Newcastle in 1969 with a commitment to document working class communities. A full participant in most aspects of Amber/Side?s work, Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen?s central involvement has been in the production of a number of long term photographic projects, which have resulted in exhibitions, books and documentary films.

Byker, (1983), her seminal documentation of the terraced Newcastle community that was eventually bulldozed to make way for the Byker Wall, began in 1969, when she moved to the North East of England. She lived in Byker for seven years, until her own house was demolished; she continued to photograph for a further five years. The exhibition toured throughout the world and the original images are still on display in Byker. The work has been used by planners, architects and educationalists and continues to exert a powerful hold on the public imagination.
Step by Step (1989), was a similarly long-term commitment, in which she explored the world of a North Shields dancing school - part of a broader engagement with North Shields undertaken by the whole Amber collective. Writing in the Sand came out of her twenty five year photographic fascination with the vibrant life of the beaches of the North East.
Sirkka-Liisa?s new work, The Coal Coast, represents a radical move into digitally printed colour images; its powerful landscapes capturing the ?terrible beauty? of the Durham coastline are natural extension of her concerns.

Image: Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, The Coal Coast, Hawthorn Hive, 1999 ©the artist

Preview Evening: Friday 4 July 2003, 18.00 - 20.00
Ground Floor art space
Gallery opening hours: Monday - Wednesday, Friday & Saturday 10.00 - 19.00; Thursday 10.00 - 22.00; Sunday 10.00 - 17.00.
Last entry is half an hour before closing.
Admission to BALTIC is free

BALTIC The Centre for Contemporary Art
South Shore Road Gateshead
London NE8 3BA
Telephone: 0191 478 1810
fax: 0191 478 1922

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