The Core Brings World-Class Art To Its Inaugural 'Late Show'

Join us as we showcase the work of internationally acclaimed artists Mark Hursty and Victoria Bradbury during the region’s Late Shows this year.

This is our first year taking part in the shows, and builds on Creative Space Management’s success at our sister building Toffee Factory – which has seen nearly 7,000 people pass through its doors for the Late Shows since opening in 2011.

The Late Shows take place in venues across Newcastle and Gateshead with many popular venues opening their doors after hours for this cultural crawl.

We will display an inflatable work by Mark and Victoria inspired by molten glass – which will use data gathered by weather sensors to create 3D projections and sculptural visualisations.

Lisa Tolan, Centre Manager for Creative Space Management, said: “We’re really excited to bring Mark and Victoria’s installation to The Core for The Late Shows. This beautiful structure transforms the space and even allows audience members to climb inside.

“Our experience through hosting events at Toffee Factory is there is a great enthusiasm for people to explore their city and to experience art in spaces they wouldn’t normally visit.”

Artist Mark said: “The Core inflatable was originally inspired by the luminosity and malleability of molten glass, and transferring those qualities onto a human scale to reflect the variability of social interactions.

“Since hot glass work is limited in size and duration and virtually impossible to sustain for sculptural installations, we used ripstop nylon to make a fabric sculpture that showed similar qualities to glass, but to make a structure that participants can interact with and physically enter.

“While visitors are inside the enigmatic glowing form, their shadows project dark silhouettes on the outside of the sculpture. These shadow puppet-like silhouettes are visible to outside spectators and reveal compelling distortions of the activities going on underneath the biomorphic fabric structures.

“We are working with Paul Watson’s Cloud Computing Research Group from Newcastle University to make works inspired by various projects of theirs that use data gathered by weather sensors throughout the city and both wearable and static sensors within the Core building that are generating location tracking data.”

Paul Watson, Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Digital Institute, Newcastle University said: “The Core is a centre for technological, digital and scientific businesses to work together.

“Its arts programme is opening up these disciplines to a greater audience and it is really exciting to work on these interactions between the artistic and digital disciplines.”

Mark continued: “We were drawn to participate in the Late Shows because of The Core building, in particular the diverse technological emphasis of the research projects and businesses based there.

“We are also excited to be artistically engaging with the flagship building of the new Science Central, a park we have been watching develop during regular walks up and down the hill between Fenham and the city centre.”