Going Back Brockens
* Exhibition Announcement
Opening Night
Friday 13th June – 5pm – 9pm
The Warehouse
Newgate Centre, Bishop Auckland
County Durham, DL14 7JQ
The exhibition will then be open from 12pm – 3pm every Thursday, Friday and Saturday until Saturday 5th July
Going Back Brockens will then be shown at the Durham Miners’ Gala on Saturday 12 July and at Horden’s 125th anniversary celebrations on Friday 22 August.
All three exhibitions are free to attend.
For full info click here
Going Back Brockens:
Monuments and Rhetoric After the Miners’ Strike
County Durham
2024 – ongoing
*Producing
Artist Narbi Price and writer Mark Hudson explore themes surrounding the 1984 miners strike and its legacy in County Durham 40 years on. Horden, a village on the east coast of Durham, is where the story begins. Once thriving as Europe’s most productive pit, now considered a ‘left behind’ neighbourhood.
Places like Horden were drastically different following the collapse of industry, hollowed of their identities, but despite such radical shifts they persevered and fought through. These places have stories to tell – stories of heritage but also new stories of hope and aspiration.
Narbi Price and Mark Hudson tell stories through their work; Narbi Price through his paintings and Mark Hudson through his writing and field recordings which informed his book ‘Coming Back Brockens: A Year in a Mining Village’ (1994).
‘Going Back Brockens: Monuments and Rhetoric After the Miners’ Strike’ is commissioned by No more Nowt and being produced by Building Culture. We are collaborating with the artists to showcase the work in County Durham communities and working closely with local groups to develop meaningful connections with the project.
Learn more and follow the development of this project here:
Get involved
As part of the Going Back Brockens project we are building a community archive collecting more stories of place. If you live in County Durham (or used to) you can contribute your stories.
Visit the engagement page to find resources, tips and instructions on how to get involved.
Mailing list
Do you want to know when Going Back Brockens events and activities are happening? Sign up to the mailing list to get notified
“I think there’s something about how I approach painting as a vehicle for narrative. I’m somewhere between a landscape painter and a history painter. There are no people because paintings with people in become about the people depicted.
I want there to be space for the viewer to inhabit the depicted location. I’m interested in the sites being specific yet generic, analogous to the specific but shared and common problems faced by the individuals, families and communities in 1984/5.
My paintings are ultimately about time, each painting deals with time in an extended manner, particular to the medium, different entirely to photography. A painting is a literal record of the time made to make it. Time is encoded into the making.”
— Narbi Price
