Firstsite<\/a> in Colchester and the Hepworth in Wakefield. But the opening of new, publicly funded regional galleries had largely dried up, until now.<\/p>\nTony Guillan, who joined as artistic director three months ago, said his story played into that narrative. \u201cI grew up on Tyneside but then left, as many people do, at the age of 18.\u201d He worked in London at organisations including Tate and the Southbank Centre. \u201cI always thought it would be nice to come back but there has been a dearth of opportunity.<\/p>\n
Artistic director Tony Guillan grew up on Tyneside, worked in London, and has returned to the north-east. Photograph: Gary Calton\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy do you have to leave and move so far away if you want to have a certain type of career? I think perhaps more than any country in Europe we\u2019re so centralised in London, it feels like it has far too many industries, not least the creative and cultural industries.\u201d<\/p>\n
The development of the Light has been a long, slow process and it opens in a county where, since Labour was virtually wiped out in the 2024 local election, Reform is running the show politically.<\/p>\n
The Light is funded by Durham county council, but there is little sign in the opening exhibition that the curators are looking over their shoulders in terms of the art they are displaying. It includes works that address themes including immigration.<\/p>\n
Stuart Haygarth\u2019s Shadey Family on show in The Light is composed of 62 vintage glass lampshades. Photograph: Gary Calton\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
Art will always have a contentious side, Guillan said. \u201cIt\u2019s our role to create the space for dialogue. We\u2019ve recently showed all the politicians and our corporate leadership around. They love what we\u2019re doing. They love the ambition. They are really ambitious. So I\u2019m very confident we\u2019re going to have the kind of space to explore what we want to.\u201d<\/p>\n
The curators said they wanted to show contemporary art of national and international significance. The inaugural exhibition features artists including the US artist Dan Flavin, famous for his use of fluorescent light tubes, and the Cuban-born US conceptual artist F\u00e9lix Gonz\u00e1lez-Torres, who died in 1996, aged 38. His piece, his first use of lightbulbs, was made after the death of his partner Ross Laycock from an Aids-related illness and is about their unending love.<\/p>\n
Dan Flavin\u2019s Untitled, 1987. Photograph: Gary Calton\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
Natasha Howes, who curated the opening show, said she had worked hard to include a good number of women and global majority artists because too many exhibitions were still dominated by white men.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast year I was looking at a festival in Spain and I think there were 30 artists and no women. I just thought: \u2018How is that allowed to happen?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The Light opens on Saturday 22 August.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Works by Tracey Emin, Steve McQueen and Olafur Eliasson have gone on display at a new contemporary art…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591553,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[437,434,435,436,438,146,85,46],"class_list":["post-591552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}