For the first time in well over a decade I walked down to the Quayside in Newcastle, the area running alongside the River Tyne which used to be a bustling port that became very run-down and was regenerated for the Millennium. It's all brand-spanking-new now and looking good. I walked over the Millennium Bridge (the 'blinking' bridge) to the Gateshead side of the river and the Baltic, the former flour warehouse that was converted into a 'modern art' gallery to add to the cultural life of the North-East. The Baltic isn't very big, but has one good sized exhibition space on each of the five floors available to the public, with scary glass-walled lifts and a great view from the top floor along the Tyne (including a new bridge that was being built from bamboo while I was there - I've got no idea why bamboo is being used).
I'd never heard of Yoshitomo Nara before but was quite taken with his images and presentation. In the one large exhibition space he built a small 'village' of five or six houses and you can look through windows and doors into the rooms. The rooms are full of drawings and scraps of paper on tables and chairs, pinned to walls and, in a few, finished paintings of his child-like characters. One room is full of fluffy toys strewn across the floor and in another, fluffy toys rammed into a peace/ban the bomb symbol. I liked the eyes of some of his children, a mesmerising, speckling rainbow of colours that brought them to hypnotic life.
The main rooms were built around a small raised walkway made of scraps of wood from which you could look into the rooms, almost like a peeping-tom peering into someone else's life. Another raised walkway led to a dark area with a large white plastic (?) head of one of his children. There were also some paintings and drawings hung on one wall near the entrance to the exhibition.It was most strange and disconcerting, but interesting nonetheless. I'd like to see more of his work.
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