'[William English & Sandra Cross'] unconventional working methods ensure that To Farse All Things turns out to be an appropriately curious title for a very curious kind of show.’ Wayne Burrows reviews To Farse All Things at Bonington Gallery.

The second review in our NewBridge Project, Collective Studio mentoring collaboration is out! 🕊 Esther Salamon: Woodland Bird Woman at Newcastle Contemporary Art by Mridula Sharma.

'I can imagine Starling earnestly pedalling downstream encountering severe pollution, fluctuating water levels through cities and farmland and forced to disassemble and reassemble his boat, a darkly humorous protest at environmental damage.' Caroline Bagenal reviews Simon Starling: Boat Works

'Klottrup’s paintings also delve into the landscape’s enduring presence, switching the crisp documentative approach for an expressive, semi-abstraction.' Kyle Nathan Brown reviews Juliet Klottrup's An Archive at Windermere Jetty Museum ⛵

'Once the incoming tide washed away these designs, their messages were delivered to the sea, swept into the coastal marine ecosystem.' Iona Glen reviews Anna Clough's Inter/Extra Terrestrial at Full of Noises last month, which came out of a residency there in September. 🌊

New Review! 🎀 Beth J Ross: Her Extraordinary Colours by Anna Mud. 'By ...turning symbols of power and division into emblems of solidarity and care... Ross reimagines the flag not as a boundary marker, but as a starting point for curiosity, conversation, and resilience'

‘Sometimes, it’s an artist’s willingness to share their trials and errors which can lead to the real creative breakthrough.’ Writer Orla Foster met with three of the artists that will be taking part in the Yorkshire Artspace Open Studios on November 15 & 16. corridor8.co.uk/article/exch...

⭐ Review! In All Possible Worlds: Middlesbrough Art Week 2025 by Kin #MAW25

'The expansive scope of textiles as a material of artistic, domestic and commercial function is clear to see in the Biennial’s vast programme.' Sally Button reviews this year's British Textiles Biennial, at various venues in Lancashire until 2nd November🧵

'What begins to emerge throughout the exhibition is the idea that digital spaces—game worlds, fantasy and dreamscapes—offer a kind of terrain where one can imagine differently.' Jessica El Mal reviews FALE SĀ / SACRED HOUSE by Fafswag at HOME this year as part of Manchester International Festival.

'The trio of dancers seemed to be suspended in time as they moved with an intricate balance of stillness and motion, their bodies extensions of one another.' Ella Otomewo reviews BLOOM at Hallé St Peters for Japan Week in Manchester last month.

‘Halliwell-Sutton’s metal structures are sullied artefacts that seek to revise [a] local heritage of extraction.’ Simal Rafique reviews ‘Rebecca Halliwell-Sutton: From skin to land, from walls to worlds’, at GLOAM, Sheffield, which ran from 22 Aug – 14 Sep 2025. corridor8.co.uk/article/rebe...

Paige Costinescu reviews '13 Beautiful Horses' at Leicester Gallery, De Montfort University. An exhibition featuring thirteen artists from the MA Contemporary Art Practice course at DMU.

'Vulnerability and ambition have equally been embraced by this cohort, giving the exhibition a sense of openness' Joanna Jowett reviews The Inside and Outside of Belonging – MA Fine Art Degree Show 2025 at the University of Leeds.

'The more I explore and read here, the more I am reminded that no "path" we take as humans is without consequence.' Joanna Jowett reviews ‘Acting in the Middle: A Glossary of Encounter — David Eckersley’ at Sovereign Design House, Huddersfield, 27 Jun — 19 Jul '25. corridor8.co.uk/article/acti...

‘I feel a certain sacred melancholy emanating from the gallery walls, one that reflects a global ecological anxiety around preservation and conservation.' Wingshan @wingshan.bsky.social reviews ‘FOREST’ at Nottingham Castle.

Catch our August-September newsletter via the link below - a roundup of all the great writing we've published as well as some exciting bookshop and book fair news!

'In this context, the criminal justice system of self-management, learned mainly through the judgements of peers and other authorities, is at fault.' We interrupt our regular programming to bring you this literary review by Kate Paul of Nell Osborne's debut novel Ghost Driver, published by Moist.

Another beautiful exhibition that I got to write about for Corridor8

In this month's long read, Sally Button writes via the underground, the city and the landscape to reflect on moving from London to the northwest of the northwest, finding fragmented artistic community in and around Lancaster and Morecambe, exposing interiority and accessing space:

A Gathering: Newcastle University Post-Graduate Degree Show. Review by Uma Breakdown 'Rather than entrenching, the most exciting work in this show disperses itself, pulling pieces of futures and past, fact and fiction, affects and politics.' Read the rest of this stunning review by Uma Breakdown.

Our regional editor @jjhlinklater.bsky.social reviews Pippa Eaon's solo show, Four-fold Reverie, at PINK, which comes out of an @artscouncilengland.bsky.social DYCP-funded period of experimentation with ceramics, film and sound, and research into neurodivergence, selfhood, sensation and perception:

Continuing our independent commissioning thanks to your paid Substack subscriptions and donations, Laura Biddle reviews The Way In Is Not The Whole Way Through at texture, a new, temporary space in Manchester, including works by Haydn Albrow, Katrina Colwing, Conor Rogers and Fleur Yearsley 👻

‘Holmes transforms ancient terrors into endearing companions, questioning where folklore sits in sanitised modern times.’ Hanna Dhaimish reviews ‘Dale Holmes: Beenderman & Gytrash’ at South Square Centre, Thornton, on until 5 Oct 2025. corridor8.co.uk/article/dale...

'Its rationale was laid out: to amplify both individual and collective voices of resistance that emerge from oppression' REVIEW - Resounding Diasporic Sonic Worlds, The NewBridge Project , Newcastle upon Tyne by @cyhchristie.bsky.social

'While I’m in the gallery, a family steps in front of the artwork. The youngsters jump and pull faces in its mirrored surface, while the man reads the caption. He does not explain it to them.’ Jennifer Brough on 'We Grown-Ups Can Also Be Afraid' at Attenborough Arts Centre.

'To write about a biennial from this perspective is a step outside of the tempo and often placeless perspective of the art reviewer who jets into a city and takes from it only what they need.' Read Liverpool resident Laura Harris, reflecting on the civic, emplaced and social nature of biennials.

'What I like is going into new places and somehow getting under the skin.' Pippa Hale talks to Lesley Guy at The Bowes Museum @thebowesmuseum about her new exhibition ‘Pet Projects’, on until 1 March 2026. corridor8.co.uk/article/pipp...

​​‘I keep wondering - is contemporary art dead?’ Wayne Burrows speaks to Bruce Asbestos about his two new commissions now on show at Ilam Park and Wentworth Woodhouse. Link to the full article in our bio. Image: 'Pepperpot the Mole' (2025), National Trust, Ilam Park. Photo by Jules Lister.

Thanks to Kate Liston and @corridor8.bsky.social for their thoughtful review of the first outing of Going Back Brockens in Bishop Auckland. Read all about it below. @nomorenowt.bsky.social @buildingculture.bsky.social corridor8.co.uk/article/goin...

'The intriguing display system forced me to confront each photograph intimately, my hands grabbing the edges, fingers grazing the glazing as I peered into each frame.' Vaishna Surjid reviews Confluences at Cross Lane Projects, a show around Mark Woods and the artists who have influenced him.

In June, Lesley Guy went to the Uncanny Carnival in Newcastle – the brainchild of Seymour Mace and the rest of the NewBridge Programming Committee – and had a canny time. corridor8.co.uk/article/unca...

"Chainmail 4 asks for compassion and seeks out care." Natalie Hughes on Amartey Golding at @factliverpool.bsky.social, the final instalment of the Resolution project which invited four artists to collaborate with participants from the justice system. corridor8.co.uk/article/amar...

'What was interesting to watch was how many people stopped to look and, seeing themselves, shied away' Chantal Oakes reviews Snapes Open Call and Response, curated by Hans Browne and featuring 29 local artists responding to the building that housed printworks firm T. Snape &Co. for 150 years! 🏫

'As with all archives, what is preserved and what is discarded is of deep significance, socially and politically.' Anthony Ellis reviews two new archival response exhibitions from Signal Film & Media in Barrow-in-Furness, The Binding Tide by Nicholas J.R. White and The Workers by Dawn Parsonage 📸

‘“A Life of its Own” reveals Symonds as a conceptually and materially informed artist, reader and collector negotiating a complex territory in ways that promise riches to come.’ Kerry Harker reviews Mia Mai Symonds: A Life of its Own at BLANK_, on until 22 Aug '25. corridor8.co.uk/article/mia-...

'Paz’s works, some completed, some in fragments, were strange, shimmering, mutable forms, as though the images were conjured from memory — part-seen, part-imagined.' Susannah Thompson responds to Alicia Paz's Women in Print residency at Artlab Contemporary Print Studios in Preston 🧜‍♀️ 🐚 🐟

The Feeding Chair comes to Chapter Arts Centre! Read Emily Roux on breast/bottle/chest feeding, matrescence and how art can help: corridor8.co.uk/.../love-cri... Part of the Feed touring art project with In Certain Places and World Breastfeeding Week (1-7 August)

Nathan Coley talks to Lesley Guy at The Bowes Museum @thebowesmuseum about the installation of two major works, one in the grounds and one amongst the collections, both on display until 1 March 2026. corridor8.co.uk/article/an-i...

‘On the left as I enter the gallery space, a suitcase awaits. This isn’t any ordinary travelling case.' Stella Baraklianou reviews 'Paula Chambers: Still. Stray. Stowaway.' at Blenheim Walk Gallery, Leeds Arts University, which you can see until 27 September 2025. corridor8.co.uk/article/paul...

corridor8.co.uk/publications... Our new publication is out now! Barkle and Tranklements: Art Writing from the Midlands is a 192-page collection of essays, fictions, surveys and rituals from nine writers from across the Midlands, edited by Ben Barra and Lesley Guy. Buy one today!

corridor8.co.uk/article/gops... Mymona Bibi talks to Johurun Nessa about setting up and running a creative group for Bangladeshi women in the West End of Newcastle. #Gopshop

Alice Bradshaw reviews ‘Memorial Gestures’ at Sunny Bank Mills, an exhibition marking three years of artist, writer and translator residencies at Holocaust Centre North, based at the University of Huddersfield. corridor8.co.uk/article/memo...

'an authentic glimpse of what process feels like. By communicating this feeling, the assembled crowd might catch a spark of inspiration from each other....' @francescabrooks.bsky.social on The Pearls Painting Symposium, held at @thebirleystudios.bsky.social earlier this year:

What happened in June, you ask? Fear not, all is here! Catch up with the free-to-read activity on our site in this recent newsletter, delve into our paid long read on the Substack from @pdkmitchell.bsky.social‬, frolic in the summer fields of art writing from the top half of England, etc, etc:

'...my entire sense of the past two centuries of the North East’s history is filtered through drawings of birds and flowers' Our latest Substack offering is from Peter Mitchell, please subscribe to read it and other wonderful essays. 🐚 corridor8.substack.com/p/i-like-the...

'This use of ornamentation to ape the capitalist language of excess is exciting, and somehow simultaneously disgusting.' @thatlooksqueer.bsky.social reviews Mark Woods: Formula + Fetish at Cross Lane in Kendal 🪶

'An altar for worshipping earth, expressing notions of ritual and a deeper connection to other, more-than-human, species.' Sam Pickett reviews Henna Asikainen's Lancaster Arts exhibition Lintukoto/Haven 🐦

‘Projects like ‘fæthm’ offer important access to new understandings of how we might think about nature and our place in the world.’ Jay Drinkall @bog_myrtle reviews ‘fæthm’ at Kelham Island Museum and on the River Don, Sheffield, which ran from 13 – 16 March 2025. corridor8.co.uk/article/faet...