Waygood is Changing -
Press Release
Latest Harker Herald Billboard offers ‘promising career in mining!’
Promise, Carol McGuigan
Harker Herald Billboard, July 2008
Promise billboard poster will be installed
9.30am on Saturday 5 July
Present Artist Carol McGuigan
Waygood at Harkers, Shields Road Byker
Passers-by on Shields Road, Newcastle, may think that they have travelled back in time, as the latest artwork on Waygood’s Harker Herald Billboard is a reproduction of an advert from the 1970s.
The advert from the National Coal Board encourages young men to consider a rewarding career in the coal industry, and is the latest in the monthly series of billboards by artists based within Waygood's studios, currently based on Shields Road.
The billboard poster, entitled Promise, will be on display throughout July. It is by writer Carol McGuigan who used a found newspaper advert and reproduced scraps from previous Harker Herald posters to play with the form, content and context of a traditional billboard.
Carol McGuigan said:
“I am interested in advertising’s irrepressibility, offering reassuring certainties in the face of profound impermanence. This optimistic NCB ad offers ‘a rewarding future’ to ‘ambitious young men’ in the mid 1970’s coal industry. Recently, demolition opposite Harkers erased buildings whose last heyday was that decade. Current economic turbulence reminds us that nothing is certain but change. Yet also persistent is the problematic promise of the young.”
“Recurrent themes for me are public lies and private truths, the insidious influence of popular culture and osmotic psycho-geography.”
Carol herself comes from a family of miners, with her father and grandfather working in the pits at Wearmouth, Sunderland.
Carol added:
“Although at the start of the 1970’s there were over 40 coal mines in the north east, by the mid 1990’s there was one, now also gone. We still however celebrate out mining heritage with the 124th anniversary Miners Gala being held in Durham city on Saturday 12th July.”
Harker Herald is a billboard outside the Waygood’s temporary home in the Harkers Building, 548-560 Shields Road, Byker, displaying work by a different artist each month.
It can be seen on the left hand side of the road by passengers on the number 15 and 22 stagecoach buses from Walker to Byker, the 301 and 302 from the coast to town and by motorists travelling towards Byker on the A193 before the large retail park. It is located just after the large Siemens factory, and opposite the Parsons Turbine Hall. It is also a short walk from Chillingham Road or Walkergate Metro stations.
Waygood is temporarily based in the former Harker’s furniture factory in Byker whilst its site in High Bridge is undergoing a major capital redevelopment to create a new city centre cultural venue.
Waygood’s £7.8million capital redevelopment of the former print warehouse and two grade 2 listed shop frontages on High Bridge will create:
New Galleries, which will offer an exciting programme of art exhibitions, residencies and live events. Artists’ Studios will provide creative facilities, including fully accessible studios for a community of studio and associate artists. The Learning Centre will offer artist led learning and workshops linked to the programme and will include The Sir James Knott Trust Library & Archive. A Café, Bar and Club will bring new, relaxed, alternative venue to the centre of Newcastle and will include an outdoor café courtyard and rooftop terrace. First floor office and workspace will be available to let for businesses and organisations.
For more information see www.waygood.org or ring Waygood on 0191 265 6857.
Media Contact: Cait Read
07811 320447