Room With A View
Current & Upcoming Exhibitions
Past Exhibitions
November 2024 12:00 pm - December 2024
Bittersweet Daze - Opening Event Friday 8th November 6.00pm - 7.15pm
Kitty L M McKay -originally from Leicestershire, is a North-East based artist currently working in the intersection between painting and sculpture.
Mckay takes monochromatic memories of leisure and transforms them into bold nostalgic works.
Using plasticine, McKay conveys the playfulness of forgotten leisure and attempts to physically reconstruct memories as the mind would.She uses archival material, collective memories, and personal archives as reference.
Her works are bright, textured and colourful, bringing a feeling of melancholic joy for times gone. She is particularly drawn to lost ‘Third Spaces’ places where communities came together away from domestic and working settings. These spaces are becoming less and less accessible to the British public
In this series Mckay explores the duality of loss and hope found in lost lidos dotted around the U.K. From Tynemouth’s old coastal pool, to a Welsh Village’s lido these sites were once widespread across the U.K. then slowly fell out of favour. Despite their atmosphere of decay, there is a poetic nature to their lost grandeur and the ghosts of recreation that haunt them.
11 October 2024 6:00 pm - 1 November 2024 4:00 pm
‘Open’ Opening Event Friday 11th October 6pm - 7.15 pm
This raw and honest collection of work tells an emotional narrative about a journey through and out of a challenging childhood, suffering from anxiety and OCD. In her first solo exhibition in several years, Nel Hume, who has been making marks and expressing herself through paint since early childhood, offers a unique insight into the mind of an anxious child, facing a world she didn't feel part of and several years spent alone, unable to attend school. With abstract, expressionist paintings depicting the defining life experiences along the way, this diverse collection of paint, print, book making, and conceptual pieces explores how art became both the saviour and catalyst for this young artist finding her way from dark to light, from closed to open.
28 June 2024 - 2 July 2024
Art Rack Preview and celebration event Friday 28th June 6 pm - 7.30 pm
ArtRack 24 celebrates the creative community who meet each week at Dry Water Arts
The philosophy behind ArtRack is to facilitate and diversify cultural encounters in Amble; giving space, place and recognition to the skills and talents of our community
There will be a wide array of works from across age ranges and works created by people living with dementia/cognitive impairment and those who identify as neurodiverse
There will be free drinks and nibbles AND excitingly a prize draw to win a workshop of your choice.
There are two ways to enter:
1.Let us know you are coming by commenting on our Facebook post
2.Come along and add your name to the draw on the night
Please note you will need to be present at the draw for your entry to be valid. Names will be put into an “artistic beret” to be drawn at 7pm on the night.
Julia Aston of Amble Development Trust will be delving into the Artistic beret to find out who the lucky winner is
Exhibition open - Wednesdays 11am - 2pm (other times by arrangement - we are a vibrant working creative space - please contact to arrange)
7 June 2024 - 18 June 2024
Opening Event : Friday 7th June 6pm- 7.30pm
Tell It How It is - An exhibition that pays homage to the lived experience of carers in the UK
This exhibition aims to capture your attention by utilising the well known form of positive affirmation signs that have become so much part of mainstream culture. Things like Love Life Laughter or Living my best life.
We asked carers to subvert this aspirational lifestyle form to inform people of what life is really like if you are a carer.
Successive governments have promised and then failed to address the crisis in care. Everyone knows the system is broken and scarily anyone of us and yes that includes you could become a carer.
It involves giving up freedoms you took for granted and more often than not huge amounts of stress emotionally and financially
Art is not just about painting and beauty, at its best art can inform educate and motivate us into action
We urge you to come to the “ Tell it as it is “ exhibition and to see and feel what it is like to be a carer
During Careres week the Dry Water team are offering FREE workshops for registered carers - check out the pop up event page for information.
10 May 2024 - 5 June 2024
Opening Event : Friday May 10th 6pm - 7.30pm
Exhibition open - Wednesdays 10am - 2pm (other times by arrangement - we are a vibrant working creative space - please contact to arrange)
Igor Tavares is a multidisciplinary artist who graduated with a BA in Illustration at Newcastle College University Centre. He works across various art forms, including dance, performance, poetry, photography, and film. The purpose of his work is to incite change, both personally and spiritually, in the audience. Tavares uses abstraction to explore dimensions beyond the figurative, which opens up and expresses thoughts and lived experiences.
Igor continues to push his boundaries, exploring his Portuguese, African heritage, and spirituality through drawing, painting, and performance.
8 March 2024 - 30 March 2024
Opening Event: 8th March 6pm to 7.30pm
Exhibition open - Wednesdays 11am - 3pm (other times by arrangement - we are a vibrant working creative space - please contact to arrange)
September 2024 - October 2024
BENEATH SHADOWED WOODS - Opening Event Friday 6th September 6pm - 7.15 pm
“The hope that the seasons offer … Even in a seemingly dormant state, changes are happening underneath, and in a while, everything will come to life again” A note from my sketchbook - January 2021
The inspiration for Beneath Shadowed Woods began during 2020 - a time few of us will forget. I moved to a new house in a small village with an ancient woodland, where I would walk almost daily. I would then return home and paint in sketchbooks at my dining table in the weeks and months before I could return to my studio. I would spend hours just painting layers and layers, trying to capture the feeling and atmosphere of the woodland and something of the experience of that time. Then came Storm Arwen later in 2021 and the devastation of the woodland and forests in Northumberland and beyond. The impact on our landscape was clear for all to see. Like many others, the tiny scrap of woodland in my village changed dramatically.
Though these paintings feel dark, to me, they reflect the beautiful, earthy, mysterious atmosphere of the woodland and undergrowth. Trees allow us to feel as rooted and grounded as they are—a chance to pause, observe, and connect with nature and ourselves.
September 2024 - October 2024
Opening Event - 9th February 6pm - 7.30 pm
Exhibition open - Wednesdays 11am - 3pm (other times by arrangement - we are a vibrant working creative space - please contact to arrange)
September 2024 - October 2024
A textile exhibition by Northumberland Artist Britney Fraser
Opening Event - 12th January 6pm - 8pm - Everyone Welcome
Britney’s practice is rooted in her family’s mining heritage as well as working class culture; more specifically, the trade industry. She highlights untold, overlooked and undervalued labour within society by transforming materials associated with manual labour. Community Services brings together two bodies of work In Conversation & In The Shadows exploring the visibility of Northumberland’s working voices.
22 September 2023 - 21 October 2023
Inspiration, for Almudena, comes from her lived experiences of mental ill health, social issues and politics. She works with a range of materials including ceramics, glass, tattooing and screen printing. The core of her work is to advocate and raise awareness around mental ill health and the importance of art and creativity in improving health.
22nd September 6.15 to 8pm - Preview Evening & Meet The Artist
Refreshments available. We invite you to come along to look, absorb and appreciate art in our beautiful space.
16 June 2023
A showcase for some of the participatory arts programmes we run here at Dry Water Arts.
Come and celebrate the creativity of our community on Friday 16th June between 6pm and 8pm. Participating groups this year are Watercolours, Drawing for Fun & Kin Club.
Saturday 10 June 2023 - 7:30 pm 8:30 pm
She View
An exhibition celebrating the female Artist Susan Waters through a witty and thought provoking exhibition at Dry Water Arts.
4 March 2023 - 21 May 2023 4:00 pm
Weathered
An exhibition of miniature paintings exploring resilience and beauty of the worn.
Monday 15 August 2022 - 10:30 am 11:30 am
More Than Medication
An exhibition which pays tribute to the resilience and creativity of people living with dementia.
An online exhibition which shares insights into the realities of living with dementia. Highlighting the need for a more holistic, social and inclusive approach towards those who live with the condition.
Featuring work by carers and people living with dementia from Curiosity Cafe dementia positive programme.
Expect to be moved, challenged, surprised and enlightened.
"Same Old Dream Trick Landscape"
Opening 14th March 6.00pm
“same old dream trick landscape” brushes between day and night, sleep and awake, memory and making. Colour changes mood, mood flits in and out of sound and shape and objects speak to one another, teetering reality, memory and illusion in a sensory exhibition that feels like an equally clear and hazy dream.
Bringing together drawing, installation, performance, and assemblage, experience Jenni Mac’s familiarly unfamiliar backroom, a sentient room of characterful multidimensional objects, activated by action and sentient in situ. There is a tenderness and beauty, alongside something uncanny and curious.
Preview
Come to Drywater on March 14th for a preview of the exhibition featuring solo and group performances from Mac and the PerHaps Now! Performance Troupe. These performances will be responsive, “activating” the artworks within the space at sporadic intervals, and repeated multiple times during the event.
“same old dream trick landscape” will leave you asking is the first one the same story as the second, and plant seeds to consider another tomorrow.
Dry Water are a working creative space and opening hours vary week by week so please call for viewing times.
Opening Event 16th May - 6pm - 8pm
Viewing times - Puffin Festival Saturday 24th / Sunday 25th May May 12-4pm - other times by appointment please call or email to arrange.
Curated by Allan Sutherland this community exhibition began way back in the strange Covid lockdown days
Allan says
" I started to learn Japanese and immersed myself in Japanese culture : writing, art, music, ceramics, calligraphy, language, culture, fashion. This research took me to the Japanese artist Hokusai and his 36 Views of Mount Fuji. On daily lockdown walks along the coastline, I gazed at the sea and began to wonder how 36 Views of Coquet Island might look - thinking of a View as being an idea, opinion, poem or memory as well as a visual representation. I began to consider Coquet island as being of equivalent importance to Mt Fuji having its own cultural, spiritual and visual significance for Amble and this part of the Northumberland coastline.
Local artists, writers, musicians and researchers have co created 36 Views of Coquet Island each bringing their unique perspective
An introduction to the original online version can be seen here: https://allansutherland.substack.com/p/36-views-of-mount-fuji-and-coquet
Some local press coverage here: https://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/community/36-views-of-coquet-island-northumberland-4589346
Dry Water are a working creative space and opening hours vary week by week so please call for viewing times.
Life interrupted
Opening - 27th June 6pm
Artist Talk - Friday 18th July 6.30pm
Local Amble artist Sandra Totterdell is an experimental mixed media artist exploring themes of loss, grief and resilience.
This is her first solo exhibition since returning home .
Sandra’s creative journey began suddenly in 2006 –amongst chaos and life changing trauma . Sandra often works outside seeking remote, ancient and spiritual places .
Working organically and abstractly her work grows in layers and textures , Sandra uses her experience of physical and mental challenges to capture intangible thoughts and emotions
Notes from artist -
It is about the confusion arising from the aftermath of trauma. It’s that feeling of uncertainty and of literally losing the thread of life and becoming unravelled.
At the same time life continues - time moves forward, relentlessly sliding on into the future regardless of whether I’m ready or not.
Dry Water are a working creative space and opening hours vary week by week so please call for viewing times.
This project is funded by the UK Government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, with the North East Combined Authority as the Lead Authority.
Opening Event September 5th 6pm - 7.30pm - FREE
What happens when you go for a walk with friends who are also neighbours who are also artists? Losing Track, Holding Traces is the culmination of a year-long project of exploratory and experimental work made by Jane Gower, Omi Pharncote and Jenny Purrett. All use natural materials and make work that connects them to their surroundings.
Jane’s multidisciplinary practice is based on personal connection to the natural world. Walking off-track, she finds natural materials, makes land art, and engages with the sensations she experiences, creating a personal mapping of place. This mapping is evidenced in her explorations with the foraged materials using textile, ceramic and sculptural techniques. Her work references and celebrates the landscape of her walks.
For Omi the process of felt-making is a natural extension of her woodland wandering. Both are repetitive, meditative activities. Whilst walking, she gathers the natural resources that become part of her felted forms. They are made to look like they came from the earth, or constructed by birds or animals.
Jenny’s practice centres on drawing and she describes this as something she does to connect herself to the world around her, rooting her to a place and moment in time. She sees her drawings as collaborations, letting all of the elements involved (materials, weather, her surroundings, other people) work together, watching to see if, and where, the magic will happen.
Over the course of a year these 3 artists have explored and experienced the same places, yet noticed different things. They have opened each other’s eyes and challenged each other’s perceptions. Drawing and making together is a powerful thing. Through it, they have taken more creative risks and fed off each other’s ideas and energy.
This exhibition is a consequence of losing track: getting lost in the experience of walking and making. The work holds the traces of these individual and collective experiences.
Dry Water are a working creative space and opening hours vary week by week so please call for viewing times.
OPENING EVENT FRIDAY 10th OCT 6pm - 7.30pm
We are thrilled to be hosting the Hot Bed Press 20:20 Print Exchange touring exhibition - one of the largest largest print exchanges in the world!
Each year since 2009 hundreds of artists from print workshops, print collectives and university print departments across the UK and internationally exchange prints (all 20cm x 20cm) through The 20:20 Print Exchange. In 2024 701 artists from 47 print groups internationally took part and their work will be exhibited at Dry Water Arts in October. The Hot Bed Press 20:20 print exchange has grown from a small collaboration to something extraordinary.
Join us to help grow, celebrate and promote printmaking via this exhibition and watch out for special print related activities, workshops and events over the exhibition period.
Dry Water are a working creative space and opening hours vary week by week so please call for viewing times
Instagram @2020printexchange
Opening 7th November 6pm - 730pm
Join us for a very special opening event which includes large scale projections on the outside and inside of the building in addition to Kate’s beautiful large scale drawings in our gallery space.
Kate Sweeney is a visual artist and researcher looking at the ways that we create and tell stories about ourselves. She is interested in how we can expand the ways we think about and describe ideas of who we are beyond metaphors of blood and DNA. Her work uses inks and drawing tools she makes from materials such as plant matter, soil and scrap metal gathered from her intimate environment. She uses these inks as the starting point for conversations about family and kinship. These conversations are translated into large-scale drawings, short films and poetic texts that explore our collective understanding of heritage.
Her most recent project was a residency with The National Trust and D6: Culture in Transit, exploring the ways the adoptive and queer experiences of motherhood can help create a more expansive articulation of our cultural inheritance.
Viewing Times: Please note as we are a working creative space times may be updated and change - please check with us before traveling.
Wednesday 19th November 11am - 1pm
Saturday 22nd November 11am - 1pm
Monday 24th 1pm - 4pm
Tuesday 25th November 9.30am - 11.30am
Thursday 27th November 10am - 12pm
Saturday 29th - 12th December times TBA
Please note as we are a working creative space times maybe updated and change - please check with us before traveling.
Dry Water are a working creative space and opening hours vary week by week so please call for additional viewing times.
Opening Event - Sunday 1st March 2pm - 4pm - FREE with refreshments ( this event coincides with World Sea Grass Day)
"Stronger Shores has been engaging with communities since its inception. Through its engagement work, it has been exploring what kelp, seagrass and oysters as a coastal defence measure means to those along our coasts. There are many services these habitats provide, be it the defence of our coastlines, the provision of nursery habitats for commercially important fish, the wellbeing that a healthy coastline provides, or the improvement of water quality. Through working with various groups, these discussions have allowed us to explore what these habitats mean, with different groups seeing different opportunities and benefits from the work of Stronger Shores. Join us, and get an insight into the work we've done, and take a moment to consider for yourself what the work of Stronger Shores could mean for you..."
“This project is funded by Defra as part of the £200 million Flood and Coastal Innovation Programmes which is managed by the Environment Agency. The programmes will drive innovation in flood and coastal resilience and adaptation to a changing climate.”
Exhibition Open Times
Opening Event - Sunday 1st March 2pm - 4pm
Mondays 9am - 10.30am and 3.30pm - 5pm
Tuesdays 9am - 12pm
Other times by arrangement - email info@drywaterarts.uk
Please note as we are a working creative space so times may be updated and change - please check with us before traveling.
Living Up To One's Teapot
Exhibition duration 26 June to 19 July 2026
Opening Times for Exhibition Viewing - We are a working creative space so times may change at short notice - please check before travel.
Tuesday 30th June 9am - 11.45am
Wednesday 1st July 10am - 1pm
Thursday 2nd July 1pm - 4pm
Saturday 4th July by arrangement - call to book a time.
Monday 6th July 9am - 10.15am
Tuesday 7th July 9am - 11.45am - 2.45pm - 3.35pm
Wednesday 8th July 10am - 12pm 1.30pm - 3.30pm
Friday 10th July by arrangement - call to book a time.
Saturday 11th July by arrangement - call to book a time.
Monday 13th July 9am - 10.15am
Tuesday 14th July 10am - 12pm
Wednesday 15th July by arrangement - call to book a time.
Thursday 16th July by arrangement - call to book a time.
Friday 17th July by arrangement - call to book a time.
Saturday 18th July - 11am - 1pm
AS SEEN ON TV (SKY Portrait Artist of the Year) - The wonderful Hannah Barker presents her solo exhibition Living Up To One's Teapot at Dry Water Arts Gallery.
Bringing together hand built ceramic novelty teapots, pastel portraits of family and friends, and new portrait works on ceramic, the exhibition explores memory, inheritance and resemblance through humour and domestic symbolism.
Barker’s interest in novelty teapots began when she inherited her Grandad’s collection. After his death, the teapots became a placeholder for his presence and playful spirit. Making in response to this loss has been a cathartic way of continuing his memory through material and form.
The works are displayed within a domestic setting, using furniture and staged arrangements that echo the home. Teapots are grouped thematically, such as toilet and sink or armchair and television. The pieces range from recognisably teapot sized objects to works that approach true life scale, including a sink rendered in the size and form of a teapot. By shifting scale and context, Barker transforms familiar household forms into affectionate caricatures.
Alongside the ceramics, Barker presents pastel portraits that serve as both remembrance and celebration. She builds layered colour slowly, blending pigment and drawing light back through erasure. This reflective process allows her to dwell on memory and attend closely to shared features and familial characteristics, with resemblance forming a quiet thread between generations.
New works combine portraiture and ceramics directly. Through underglazes, surface texture and the sheen of transparent glaze, Barker brings drawing and clay together in single objects, extending her exploration of how likeness can inhabit both image and form.
Humour runs throughout the exhibition. The teapots echo domestic appliances, furniture and even people, blurring object and character. For Barker, the teapot symbolises gathering, comfort and conversation, holding the rituals of shared time.
The exhibition title draws on a historical reference. It echoes an inscription by James Hadley of the Royal Worcester Porcelain Factory, itself thought to reference Oscar Wilde’s remark about “living up to my blue china”, a sentiment aligned with the ideals of the Aesthetic Movement. For Barker, the phrase suggests humour and ornament, but also the idea of living up to a family legacy, reflecting her themes of inheritance and belonging.
Barker holds an MFA from Northumbria University and Baltic 39 (2019). She has exhibited widely, with recent highlights including appearing as a contestant on Portrait Artist of the Year (Series 12), and being shortlisted for the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists Drawing Prize and the New Light Summer Exhibition of the North (2025). She was also the Judges’ Discretionary Prize Winner in the Woon Foundation Prize (2016)
Placements - Kim Lewis - 9th October – 7 November 2026
Opening event - Friday 9th October 6pm - 7.30pm - All Welcome
We are very excited to be showing new work from artist, author and illustrator Kim Lewis.
Placements
placements: the action of placing someone or something somewhere
placing: to put or set in a particular place, position, situation, or relation
place: an area with definite or indefinite boundaries; a dwelling or house
Placements is a long series of images prompted by a playful take on the quote “what you seek is seeking you” (Rumi) – the philosophical idea that life purpose is about listening to your intuition and knowing that the things which call to you are calling for a reason.
“Rumi’s quote had been stuck on my drawing board for some time. One day while questioning direction and decluttering my studio, I puzzled over the very many photographs of closely cropped weathered textures and the bowls of tools, pots, sticks and stones filling shelves. Why had I made these collections and what was I going to do with them? On instinct, and for fun, I arranged a few favourite stones on a loved photo image of cracked plaster, then drew the stones on the print out of pure curiosity. The result was new and surprising, as if these old things had been waiting for a conversation and were now glad to tell their story. My life was in the process of change at that point, so these drawings have become a metaphor for listening closely to that – expressing the loveliness of letting go to what happens, visually. A bit of seeking and being sought, with a happy lost and found. “
Kim Lewis
Kim Lewis studied Fine Art at Sir George Williams University in Montreal, Canada, followed by postgraduate printmaking at Hornsey College of Art in London, England. She then worked as an independent artist, exhibiting broadly in the north before becoming the author/illustrator of over 20 picture books for children, which have been translated into several languages and sold worldwide. In 2007 she returned to fine art, creating work for chosen literary texts using drawing and mixed media, for both exhibition and publication. She has collaborated with poets, nature writers, gardeners, theatre companies and visual artists. Her solo projects cover farming, wild landscapes, collected materials and loved objects. She works from her home studio in Northumberland.
Opening Event - 6pm - 7.30pm 9th October - All Welcome - Free
Full Exhibition Viewing times will follow shortly.
Viewing outside official viewing times can be arranged - email or ring to arrange.