Terrestrial Act I

Free public art exhibition on stage at  Newcastle Theatre Royal
Exhibiting artists: Sam Carvosso, Anna Reading, Davinia-Ann Robinson, Hannah Rowan, Harry Smithson, Giorgio van Meerwijk

Staged within the grand yet empty Newcastle Theatre Royal, the exhibition evokes a future-past landscape while questioning the way we ‘act’ within the natural world.

Without actors to populate the set and bring it to life, the microscopic lives of organic matter perform their own stories under the spotlight. From 3-D printed biodegradable saplings, through to mic’d up clay bubbling, the focus shifts between past and present, staged and unstaged, organic and fabricated. The artworks all point in some way to the role played by the human hand in altering the terrestrial terrain around us.

We invite you to step onto the stage and explore the set.

The exhibition forms part of a wider project, ‘Terrestrial Act’, produced by Hot Desque. The exhibited artworks on stage will result in a collaborative artist film, to be screened at artist-led organisation The NewBridge Project in Shieldfield later this year. ‘Terrestrial Act’ poses questions around the impact of extractive capitalism, and the need to dissolve hierarchical classifications of living matter, at a critical time in the lead up to the COP26 UN Climate Talks in Glasgow, this November.

This project has been made possible with the support from Arts Council England, Newcastle Theatre Royal and The NewBridge Project.