In addition to our shows, workshops and other events, we also host exhibitions in our building on an ongoing basis. Some are permanent features you can see all year round, while others, like those in the Dickinson Dees room, are shown on a shorter basis, often related to our main production of the season. Find out information about upcoming exhibitions here, and keep checking back for details of launch and preview events.

KEITH PATTISON: NO REDEMPTION
Wed 4 Apr - Sat 9 Jun

DICKINSON DEES ROOM & EAST CORRIDOR

PLEASE NOTE: The exhibition many not always be accessible to the public depending on usage of the building - for queries, please email John Disley, Front of House Manager on jdisley@northernstage.co.uk

In August 1984, Keith Pattison was commissioned by Sunderland's Artists' Agency to photograph the strike in Easington Colliery for one month.  Instantly identifying with the struggle, he stayed there on and off for eight months, until the strike ended in March '85, working behind the lines to record events from the miners' point of view.

His photographs concentrate not on the much publicised violence of the strike, but on how the village responded to the overwhelming opposition of the state and a mostly hostile press. He found a community with no money or resources except energy and a sense of the injustice done against them; a community which rallied together, women and children figure strongly in these images, and shown against the landscape which shaped it, street corners, back lanes, coal-strewn beaches, crowded meeting rooms, dwarfed by the colliery.



Twenty-seven years on, as government cuts begin to bite, unemployment grows and more strikes loom, these photographs are timely and uncomfortably relevant once more.

Keith Pattison works mainly as a production photographer, currently for theatre companies such as the Young Vic, Royal Court, Almeida, Theatre by the Lake, West Yorkshire Playhouse and Bill Kenwright. His exhibitions include Easington 1984; The Borrowers, portraits of people leaving Sunderland Library with their books; and Home & Away, capturing the emotions of Newcastle United fans as they watch their team play.