Shipbuilding on the Tyne

22 JULY – 08 OCTOBER 2017

SIDE

SHIPBUILDING ON THE TYNE

by Bruce Rae, 1983 Nationalisation, in 1977, created British Shipbuilders to rationalise and secure the industry. By 1983 the new body had already closed half the once independent yards it managed. Now the government demanded privatisation of the rest. This was the context in which Side Gallery commissioned Bruce Rae to document the industry. ‘I was introduced to my minder, a guy in a long, blue, gabardine mac with a flat hat, who was supposed to accompany me everywhere I went,’ Rae remembers. ‘Fortunately, he got bored stiff after half a day and just disappeared... I could go anywhere I liked. It was quite extraordinary.’

He captured the trades, the awe-inspiring scale, the powerful structures that appeared everywhere he looked. In Wallsend, he documented Swan Hunter, the Neptune Yard, Clark Hawthorn Marine Engine Works, Cleland’s; In North Shields, Smith’s Repair; in South Shields, Readhead’s: some were already in the process of closure, but it was a massive project. This is the first time since 1983, that the full scale of the work has been exhibited.

EVENT Photographer Talk . Saturday 22 July . 2pm . Free Photographer Bruce Rae & writer Paul Rutishauser will introduce the exhibition.

THE ART OF SHIPBUILDING

by Amber Films, 2017 Bruce Rae’s photographs are held in the AmberSide Collection, which has grown out the Amber collective’s production, commissioning and exhibition work over nearly 50 years. The new exhibition will also feature Amber’s latest film, The Art of Shipbuilding, which explores the shipyard poetry of Jack Davitt (aka Ripyard Cuddling), the work of shipyard painter Peter Burns and the photographs of Bruce Rae and Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen.

Cover image: Replacing a propeller bonnet lost at sea, Smith’s Repair, North Shields, Bruce Rae, 1983 Image below: In the fabrication shed, Swan Hunter, Bruce Rae, 1983

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