BLACK BOX³ is a permanent gallery space on the 4th Floor of Ellison Lab, Northumbria University, supported by CNoS and Northumbria University’s School of Geography and Natural Sciences. Converting the space of two former display cabinets into a gallery and screen-based platform, BLACK BOX³ showcases contemporary creative works at the intersection of art and science. Three ‘black boxes’ in the form of two wall recesses and one screen allow for small-scale curated exhibitions as part of CNoS’ ongoing research. Video and audio works are also hosted here on the CNoS website.

Our current exhibition shows the process-led work of artist, Dr. Michele Allen, in collaboration with Angela Sherry, Associate Professor in Microbial Environments at Northumbria University.  Including elements of Sherry’s research into microbial environments, Allen’s work brings together multiple voices to explore tidal mudflats on the River Tyne, thinking about mud as a habitat, a slow-moving dynamic force in the landscape shaped by tidal flows and interactions with the microbial, animal and human life which live in and around it. The work considers the complexity of mud, a material which is commonplace, has a low status and is not typically a subject for art. The work was developed during a residency with the Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment, a project funded by Gateshead Riverside Partnership. The accompanying artist’s book and prints were created in collaboration with Foundation Press with funding from Arts Council England. 

Michele Allen, Mud Mapping (2022-24)

Residency with The Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment (HBBE)

Digital Video, Photography, Text and Microbial interactions…

The video work ‘Mud Mapping’ acts as a virtual journey along the Tyne from Newcastle-upon-Tyne’s Swing Bridge to Dunston’s Saltmarsh Garden giving an account of the mudflats from multiple perspectives through the voices of scientists, ecologists and people who live locally. The river landscape was filmed over a period of four months, across different seasons and times of day capturing fragments of human and animal life. The journey ends at the saltmarsh garden, which the artist considers as a kind of conceptual time travel, an end point and a beginning. An ancient landscape which might point the way to a more sustainable future.

A related work ‘Where the Gut Meets the Tyne’ attempts to visualise the communities of microbes which live deep in the mud through the creation of Winogradsky Columns which use mud combined with egg yolk (a source of sulphur) and a newspaper (a source of carbon), both acting as food for microbes. To make these columns mud collected from the confluence of the rivers Team (the gut) and Tyne have been fed a newspaper article collected by Allen at the beginning of the project, ‘10 species to Save the Planet’ an account of key species to combat pollution and climate change. Two species Curlews and Common Reeds can be found in the river landscape, over the course of the exhibition the microbes will digest this information; slowly become visible in the form of brightly coloured blooms in the mud. Large scale colour prints are made from scanned sections of this article prior to it being fed to the mud.

The initial work was exhibited in the OME (an experimental building created by HBBE) as a pop up in the Staiths Cafe (Dunston) in the group exhibition HabitAbility! at Newbridge Project, Newcastle and was included in a solo exhibition by Allen in Gateshead Library. Allen has subsequently developed a small run riso publication created in collaboration with Foundation Press and printed paper stocks which are made from algae dredged from polluted waterways. 

With thanks to Clare Ross, Dr Angela Sherry, Emma Jude and The Friends of Dunston Staiths for sharing their knowledge of this landscape and whose voices appear in the film.