North East Open Call
Location: 1-7 Dundas Arcade (former B&M Store), Dundas House, Middlesbrough, TS1 1JA,
Dates: Fri 26 Sept - Sat 4 Oct (closed Mon 29 Sept & Tue 30 Sept)
Hours: Daily 10am-4pm (Sun 12-4pm)
Access: Step Free
Artists: Erin Dickson // Iris Ollier // Jonathan West // Kitty McKay // Petra Szemán
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Exploring ideas of home through language, culture and vernacular architecture, Erin Dickson’s expansive practice engages tongue-in-cheek themes of ‘Britishness’. Working in the space between craft and digital manufacture, she works both physically and virtually, from processing data to create 3D models to developing systems of correspondence. Through humour, Dickson’s sculpture, video and installations soften deliberately provocative subject matter including British class systems, AI bias, intimacy, community, and isolation.
Her work has been exhibited internationally, most notably at Glasstress, a collateral event of the Venice Biennale, as well as the Royal Academy of Arts, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art and FACT Liverpool, UK. She has received international grants and awards including an Honorary Diploma from the Jutta Cuny Foundation, Germany, The Kyohei Fujita Memorial Prize from Glasmuseet Ebeltoft, Denmark, and a National Lottery Project Grant from Arts Council England.
Dickson lives and works in NSW, Australia.
Instagram: @Erin Dickson
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Iris Ollier is a multi-disciplinary artist working across sculpture, text and imagery. Her practice investigates embodied perception, specifically the corporeal aspect of looking, and the commodification of attention. Graduating from Newcastle University’s BA Fine Art in 2023, Ollier was awarded Visual Artist and Craft Maker Award grant, (Edinburgh 2025), Newcastle Arts Centre’s Brass Tacks grant from Creative Central NCL (2023), shortlisted for the North East Emerging Artist Award (2024), and in 2022 received the Ella Dawson Travel Award. Solo exhibitions include Iris Ollier at Newcastle Arts Centre (2024-5) Iris Ollier: Roving Eye at Shieldfield Art Works (2023). Other notable exhibitions include In the Round at Newcastle Arts Centre (2023) and Thrills at Embassy Gallery (2024). Iris lives and works in Edinburgh, Scotland where she is a director of Votive Gallery, an itinerant artist-run curatorial project.
Instagram: @iris_ollier
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Jonathan Lloyd West is a British artist based in Redcar, working across painting, printmaking, drawing, digital, and mixed media. West studied at Camberwell College of Arts (BA) and the Slade School of Fine Art (MFA). His ongoing series Infinite Scroll uses layered processes to build compositions that refuse a clear beginning or end. These works explore the visual and psychological effects of endlessly scrolling through digital content, inviting moments of reflection and interruption.
West’s recent exhibitions include Studio Response [3] at Saatchi Gallery, London (2022–23); Ancient Mew at Conditions, London (2022); and Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere: Painting in the North East. Now at Newcastle Contemporary Art, Newcastle upon Tyne (2022). He was a finalist for the Contemporary British Painting Prize in 2018.
Instagram: @jonathanlloydwest
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Kitty McKay is an artist, researcher and DJ from Liverpool and is currently based in Newcastle upon Tyne. Kitty studied a Masters of Fine Art at Newcastle University. While studying Kitty also worked part-time at The NewBridge Project, an artist-led, DIY art and community venue
Kitty’s interdisciplinary practice embraces the politics of community and encompasses social impact research through moving image, sound, installation, sculpture, collage, live works and writing. They are especially interested in queer and feminist frameworks for exploring space and place. Kitty often works collaboratively to produce live and socially-engaged works.
www.thenewbridgeproject.com/artist/kitty-mckay
Handles: @kittylmmckay
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Petra Szeman is a moving image artist working between the North East of England and Japan. Their practice centers on animation and game-like landscapes, blending the aesthetics of digital environments with narrative exploration. Petra studied Fine Art at Newcastle University from 2013 to 2017 and has since exhibited widely, including at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland, NTT InterCommunication Center in Tokyo, and various galleries across England, continental Europe, and East Asia.
Petra’s work explores the boundaries between the real and the fictional. Through a virtual self that acts as a main character in animated, dreamlike worlds, they investigate liminal spaces and transitional states. Their practice examines how identity and memory are shaped in a reality saturated with both digital and physical fictions. Rather than viewing cyberspace as an alien or detached domain, Petra embraces it as a space of possibility - navigating the tension between dystopia and utopia while envisioning new queer futures.
Handles: @petra_szeman
about the show.
The five selected artists for this year's North East Open Call invite us to scrutinise contemporary worlds through film, painting, and sculpture. Iris Ollier refocuses the act of seeing through her lens-based works. Jonathan West surrounds us with monumental painting, freezing our obsession with digital scrolling. Kitty McKay’s repurposed metro seats form a dysphoric collection of works that are as uncomfortable as they are familiar while Petra Széman disrupts linear perceptions with a dreamlike fusion of film and anime. Finally, the beguiling voice of Jessica guides us through Harton Moor Estate, a journey rendered as an otherworldly graphic landscape by Erin Dickson.
