A Successful Proposition for the Great North Exhibition is the outcome of an invitation to artists Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan to produce a public artwork for the Great Exhibition of the North.
The resulting work seeks to engage with the context of this commission and the Great Exhibition of the North, and to consider the wider question about the role that contemporary art might be expected to perform as part of such an event.
The work consists of a number of elements, including a series of sculptural faces built into the internal walls of BALTIC. These faces speak a text that, amongst other things, weaves together a narrative of the C18th Newcastle born radical Thomas Spence, and his anti-power satirical motifs, into the contemporary context of BALTIC and an event such as Great Exhibition of the North.