Summer Preview Party: Chitra Ganesh / Tish Murtha & Kuba Ryniewicz

Chitra Ganesh: Journey to the Great Below

Baltic is proud to present the first major UK solo exhibition in a public institution of Chitra Ganesh. Informed by her studies in literature, semiotics, and contemporary social theory, Ganesh, who lives and works in Brooklyn, also draws from histories of surrealism, science fiction, anime, and South Asian visual culture including ancient statuary, popular Indian comics and graphic design.

The exhibition will première a new large-scale animation titled Journey to the Great Below, inspired by what is widely considered to be the world’s oldest recorded myth, The Descent of Inanna into the Underworld, written c.1900 – 1600 BCE in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq). The animation will be presented alongside newly commissioned sculptural works, a site-specific wall drawing, and a selection of recent paintings, prints, works on paper and mixed media works.

Major Exhibition Supporters
Bagri Foundation / Bukhman Foundation

Exhibition Supporter
Henry Moore Foundation

Tish Murtha & Kuba Ryniewicz: Close to Home

Born in South Shields in 1956, Tish Murtha returned to Newcastle from university to document life in her Elswick community, capturing the social impact of industrial decline with honesty, empathy, and urgency. Close to Home is a landmark exhibition that brings together for the first time four major series by the celebrated documentary photographer: Elswick Kids (1978), Elswick Revisited (1987 – 1991), Save Scotswood Works (1979) and Youth Unemployment (1981).

A newly commissioned body of work by Newcastle-based artist Kuba Ryniewicz is presented alongside Tish Murtha’s photographs. Ryniewicz’s photographs extend the exhibition’s exploration of everyday life, community and place in the North East. While Murtha documents working-class life in Newcastle during the late twentieth century, Ryniewicz offers a contemporary perspective shaped by lockdown and the ongoing dynamics of friendship, intimacy and creative community.