What To Expect From Narbi Price's Solo Exhibition in Hexham
Hexham's Queen's Hall Arts Centre is presenting Hartlepool-born artist Narbi Price's first solo exhibition since 2020
Narbi is an artist, curator and lecturer. He is also a trustee of The Ashington Group collection, chair of Contemporary British Painting, and associate lecturer at Newcastle University. He is a former John Moores Painting Prize prize-winner, winner of the Contemporary British Painting Prize, and two-time North East Visual Artist of the Year.
Originally from Hartlepool, he’s been in Newcastle and Gateshead for 27 years. ‘Being an artist of some kind was probably always going to be the thing I did,’ he says. ‘Obviously, as a kid, I didn’t really know what that meant. But visual sensibility implants itself at a very early stage. The first things that stuck in my imagination were things that reflected my experience, as a bookish kid growing up on a Hartlepool council estate. Films like Kes, repeats of Steptoe and Son, things that reflected the everyday in a focused way. The Further Abroad TV series by Jonathan Meades was hugely influential, then later music and movies expanded my horizons.’
Narbi paints specific sites of various types of cultural importance. ‘These range from where momentous historical events have taken place, to where album covers were shot and so on,’ he explains. ‘The thing they have in common is that the events are un-memorialised, there are no blue plaques or tourist trails. They’re normal streets, but if you know, you know.’
They’re also sites where uncountable, unknowable volumes of events have happened to normal people. ‘They’ve seen people fall in love, kids scrape their knees, dogs lick up fallen ice-creams. They’ve sheltered people from the rain, they’ve witnessed others get heartbreaking news, they’re the spaces that are all around us,’ says Narbi. ‘But at the same time, the ones in the paintings have an extra level of aura because of their history. The act of pilgrimage, and seeking of connection to make sense of our history, is the link in this work. Whether that’s mourning for acts of violence, or attempting to get closer to our heroes. Painting these scenes does something very different than photographing them does. It invites us to linger, to wonder about the location. There are paintings here about war, punk rock, civil rights, triumph and defeat. There are no people in the paintings, as the viewer, we become the active participant – we complete the work.’
That’s exactly what you can experience at Queen’s Hall Arts Centre in Hexham. Shadow on the Things You Know is a major (free) solo exhibition by Narbi and his first since 2020, running until 30th May.
‘This work has been percolating since before the pandemic, since then I’ve taken on intense project-based exhibitions, such as Going Back Brockens, a show that looked at the legacy of the Miners’ Strike in County Durham, and toured to multiple venues, culminating in January at Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens,’ says Narbi. ‘It’s great to be showing works that are very unapologetically “me”. In some ways Shadow on the Things You Know is an expanded self-portrait, and I’m still the teenager in the bedroom, becoming fascinated by stories. These ultimately, are paintings about stories, true ones, exaggerated ones, mythologised ones, and ones we will never know.’
Queen’s Hall are honoured to be sharing Narbi’s works. ‘Narbi Price is an artist whose practice is rooted in curiosity, research and a deep commitment to painting,’ says Queen’s Hall Arts’ visual art manager, Dr Dominic Smith. ‘Presenting his work at Queen’s Hall is an important moment, bringing a nationally-recognised artist into a community-focused space where ideas, making and conversation are shared. This exhibition reflects our commitment to supporting contemporary arts practice that remains open, generous and accessible to our audiences.’
Narbi says there are many good artists living and working in the region that are worth celebrating. ‘It’s easier than ever to create networks and collaborate with other practitioners nationally and internationally, so the pull of London is less necessary,’ he adds. ‘I’m really interested in a decentralised “art world” where artists can live and work wherever they want to, and I think that’s beginning to come to fruition [and] is the main change I’ve seen in my 27 years in the arts.’
His advice to budding artists in the region is clear. ‘Make no bones about it, it’s really hard,’ he says. ‘There’s no one path, and you’ll see mediocre artists getting further on than you. It’s more than a full-time job, but if it’s the thing you’re thinking about when you wake up in the middle of the night, then that’s a good sign, and if it’s what you really want to do you’ll find a way. Make the things that you really want to see, blow yourself away.’
The last 10 years have been intense for Narbi. ‘I did a PhD, had several solo exhibitions, innumerable group shows, curated half a dozen, there was a global pandemic, I did a book and I made 43 paintings in two years,’ he says. As for what the future holds, we wouldn’t blame him for taking it easy for a while!
