October and MIMA

October 01, 2022By Greg McGee

October and MIMA

What else is a couple who have directed a gallery for 17 years going to do on their first Saturday off?

Why, visit an Art Gallery of course!

Not just any gallery, mind.

Ails McGee taking the stairs to MIMA's upper floors

MIMA has been a favourite of ours since we collaborated on our charitable 2014 project, 'Out the Box', where people from York who had experienced homelessness visited Middlesbrough to get inspiration. The resulting exhibition was displayed in York city centre and attracted a huge amount of footfall. That's the kind of bountiful harvest a careful collaboration can bring. More soon, I hope.

Cramming up on Teesside cultural take up

In the meantime, MIMA did not disappoint. Its current major exhibition, Erratics, from, Lubna Chowdhary, closes on 9 October. Chowdhary's work is presented at MIMA in her first large-scale museum exhibition. It's bright, it's witty, and it straddles the world of handicraft and mechanoid, automata art. There's a Bauhaus aspect, there's swagger in the sheer size, and the relentless interfusion of hand made analogue art and art filtered through a machine conduit is exciting and pertinent.

Middlesbrough born Greg McGee enjoys his native town's celebration of Lubna Chowdhary

Ails McGee garnering some minimalist inspiration for the McGee's next move in the art world

This corner of Middlesbrough continues to thrive. Nearby Baker Street is great, the pubs, all genuine terraced houses and cosily themed on Conan Doyle's seminal detective Sherlock, crackle cosily, the outside fountains bubble and fizz, MIMA's shop is genuinely thrilling, and the view from the terrace, high up on the roof, allows the vista of Teesside to stretch like polished, riveted metal into the iridescent, distant smudge of the Cleveland Hills, o'er yonder, see.

Get yourselves there! Lubna Chowdhary's art is am-az-ing and the curatorial team have nailed it. Also - the coffee. Hit the cafe before the exhibition, the craic inculcated by the coffee is a pleasingly Teesside mash up of pick-me-up legal drugs and slow burning culture.