Wormhole Contract

Hatton Gallery, Newcastle

14 May 2022

The Ignorant Art School exhibition transferred from Cooper Gallery, Dundee to the Hatton Gallery. An event was commissioned as part of the White Room project, Reading University 1970, which was one of the ‘radical pedagogies’ that was explored in the exhibition.

The audio, ‘Ballad of the White Room,’ made with three of the original participants, Anne Bean, Graham Challifour and Rod Melvin, in the White Room project which had taken place over three weeks in May 1970, was used as a catalyst for the interventions of current Newcastle students Lucy Heaton and Erin Rowlinson-Martin working with Anne Bean

The mirror, which was a part of the action, was held and looked into by each member of the audience so that the reflections of each person present were held as ‘visionary selfies’ within the mirror. Julie Milne, Chief Curator of Art Galleries, Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums and Sophia Hao, Principal Curator at Cooper Gallery, Dundee and curator of The Ignorant Art School exhibition officially signed The Wormhole Contract as witnesses at the end of these actions.

The final event of the evening was the wrapping and sealing of the mirror with the contract. It is now held in the Hatton Gallery archive space and will be opened in May 2032.