Grains to Tyne

BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art + Travelling Gallery, 2022

Grains to Tyne was a commission for BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art for ‘What’s for Tea?’ - an exhibition which took place in the Travelling Gallery - a custom-built mobile art gallery. This bus took the exhibition to communities across the North East of England. ‘What’s for Tea?’ referenced BALTIC’s building history as a working flour mill, opened in 1950 by Rank Hovis. It explored food production and consumption; what we eat, how much we eat and how our eating habits could help combat the climate emergency.

Julia’s work referenced BALTIC’s history as a site of flour production and distribution - a huge silo where wheat grains from around the world were stored before processing. The work invited the viewer to consider the global nature of food production by getting involved in the process of flour making, creating their own blend of flour using grains from around the world and hand grinding them into flour to take home.

Photos by Colin Davison