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Dive deeper in this series of discussion-based artist and scientist talks exploring oceanic worlds through art, research and dialogue. Taking place within the exhibition space, this special programme of discussion-based talks accompanying For All At Last Return brings together artists and scientists to explore marine habitats and ocean futures through art, research, and dialogue.   Shezad Dawood and Dr Sasha Montelli lead a discussion about coral reefs, the impacts of rising sea temperatures on marine environments, and the recent discovery of deep-sea corals and sponges in Antarctica. Shezad Dawood is a British artist based in London. His multidisciplinary practice interweaves stories, realities, and symbolism to create richly layered artworks, spanning painting, textiles, sculpture, film, and digital media. His work takes a philosophical approach, asking questions and exploring alternative futures through what Dawood describes as ‘world-building’. His practice is animated by research, working with multiple audiences and communities to delve into narrative, history, and embodiment. His fascination with marine ecology and the potential for hybrid thinking across both human and marine ecosystems has been presented internationally. Dr Sasha Montelli is a Lecturer in Environmental Change at the University College London. His interdisciplinary research combines marine geophysical data with sediment cores and numerical modelling to reconstruct past interactions between ice sheets, ocean, and solid earth on multiple temporal and spatial scales. The geography of Montelli’s projects span both hemispheres, including East and West Antarctica, the Eurasian Arctic, and the subarctic Pacific.

Dive deeper in this series of discussion-based artist and scientist talks exploring oceanic worlds through art, research and dialogue. Taking place within the exhibition space, this special programme of discussion-based talks accompanying For All At Last Return brings together artists and scientists to explore marine habitats and ocean futures through art, research, and dialogue. Kristina Õllek and Dr Jenny Gales discuss deep-sea exploration, mining and extraction, and the use of new technologies in marine environments. Kristina Õllek is an Estonian artist currently based in Tallinn. She works with photography, video and installation, as well as microbial and chemical processes, with a focus on investigating aquatic ecosystems, geological matter, and human-altered environments. In her practice she uses a research-based approach, but also incorporates her own fictitious and speculative perspectives. She is interested in marine habitats and the notion of new technologies, including the geopolitical and ecological conditions associated with them. In For All At Last Return, Õllek presents a new installation, Breathing Deep Currency (2025), commissioned by Baltic. Dr Jenny Gales is Associate Professor of Ocean Exploration at the University of Plymouth, specializing in submarine slope processes and geohazards. Jenny has a passion for submarine landslides, canyons, volcanoes, channels, and gullies on high latitude continental margins. Gales uses cutting-edge technologies to image and measure the seafloor and subseafloor, including shipboard acoustics, coring, marine robotics, autonomous vehicles, and direct monitoring. She has been involved in numerous international research projects including Arctic and Antarctic expeditions.

Dive deeper in this series of discussion-based artist and scientist talks exploring oceanic worlds through art, research and dialogue. Artist Rob Smith and Dr. William Reid, Lecturer in Marine Biology at Newcastle University, discuss polymetallic nodules, the histories and futures of deep sea mining and the recent discovery of dark oxygen which has called into question the origins of life on Earth.

Dive deeper in this series of discussion-based artist and scientist talks exploring oceanic worlds through art, research and dialogue. Artist Michele Allen and Dr. Gary Caldwell, Senior Lecturer in Applied Marine Biology at Newcastle University, discuss coastal ecologies and the devastating marine die-off along the North East coast.

An exhibition of work by artists Henna Asikainen and Roua Horanieh will be presented at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead during Refugee Week 2025. The project has been developed with the participation of a group of people with experience of migration and displacement, who now live in Gateshead and Newcastle. To Own Both Nothing and the Whole World has been co-commissioned and co-produced by Counterpoints Arts and Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, and made possible by the support of Moomin Characters Ltd. It is part of celebrations marking 80 years since the publication of the first Moomin story by Tove Jansson, which had a focus on displacement. The title of the exhibition is a quote from Snufkin, one of the characters in the Moomin stories. The project explores ideas of home and belonging, reflecting on the impact of displacement on both human and more-than-human worlds. Recognising that nature is our first habitat without which no home can be built. The materials used in the work are foraged from the surrounding landscape, each carrying its own enchanting story—bringing communities together in unexpected and meaningful ways. The multiple artworks will be seen outside of the gallery, in the entrance area Lightbox, on Ground Floor and in the Level 5 Viewing Box, with its presence woven across Baltic. At the heart of the work are Taihaku cherry trees and their extraordinary migration story, where a sole migrant tree in the UK became a saviour of the whole ecosystem, reviving the extinct community in its native country of Japan. The exhibition also encompasses migratory birdnests with their many stories of movement, resilience and adaptation and 200-year-old tree roots planted during the Napoleonic Wars, and which were uprooted by a recent storm. Willow and other foraged wonders from community gardens feature within the artwork alongside a tree felled by a storm in local suburbia, a reminder of nature’s unpredictability and the cycles of loss and renewal. Through this assemblage of living histories, To Own Both Nothing and The Whole World invites reflection on the interconnected journeys of people, plants, and place—foregrounding the invaluable contribution migrants bring to this country, and the power and beauty of nature and community in shaping our shared world. The project aims to raise awareness around displacement and climate, to create the opportunity for dialogue with asylum seekers, refugees and migrants around the perception of their migration, their future and how they can thrive in a new environment. It also enables the opportunity for dialogue within the local area on what it takes to welcome a migrant community. Many different elements make a nest, and it takes many to create it, weaving together different elements to create something solid that can hold and shelter someone. By creating a story that lives on in people’s memories and thoughts, there is the potential to change minds and behaviours.

An exhibition of work by artists Henna Asikainen and Roua Horanieh will be presented at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead during Refugee Week 2025. The project has been developed with the participation of a group of people with experience of migration and displacement, who now live in Gateshead and Newcastle. To Own Both Nothing and the Whole World has been co-commissioned and co-produced by Counterpoints Arts and Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, and made possible by the support of Moomin Characters Ltd. It is part of celebrations marking 80 years since the publication of the first Moomin story by Tove Jansson, which had a focus on displacement. The title of the exhibition is a quote from Snufkin, one of the characters in the Moomin stories. The project explores ideas of home and belonging, reflecting on the impact of displacement on both human and more-than-human worlds. Recognising that nature is our first habitat without which no home can be built. The materials used in the work are foraged from the surrounding landscape, each carrying its own enchanting story—bringing communities together in unexpected and meaningful ways. The multiple artworks will be seen outside of the gallery, in the entrance area Lightbox, on Ground Floor and in the Level 5 Viewing Box, with its presence woven across Baltic. At the heart of the work are Taihaku cherry trees and their extraordinary migration story, where a sole migrant tree in the UK became a saviour of the whole ecosystem, reviving the extinct community in its native country of Japan. The exhibition also encompasses migratory birdnests with their many stories of movement, resilience and adaptation and 200-year-old tree roots planted during the Napoleonic Wars, and which were uprooted by a recent storm. Willow and other foraged wonders from community gardens feature within the artwork alongside a tree felled by a storm in local suburbia, a reminder of nature’s unpredictability and the cycles of loss and renewal. Through this assemblage of living histories, To Own Both Nothing and The Whole World invites reflection on the interconnected journeys of people, plants, and place—foregrounding the invaluable contribution migrants bring to this country, and the power and beauty of nature and community in shaping our shared world. The project aims to raise awareness around displacement and climate, to create the opportunity for dialogue with asylum seekers, refugees and migrants around the perception of their migration, their future and how they can thrive in a new environment. It also enables the opportunity for dialogue within the local area on what it takes to welcome a migrant community. Many different elements make a nest, and it takes many to create it, weaving together different elements to create something solid that can hold and shelter someone. By creating a story that lives on in people’s memories and thoughts, there is the potential to change minds and behaviours.

Volcanoes and Utopias: an audio performance by artists Kate Liston and Tess Denman-Cleaver Kate Liston and Tess Denman-Cleaver's podcast is a poetic performance on volcanoes, parliamentary architecture, Norse mythology, Quaker design, pease pudding, the current lack of gossip, and the function of utopias. Volcanoes and Utopias is a collection of work-in-progress extracts from Town Hall Meeting of the Air, which will be presented at Baltic 39 in January 2021. Town Hall Meeting of the Air considers the poetics of civic gathering and invites reimaginings of public political discourse. The work is framed here within a fictionalised account of the artists' attempt to design and plan for future public gatherings whilst in lockdown. Kate Liston works with moving image, installation, and writing that is sometimes performed. Notable projects include Oh-Link Zone, Black Tower Projects, London (2018); Feel After the New See, The Hatton Gallery, Newcastle (2018); The Scientific Method, The Tetley Gallery, Leeds (2016); Feminism and the Body in Performance, MART Gallery, Dublin (2015); They Used to Call it the Moon, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (2014). She is a lecturer in Fine Art at Northumbria University.    Tess Denman-Cleaver’s work spans performance, writing, installation and workshops. She has recently shown work at Tate Britain, Hatton Gallery, Turner Contemporary, Tate St Ives, M_HKA Gallery Antwerp, Paul Mellon Centre, Audiograft Festival and Wilkinson Gallery. Tess was Artist in Residence at the Sonic Arts Research Unit (Oxford) between 2017-19 and is Producer, Artists' Moving Image at Tyneside Cinema.  Image: Jerome F. Hamlin, Seasons of Fire: Iceland's Pompeii (still) 1974. Accessed via YouTube

In this BALTIC Podcast Dr Paolo Fortis, Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology, Durham University, explores Abel Rodriguez’ exhibition. Paolo Fortis is a social anthropologist with research interests in the relations between art, ontology, notions of the person and alterity among Central and South American indigenous peoples. You can view the exhibition at BALTIC, online here: http://balticplus.uk/abel-rodriguez-e785/ You can read a transcript of the podcast here: http://balticplus.uk/baltic-podcast-dr-paolo-fortis-explores-abel-rodriguez-exhibition-transcript-c33880/

In this BALTIC Podcast exploring BALTIC exhibitions, Alessandro Boussalem explores Imran Perretta's The Destructors. Alessandro Boussalem is a human geographer. His research is on the intersections of gender, sexualities, and race/ethnicities in contemporary Europe. He is a PhD candidate at Newcastle University with a project on the experiences of LGBTQ people from a Muslim background living in Brussels, Belgium. You can view The Destructors online here while BALTIC is currently closed: http://balticplus.uk/the-destructors-imran-perretta-c33847/

In this BALTIC Podcast exploring BALTIC exhibitions and research, art historian Victoria Horne examines Judy Chicago, specifically Femininity, Art and the Home. Horne discusses the role of labour within the home, which was often at the fore of questioning within second-wave feminism and the Women's Art Movement. Horne also highlights the amplified and indistinct roles between domestic and paid labour that many may find present in their homes currently, while including reference to historical projects such as Womanhouse, ​that focused on these enquiries. Suggested further reading: - Castlemilk Womanhouse archive on Glasgow Women’s Library website: https://womenslibrary.org.uk/discover-our-projects/house-work-castle-milk-woman-house/ - Hannah Hamblin, 'Los Angeles, 1972/Glasgow, 1990: A Report on Castlemilk Womanhouse' in Feminism and Art History Now, London: IB Tauris, 2017. - Amy Tobin, A Woman's Place, London: Raven Row. http://www.ravenrow.org/texts/75/ - Camilla M Rostvik, 'Blood Works: Judy Chicago and Menstrual Art', Oxford Art Journal, 42.3 (2019): 335-353. Victoria Horne is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Arts at Northumbria University Newcastle, specialising in the cultural and intellectual history of Anglo-American feminism. ​

Animalesque with Daisy Hildyard Wednesday 1 April 2020 Across three 5-minute sessions, writer Daisy Hildyard offers readings from selected texts in response to the exhibition Animalesque / Art Across Species and Beings at BALTIC. These extracts resonate with the exhibition by inviting us to re-think human's position in the world, their relationship to the natural world and to the various complex ecologies that bond beings together. Images here: http://balticplus.uk/animalesque-exhibition-images-c33852/ 1. From Anna Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World, ​published 2015 Reflecting on the exhibition. 2. From Svetlana Alexievich, Chernobyl Prayer, published 1997 In response to Pierre Huyghe, Human Mask (2014). 3. From Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being​, published 2016 Reflecting on Ho Tzu Nyen, 2 or 3 Tigers (2015); Pia Arke with Anders Jorgensen, Tupilakosaurus (1999) and Britta Marakatt-Labba, Borrhål (2018), Mellan två världar, Snömodd (2019). Daisy Hildyard is the author of Hunters in the Snow (Jonathan Cape, 2013), a novel about farmers, and The Second Body (2017) and an essay about humans and animals in the Anthropocene. BALTIC Podcasts Join us every fortnight for a series of podcasts exploring BALTIC exhibitions led by special guests. In these, artists, writers, academics and other guests offer short talks in their field of expertise to further explore the concepts and themes of our programme.

Animalesque with Daisy Hildyard Wednesday 1 April 2020 Across three 5-minute sessions, writer Daisy Hildyard offers readings from selected texts in response to the exhibition Animalesque / Art Across Species and Beings at BALTIC. These extracts resonate with the exhibition by inviting us to re-think human's position in the world, their relationship to the natural world and to the various complex ecologies that bond beings together. Images here: http://balticplus.uk/animalesque-exhibition-images-c33852/ 1. From Anna Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World, ​published 2015 Reflecting on the exhibition. 2. From Svetlana Alexievich, Chernobyl Prayer, published 1997 In response to Pierre Huyghe, Human Mask (2014). 3. From Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being​, published 2016 Reflecting on Ho Tzu Nyen, 2 or 3 Tigers (2015); Pia Arke with Anders Jorgensen, Tupilakosaurus (1999) and Britta Marakatt-Labba, Borrhål (2018), Mellan två världar, Snömodd (2019). Daisy Hildyard is the author of Hunters in the Snow (Jonathan Cape, 2013), a novel about farmers, and The Second Body (2017) and an essay about humans and animals in the Anthropocene. BALTIC Podcasts Join us every fortnight for a series of podcasts exploring BALTIC exhibitions led by special guests. In these, artists, writers, academics and other guests offer short talks in their field of expertise to further explore the concepts and themes of our programme.

Animalesque with Daisy Hildyard Wednesday 1 April 2020 Across three 5-minute sessions, writer Daisy Hildyard offers readings from selected texts in response to the exhibition Animalesque / Art Across Species and Beings at BALTIC. These extracts resonate with the exhibition by inviting us to re-think human's position in the world, their relationship to the natural world and to the various complex ecologies that bond beings together. Images here: http://balticplus.uk/animalesque-exhibition-images-c33852/ 1. From Anna Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World, ​published 2015 Reflecting on the exhibition. 2. From Svetlana Alexievich, Chernobyl Prayer, published 1997 In response to Pierre Huyghe, Human Mask (2014). 3. From Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being​, published 2016 Reflecting on Ho Tzu Nyen, 2 or 3 Tigers (2015); Pia Arke with Anders Jorgensen, Tupilakosaurus (1999) and Britta Marakatt-Labba, Borrhål (2018), Mellan två världar, Snömodd (2019). Daisy Hildyard is the author of Hunters in the Snow (Jonathan Cape, 2013), a novel about farmers, and The Second Body (2017) and an essay about humans and animals in the Anthropocene. BALTIC Podcasts Join us every fortnight for a series of podcasts exploring BALTIC exhibitions led by special guests. In these, artists, writers, academics and other guests offer short talks in their field of expertise to further explore the concepts and themes of our programme.

Alessandro Vincentelli in conversation with Filipa Ramos, curator of the exhibition Animalesque: Art Across Species and Beings. 14 November 2019. The podcast begins and ends with recordings made by Chris Watson from his 1998 work Outside the Circle of Fire, which he revisited for this exhibition. First we hear a Hippopotamus emerging from the River Mara; Masai Mara, Kenya and to end the podcast we hear Mozambique nightjar; banks of the River Zambezi, Zimbabwe. Courtesy the artist.