How Newcastle gave birth to Pop Art

The Hatton Gallery at Newcastle University will re-open on 7 October 2017, following a 20-month, £3.8million redevelopment made possible by National Lottery players through the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), with a ground-breaking exhibition that will firmly – and correctly – position Newcastle as the birthplace of Pop Art.

The gallery has played a unique role in the development of British Art, with its history intimately entwined with some of the most influential artists of the 20th century. The exhibition Pioneers of Pop revolves around the numerous artists and writers, activities, projects and ideas which had at their centre, artist Richard Hamilton, during his time teaching at Newcastle University (1953-1966).

Hamilton’s significant achievements in the North East included the ground-breaking exhibitions Man, Machine & Motion and an Exhibit, the development of a new Basic Design course of art teaching alongside Victor Pasmore, arranging the rescue of Kurt Schwitters’ Merz Barn Wall and the re-creation of Marcel Duchamp’s iconic sculpture Large Glass.

Pioneers of Pop includes around 100 works by some of the leading British artists associated with both Pop and abstract art – Eduardo Paolozzi, David Hockney, Richard Smith, Ian Stephenson, R.B Kitaj, Joe Tilson and, of course, Hamilton himself. The exhibition will include works created in a wide range of media, including paintings, prints, collages, magazines and photographs – from lenders across the UK, such as Tate, V&A, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Abbot Hall, Pallant House, and Arts Council England. Many of the works are coming from private collections and have rarely been seen in public.

Pre-dating Andy Warhol’s first – and much-celebrated – forays into the genre with his iconic Campbell’s soup can and Marilyn Munroe diptych by five years, Hamilton said in 1957: “Pop Art is: popular, transient, expendable, low-cost, mass-produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, and Big Business”. Pioneers of Pop aims to capture the excitement, experimentation and opportunity of that time through the prism of Newcastle and its progressive, stimulating art school – where Hamilton and his colleagues sought to widen the basis of art’s visual language.