MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
Black and white and Redcar
MIKE QUILLE salutes an extensive body of photographic work that documents, with subtlety and compassion, working-class lives in north-east England
Redcar Blast Furnace, 2.00am Midsummer night, 1986; Picnic on Bran Sand, South Gare, Teesmouth 1982
[Courtesy of the artist] 
New releases from Christina Alden and Alex Patterson, Odette Michell, Clementine Lovell
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
RON JACOBS welcomes a timely homage to one of the IWW and CPUSA’s most effective orators
Ian Macdonald – Fixing Time
Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland
FIXING TIME is the title of a comprehensive exhibition of 50 years’ work by Ian Macdonald, the north-east England photographer and artist. It takes place across two venues, the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art and Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens.
Macdonald’s extensive body of work is dedicated to documenting working-class life, and the rise and fall of heavy industry in the north-east in the last decades of the 20th century. This has been, of course, a period marked by huge political shifts and social upheaval. There are a wide range of themes, including People, Towns and Portraits; Greatham Creek, Teeside; Smith’s Dock Shipyard; Redcar Blast Furnace; and School Portraits.
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