STEEL LIFE

MURRAY MCKEAN
24 September - 19 October

Please join Chancellor Paul Jeans for the exhibition launch at the University Gallery
Tuesday 24 September from 6:30pm

Murray McKean's Steel Life presents a collection of striking photographs that document the closure of the Newcastle steelworks, following on from Harold Cazneaux (1878 – 1953) and David Moore's (1927 – 2003) vivid documentation of the site in decades prior. At the turn of the century, Murray McKean’s photographs showed the site post closure in a state of ruin. Detritus from the steelworks is sprawled across the landscape in a kind of wreckage that documents the monumental scale and emotion of that time in Newcastle's history. The residual materials, and the evidence of absent workers, and workers as they clear the site, will remain tangible for many. Using the texture of the abandoned architecture of the site, Murray has preserved this period of our city's history with a series of poignant images that offer critical commentary on our collective memory twenty years on.

image: Steel Life number 14, 2001, silver gelatine prints shot on 6 x 7 mm 100 iso film using Mamiya RB 67 camera. Image courtesy of Murray McKean