A gallery’s influence need not stop at the edge of a city. This autumn, Newcastle’s The Biscuit Factory is taking its curatorial programme to Wooler, where a new partnership with Ad Gefrin will place contemporary art alongside Anglo-Saxon history and the craft of whisky making.
The first exhibition, Modern Classics, opens on 23 October, bringing together work by Paula Dunn, Angelo Murphy and Garry Courtnell. It begins a programme of exhibitions, conversations and gatherings at the Northumberland museum and distillery, curated by the independent gallery in Ouseburn.
There is a practical idea behind the collaboration. People living in rural places should have opportunities to encounter contemporary work nearer to home; artists benefit from places where new audiences can spend time with it. A continuing programme can help establish those relationships, giving visitors reasons to return as the work changes.
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Rachel Brown, General Manager of The Biscuit Factory, puts that ambition plainly: “Taking the gallery out of the city allows us to provide rural access to contemporary art.”
Founded in 2002, The Biscuit Factory has built its Newcastle programme around handmade and original work, encompassing painting, sculpture, print, ceramics, textiles and jewellery. Its move into Ad Gefrin gives that activity another setting, with scope for artists and audiences to meet through events as well as exhibitions.
The opening show explores light and atmosphere, the everyday and the elemental. Its three artists use traditional techniques to make contemporary work: an appropriate starting point for a partnership interested in what connects inherited knowledge with present-day practice.
On 23 October, Paula Dunn will join an In Conversation event at Ad Gefrin, discussing her work, process and inspiration. She will also sign copies of her book, Atmospheric Landscapes. For visitors, the conversation offers a way into decisions and methods that a finished painting cannot always explain by itself.
That attention to making connects the exhibition programme to its host. Ad Gefrin’s museum draws on the Anglo-Saxon royal site at Yeavering and recreates the Great Hall of the seventh-century Northumbrian kings and queens. Its distillery is engaged in a different process, dependent on materials, skill and time. Contemporary artists bring their own ways of working into that setting.
“Whisky making is as much an art as it is a science, matured through craft and time,” says Ad Gefrin co-founder Eileen Ferguson. She describes the partnership as an opportunity to extend the organisations’ hospitality to artists and art lovers in Newcastle and Wooler over the coming years.
Ad Gefrin has already commissioned artists in other parts of its activity. Voirrey Taylor, Luke McTaggart and Sarah Calavera created artwork for the bottle designs of its first Crǣft Series release, and the organisation has announced an open call for artists for future releases. The exhibitions add a further platform on which creative work can be encountered.
For MagNorth, the interest is in how that platform develops. Rural access involves the practical details of a visit as well as its location: cost, opening times and opportunities to feel at ease with unfamiliar work. The exhibition is free, while the opening-day artist conversation is separately ticketed. Those distinctions matter when encouraging people to take part.
Wooler has its own history and contemporary cultural life. Hosting work here gives the partnership a chance to develop around the people who use the space, and the artists who come into it. The programme’s value will become clearer through those encounters.
For now, Modern Classics offers a reason to visit: three artists, a new setting and the opportunity to look closely at work concerned with light, atmosphere and the things around us. It is also the beginning of a relationship between two North East organisations whose shared interest in craft could reach well beyond this first exhibition.
Modern Classics runs at Ad Gefrin, Wooler, from 23 October to 13 December 2026 and is advertised as free.
In Conversation With Paula Dunn takes place on Friday 23 October, 11am–noon, with tickets priced at £5.
Exhibition access is separate from any museum or distillery tour admission; check the venue’s arrangements before visiting.
Header image: Steep Valleys Hold Fast by Paula Dunn
