Audrey Amiss: Kitchen Sink Realism - Curator Exhibition Tour

Jon Weston, curator at the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, is leading a tour of Kitchen Sink Realism on Friday 27 November. It's part of a series of lunchtime tours running through the exhibition, which is a major solo show of the Sunderland-born artist Audrey Joan Amiss (1933–2013). The tour itself runs from 12:00 to 12:30, so it's a half-hour walk through the work with the person who helped put it together.

Kitchen Sink Realism brings together previously unseen paintings, drawings and archival material, tracing Amiss's journey from her early years in Sunderland to her final years in Clapham, South London. The title comes from Amiss herself: "I was once in the tradition of social realism, also called the kitchen sink school of painting, but I am now avant garde and misunderstood." She studied at Sunderland College of Art — now part of the University of Sunderland — and won a scholarship to the Royal Academy Schools in London, where she worked between 1954 and 1958.

Across painting, watercolour, pastel, drawing and photography, she was relentless; the Wellcome Collection estimates she filled roughly 50,000 sketchbook pages. Her archive of scrapbooks, account books and logs even preserved everyday detritus like receipts, tickets and food packaging. Later in life, she identified as a psychiatric survivor and campaigned for reform of the UK's mental health system. The show is made possible with the support of the Wellcome Collection in London.

If you can't make the 27th, there are other lunchtime tours on 6, 13 and 20 November, 4, 11 and 18 December, and 8 and 15 January, all at 12:00. The exhibition itself runs until Sunday 17 January 2027 at the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, on the second floor of Culture House, Keel Square. Entry is free, but you need to book your spot in advance.