Women at the coalface in new mining exhibition

With spring just around the corner, the attractions of The Auckland Project today begin reopening for the new season which will culminate in the autumn with the big reveal of the new Faith museum.

In the mining art gallery in Bishop Auckland Market Place, a new selection of works from the 460 held by the Gemini Collection have gone on display, and as well as featuring well known male artists like Norman Cornish, Tom McGuinness and Robert Olley, it includes four painting by women.

Gillian Wales and Robert McManners, co-founders of the Gemini Collection, with the latest exhibition at the Mining Art Gallery, Bishop Auckland. Picture: SARAH CALDECOTT

“The exhibition tries to show the breadth of the collection so there’s a cross section of artists and themes,” says assistant curator Anne Sutherland. “People think of mining as a man’s world but female artists have portrayed it as well. We have a work by Marjorie Arnfield who actually went down a mine dressed as a boy - it was thought quite unlucky to have a woman underground so, in order to see what the world was like underground, she went in disguise.”

Her piece (above) shows women waving placards and protesting against pit closures in the 1980s.

It is alongside a piece by Gill Holloway (above) which shows the Angel of the North rising above a mound while beneath the angel’s feet, a cage drops to the seams below where miners are at work – the iconic angel, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this month, is built at Gateshead on the site of an old colliery.

A dramatic picture of light and effort by Robert Olley (above) is perhaps the showstopper of the exhibition.

“He was inspired by seeing a young lad sorting out shopping trolleys at a supermarket, and he thought ‘what was I doing at the same age?’,” says Anne, “and so the painting shows miners trying to get a coal tub back on the rails underground in the same way the lad was wrestling with the shopping trolleys.”

However, the most emotional picture is probably one by Tom McGuinness (above). It is called Women Waiting at the Pithead and it shows women, with faces reminiscent of Edvard Munch’s famous Scream, fearing the worst for their husbands who have been caught down below in a disaster – but the painting is also about the death of the mining industry.

“It is part of Tom’s ‘lost generation’ series,” says Bob McManners who with Gillian Wales has spent decades building up the Gemini Collection. “He railed against the closure of the mines in the Thatcher years, although over time his ire turned to sadness, so these wandering souls who have no focus to their lives – there’s even a woman without a face looking at the derelict pithead.”

The mining art gallery, like Auckland Castle and the Spanish Gallery which also reopen today, is available to the public from Wednesdays to Sundays from 10.30am to 4pm.

In March, the Spanish Gallery in the Market Place will be offering free talks and tours every Wednesday.

Auckland Castle revolves around the 13 supersize paintings of Jacob and his 12 sons by Francisco de Zurbaran, but in March, there will be a “missing women” exhibition to examine the stories of the females of the family.

The Weardale Railway will open in April with the first service up to Stanhope since 2019, and then in June archaeological excavations will begin in Auckland Park. On July 29, the Kynren nightshow will begin for its summer run of Saturdays and finally, in the autumn, the Faith museum which is the centrepiece of the project is due to open.

Gillian Wales and Bob McManners with the Tom McGuinness painting in the new exhibition in the Bishop Auckland Mining Art Gallery