The Mining Art Gallery

Opened in 2017 in the centre of Bishop Auckland, the gallery brings together the paintings of the Durham and Northumberland coal miners, including Ted Holloway and Tom McGuiness. The Most arresting work for me, however, is that by Norman Cornish. Like Lowry, this is appealing twentieth century street art. It tells the tale of community and togetherness fused by harsh working conditions in the shadow of the ever-present danger down the pit. The warmth and mutual reassurance of the local pub, the queue at the bus stop and for the chip van is conveyed, as the often hunched, bow-legged and round-shouldered figures are often physically very close to each other. Heads down, they communicate the drudgery and a degree of foreboding on the journey to work along the pit road. These paintings are as evocative of a particular way of life as anything else I’ve come across. It is affectionate and compelling art.

Because railways and coal mines were inextricably linked, examples of Norman Cornish’s work include the tracks, trucks and industrial tank engines that fussed about in the yards, making up the trains that the bigger beasts would then take off to the power stations and industrial towns. An ex-coal miner and former colleague once told me how much “the auld fellas” who drove these locomotives enjoyed their jobs, relieved, no doubt, not to have to go down the pit themselves.

In addition to the gallery in Bishop Auckland, we discovered further examples of the work of Norman Cornish, including Miners on Pit Road, at an exhibition at Bowes Museum entitled Kith and Kinship. The exhibition was certainly very well attended when we were there. It also features work by LS Lowry and is on until 19^th January 2025. The award-winning café at Bowes Museum was the icing on the cake [had it not been lunchtime].