- Play Hard
- 26th Nov 2025
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These new exhibitions at Baltic will transport you to other worlds
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Winter weather got you wanting an indoor adventure? Rainy days might be grey, but we know just the place to brighten up your day – Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art.
And right now, two major new exhibitions have just opened – one taking you on a dive beneath the surface of our planet’s oceans, the other pulling you into the hypnotic, dreamlike world of Uzbek filmmaker Saodat Ismailova.
If you’ve been looking for the perfect excuse to wander along the Tyne and step inside the Baltic’s world of international-scale art, consider this your sign.
The best part? It’s all FREE.
FOR ALL AT LAST RETURN
Level 4
There’s something so moving about experiencing this exhibition while standing just metres from the water. Perched on the River Tyne, the Baltic feels like the ideal setting for For All At Last Return, a group exhibition inspired by the very marine worlds that surround us – both near and far.
Covering more than 70% of the planet, our oceans are home to a wide range of ecosystems: coral reefs that shimmer in tropical shallows, icy North Sea shorelines, vast open oceans and mysterious deep-sea realms that remain barely understood. This new exhibition asks us to look closely at these environments – and at the growing pressures they face from overfishing, climate change and degradation.
The show brings together sculpture, photography, installations and film by British and international artists working at the intersection of art and ecology. Many have collaborated directly with marine biologists and oceanographers, giving the works a rare blend of scientific insight and imagination. The result is a kind of global voyage through underwater worlds – revealing the ocean as a place shaped not just by natural forces, but by histories of colonisation, extraction, resilience and renewal.
Expect to move from the reefs of the South Pacific to the tidal landscapes of the North Sea, all without leaving Gateshead. It’s immersive, thought-provoking and at times heartbreakingly beautiful. You’ll also find a newly commissioned Lightbox work by Caribbean artist Nadia Huggins glowing on the Ground Floor – a luminous prelude to what waits above.
SAODAT ISMAILOVA: AS WE FADE
Level 3
Step down one floor and the energy shifts entirely. Here, the Baltic presents the first major UK solo exhibition of Saodat Ismailova – one of the most influential contemporary artists from Central Asia. Working between Paris and Tashkent, Ismailova has built a remarkable two-decade practice exploring memory, myth, spirituality and the hidden rhythms of everyday life.
As We Fade marks the world premiere of her new double-channel film Swan Lake (2025), the centrepiece of a show that blends film, sound, sculpture and installation into a kind of sensory tapestry. Her work feels dreamlike yet grounded in real histories – particularly those shaped by the turbulent post-Soviet era in Uzbekistan, where she came of age.
The exhibition traces themes of transition and transformation: political upheaval, spiritual memory, suppressed knowledge systems and the threshold between visible and invisible worlds. Many of her stories centre on women, and on oral traditions that survive outside the written archive.
Alongside Swan Lake (2025), the exhibition features three key works from across her career – Zukhra (2013), As We Fade (2024) and Melted into the Sun (2024). Together, these pieces invite you to linger in spaces of uncertainty: the “in-between” states that accompany social change, where dreaming becomes both possible and vulnerable.
The history behind Swan Lake (2025) is especially compelling. Composed from archival films made during Perestroika – the era of intense transition leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union – it evokes a time defined by contradiction: hope and grief, chaos and liberation. As Soviet television famously looped the ballet Swan Lake for nearly 24 hours, millions watched without knowing their country was dissolving. Ismailova dedicates the work to the “children of Perestroika” and to the forgotten films that captured that surreal moment in collective memory.
Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead Quays, South Shore Road, Gateshead NE8 3BA
Rachael Ellis
Head of Content
After gaining a first in her BA Media and Journalism degree at Northumbria University, Rachael worked at Newcastle’s leading regional newspaper with her stories being picked up in national and global newspapers. She spent two very successful years giving a voice to those communities across the North East who otherwise…
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