Stepney Western
Harry Lawson
NCA - Gallery One & Two
Saturday 15th March — Saturday 26th April, 2025
open: Thursday - Saturday, 12 - 5pm
Opening event: Saturday 15th March, 3-7pm
Thursday 27th - Saturday 30th March - Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival
NCA is delighted to announce Stepney Western, an exhibition comprising a new film by Newcastle-based artist / filmmaker Harry Lawson and archival photography from Richard Blosse, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dean Chapman, Mik Critchlow, Martine Franck, Chris Killip, Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, Tish Murtha, Davey Pearson and more. At the heart of Stepney Western is Lawson’s experimental documentary, made over the past two years in collaboration with a group of young inner city horse riders from Stepney Bank Stables in Newcastle. It is loosely centred on their Alternative Provision programme — a unique alternative for young people in Newcastle who struggle in mainstream education settings.
Recasting Byker as the Wild West, Stepney Western sits at the porous boundary between fact and fiction combining recontextualised iPhone clips shot by the riders and archival material from North East Film Archive with Lawson’s own footage. What emerges is an intergenerational portrait of this community, incorporating fragments from the 2005 CBBC series The Stables (made with teenagers at Stepney twenty years ago). The film is complemented by a sequence of archival photographs drawn from the rich local collections of AmberSide and the Ouseburn Trust, as well as Stepney’s own archives. The images offer a new perspective on the North East’s social and industrial history and reimagine dominant cultural narratives on regeneration in the area. All photographs operate as an active part of Stepney Western; images considered minor, disregarded or as yet unseen take on a new and urgent resonance when seen through the prism of the Western genre.
Full details for the events programme will be announced soon.
Screening times
12:15pm | with audio description (HOH)
1:00pm | with subtitles
1:45pm | with audio description (HOH)
2:30pm | with subtitles
3:15pm | with audio description (HOH)
4:00pm | with subtitles
The film’s duration is 40 minutes.
Harry Lawson, Stepney Western (2025). Courtesy of the artist and Newcastle Contemporary Art
Harry Lawson (b. 1994) is an artist and documentary filmmaker from Sunderland. He has been commissioned and supported by BFI Doc Society, Arts Council England, Sky Sports, Wellcome Trust, Jupiter Woods, Block9 and The FA, amongst others. His work has been shown on BBC One, and featured in publications such as The Guardian, Huck, Plaster, Crack, Resident Advisor, and Copa90. Lawson’s 2020 film, Meat Rack, was selected in The Observer’s Guide to Summer Culture and featured in the photobook Temporary Pleasure, published by Prestel. In 2023, he exhibited Millwall On The Screen across two separate exhibitions; first as a site-specific installation, then as a gallery show — the three-screen film ‘asked viewers to consider their own prejudices’ (The Guardian) and was described as ‘striking and unexpected’ (Huck Magazine). Recent exhibitions and screenings include Chemist Gallery (London), Zumzeig (Barcelona) and Floating (Berlin).
Stepney Bank Stables is a charity whose mission is to provide young people living in disadvantaged urban areas of Newcastle with access to horses and the physical, social and emotional benefits that brings. This exhibition represents the first outcome from an ongoing participatory art project directed by Harry Lawson.
Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, Ragman’s Horse and Cart by Union Road (Byker), 1970. Courtesy of AmberSide Collection
Stepney Western is supported by Arts Council England, BFI Doc Society Fund awarding National Lottery funding and Community Foundation. Project partners include Ouseburn Trust, AmberSide Collection, Seven Stories, Nexus, NewBridge Print Studio, Foundation Press, North East Film Archive, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival and Newcastle Contemporary Art.
