Mathew Wayne Parkin

It Spread Through Gaps and Voids in Construction

A projection on a free-standing wall in a red-lit room, with the wall acting as the light source and a wooden bench in the foreground. The projection shows footage from a thermal camera with patches of different shades of purple, with the caption, ‘I got hope in my soul’.

It Spread Through Gaps and Voids in Construction
23-28 April 
XL Gallery, Newcastle University
Opening: 5-7pm 22 April 2026

This exhibition of work produced during a practice-based PhD brings together moving image, installation and photography to explore a gay sauna in Leeds that was destroyed by fire. The work uses witness accounts, reconstruction, and archival fragments. Moving between memory and official record, it considers how such spaces are experienced, documented, and remembered. What remains is partial — shaped by recollection, absence, and the limits of what can be recorded.

A projection on a free-standing wall in a red-lit room, with the wall acting as the light source and a wooden bench in the foreground. The projection shows the screen of a microfilm scanner with the caption, ‘I don’t know if you could document a place like that. Most of it happened in the dark anyway.’
A projection on a free-standing wall in a red-lit room, with the wall acting as the light source and a wooden bench in the foreground. The black-and-white projection shows three topless men at a pub-style table with the caption, ‘Strong enough to walk on through the night There’s a nice day on the other side’.
A dimly lit room with reddish lighting. In the centre of the image is a free-standing wall with a framed collage on it. Behind this wall are some wooden benches and a speaker on a stand. To the right is the start of a wooden chair sculpture, and on the left is the edge of a white vitrine with a clip-on light.
A red dimly lit room with two collages on the walls in silver clip frames and prominent radiators. A sculpture of two chairs assembled like a loveseat sits on a black mat.
In a dimly red-lit room, a sculpture of two chairs assembled like a loveseat sits on a black mat.
A deep white vitrine sits on wooden legs. Thin lamps on flexible stands are clipped to the sides, illuminating the dimly lit room with red light. The floor is wooden, and the walls are bare and white.
A deep white vitrine, lit red by two lights clipped to the sides, filled with scattered black-and-white photographs, some curling up at the edges.
A collection of black-and-white photographs, some with curling edges, scattered in a deep white vitrine illuminated by red light.
Two wooden chairs are bound together with white cable ties, showing wear and marks on the seats. The background features a wooden floor.
A digital collage in a silver clip frame on a white wall. A distorted greyscale poster or advertisement has been heavily damaged or overlaid with scratches and white streaks. The background is dark and cloudy, with large jagged diagonal lines cutting across the right side. A graphic is overlaid with text listing various fetish subcultures and event details.
Two wooden chairs are bound together with white cable ties, showing wear and marks on the seats. The background features a wooden floor.