Twin artists honoured to share the spotlight at Baltic gallery

It was 2001, must have been early summer. An excited call from Northumbria University press office. Twins, they said, graduating together in fine art.

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They might have said identical twins. Probably did, since that would have further sparked a journalist's interest. But that led to my first encounter with Laura and Rachel Lancaster, from Hartlepool.

I can’t remember what was said but I do remember being impressed with their paintings - and impressed that they were painters. Aspiring artists seemed video-fixated back then.

What would they do next? Where would they go? Questions I always asked art students in those days because most had their sights set on London.

This, remember, was a year before Baltic opened, injecting yet more excitement and possibility into the North East art scene (The Angel of the North had appeared in 1998, the year the Lancasters began their degrees).

In the case of the twins, the answers to those stock questions are that they continued painting and stuck around.

They have shared a studio since 2012 in Newcastle’s Ouseburn Valley - 36 Lime Street - and now here they are with a big joint-show about to open at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art.

And I'm meeting them again, each now an artist with a reputation and following. While some paintings here are newly commissioned by Baltic, others have been loaned by owners including the Government Art Collection, which bought a painting by Rachel in 2023.

This is the first painting exhibition in Baltic’s Level 3 gallery space for 10 years, the twins tell me. It’s also their first shared exhibition in a major institution.

So, are they nervous, excited?

"Bit of both really," says Laura.

"It’s quite an honour to be given this platform. I think there were nerves but now we can see it looks good we can relax a bit.

"They're expecting nearly 1,000 people at the preview and it's exciting to see there's that appetite for art."

"Because we've both shown a lot elsewhere it’s nice to have this calibre of gallery space in the region," adds Rachel.