In and Out of Sight is a dynamic and evolving exhibition encompassing drawing, sculpture, film, installation and live works by artists Catherine Bertola, Cath Campbell, Jo Coupe and Jennifer Douglas. Performance is the starting point for the work and while none of the artists would describe themselves as performers, increasingly they are realizing the role of performance inherent in the research, making or presentation of each artist's work.

The exhibition offers a fresh approach to the exhibition model, where exhibited works will develop over time, informed by collaboration with academics, technicians, artists, local community groups and the public. For these seven weeks, the usually ‘private’ processes of research, production, installation, conversation and engagement become part of the exhibition itself.

The artists met at Newcastle University in the late 1990s and over the last 20 years have maintained close personal and professional relationships, sharing studios and exhibiting together. Although they have their own distinct, individual practices, this shared experience over time subtly unites them. These commonalities will reveal themselves over the seven-week ebb and flow of the In and Out of Sight exhibition.

Catherine Bertola creates installations, objects and drawings that respond to particular sites, collections or historical contexts. Underpinning her work is a desire to look beyond the surfaces of objects and buildings, to uncover forgotten and invisible histories of places and people as a way of reframing and reconsidering the past. In her new work she will use different processes to re-animate photographs of empty domestic interiors through the inclusion of her own presence.

Cath Campbell's work encompasses drawing, photography, sculpture, digital printmaking, installation and large-scale architectural interventions. She has a particular interest in the socio-political meaning invested in an object or image when dislocated from its original surroundings and placed in a new context. Campbell appropriates found images and materials and, through a process of manipulation, re-presents them to question the disconnect between reality, desire and experience. For UHGalleries she will develop a series of performances that explore ideas of the troubadour and traditional folk song using found film footage to provide the narrative.

Jo Coupe's work is rooted in a fascination with impermanence. From photography to installation, video, objects and sound, she takes research as the starting point for works that investigate transience, precariousness and unpredictability. Her most recent work explores electromagnetism as an agent of change, movement and thought. For In and Out of Sight Coupe continues her research in electromagnetism, taking the human voice as the focus for an immersive sound installation.

Jennifer Douglas creates large-scale paintings, sculptures and installations using a register of purposely codified materials to explore relationships between inherent function and renewed significance, twisting interpretation. Her current work references the working environments of heavy and light industry and their painterly equivalents within the history of modern and contemporary art. Douglas will explore the physicality of painting, mapping the outcomes of the actions used to make marks in a series of large scale paintings.