There are four bulbous cocoon-shaped brown entities hanging from the ceiling of Empty Shop’s main exhibition room, suspended by thick brown strings, their bases dripping a dark treacle-like substance onto what appear to be miniaturised sand dunes (or just piles of sand) spread out on the wooden floor. In the Pink Room next door, the artist Neil Armstrong’s site-specific installation entitled ‘Today I’d like to lie down and become a wasp’s nest’ is garnering further attention as people contemplate the stand-alone structure consisting mainly of what seems to be wood and patterned cloth nailed together.

I’ll be honest – installation art is not entirely my cup of tea, doesn’t really float my boat, light my fire, whatever clichéd expression you’d choose to employ. It might just be a sign of my philistine nature, or sheer mental laziness, but I’ve always preferred the more clearly-categorised (to my mind) types of art as opposed to that which I feel simple perplexity when faced with. Jenny Saville over Tracey Emin; Hockney over Hirst any day (both of my choices, Saville and Hockney, being mainly painters – no surprises there). This being the case, having stepped inside the tiny collection of rooms that is Empty Shop only to be faced with attention-grabbing installations (albeit with other more traditional forms of art hanging in the background), I did endeavour to keep an open mind and take the art as it was, which is arguably the best advice I can give to anyone looking to get themselves down to the Empty Shop Open and experience the latest Durham’s art scene has to offer.

Carly Baker’s ‘Feeding Frenzy’