Art attack

Today I paid my first visit to Baltic, the new centre for contemporary art on the Gateshead bank of the Tyne. The five-floored 'gallery' is so called because it's been converted from the old disused Baltic Flour Mill - and mighty impressive it is, too. Entry is free, and thankfully there's no pay-off for this season's corporate sponsors (Northern Rock) in the form of having their logo plastered all over the guide leaflets. Although two of the exhibitions (Chad McCail's "subversive" cartoon world populated by robots and zombies and 'The Cathedral', a photographic exhibition of work by four different artists centred on Durham Cathedral) left me rather cold, the exhibition of works by the Cobra group (artists from Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam in the immediate post-war period) was worth seeing - a real riot of colours, vibrant and energetic canvasses, abstract but not clinically so. There was also a chance to see the latest Anthony Gormley project, 'Domain Field', in progress: along with a team of artists, he's been making plaster casts of 240 local volunteers in order to construct figures made of "welded steel bars forming a three-dimensional drawing in space".