GAteshead’s Baltic gallery opened in 2002 with great fanfare and high hopes. But “the Baltic has become the safely provincial test bed of the wannabe cutting-edgers. You know the kind of thing: formulaic novelty and predictable, in-your-face transgression, not to mention those darkened rooms containing videos that render visitors comatose. Fair enough, Bill Viola is a master, but how about the others? If the Baltic’s programme of institutional avant-gardism has been underwhelming, its managerial record has been abysmal.”