The portraits were first exhibited in December 2007 at Downing Street – the first and only time that new works of art, not part of the Downing Street collection, have been shown in the Prime Minister’s residence.  The portraits were then exhibited in the Cotswolds to raise awareness for a planned Maggie’s Centre in the region, and then in Glasgow.

The exhibition arrived in Newcastle for a special evening at the Great North Museum to raise awareness of Maggie’s plans for a centre at the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle.

Sam Taylor-Wood's most famous works include the sleeping David Beckham of 2002 and Crying Men series of 2004, featuring Sean Penn, Clint Eastwood, Jude Law, Daniel Craig, Paul Newman, and 23 other actors.  In 2007, Sam took a step outside her normal realm of work to photograph Maggie’s centre users at the stunning Maggie’s Fife (a Zaha Hadid designed building) on a sunny day in September. 

Sam said: “Every person shown has been affected by cancer, either living with the disease themselves or supporting a loved one through their own illness. I hope that the portraits have captured their strong and mildly heroic spirit. They were very brave to put their faces to this, as it can’t have been an easy decision.”

The photographs taken by Taylor-Wood of Maggie’s Fife centre users depict people touched by cancer. Some have been given a life-threatening diagnosis; others had completed their treatment. Some were carers; others had lost a loved one to the disease. The people in these pictures wanted to share some of their experiences of cancer, including the help they found at Maggie’s. The new Great North Museum acts as the perfect launch pad for the North East campaign and is a wonderful opportunity to display these relevant images, in such an impressive and familiar setting - the city of Newcastle.

Richard Smith, who is featured in one of the portraits, has had testicular cancer twice, the most prevalent cancer among men aged between 15 and 45. Richard, of West Lothian, said: “Having cancer opened up my empathy for other people. That’s partly Maggie’s and partly the experience of the disease. It made me reassess life; reassess what’s important; reassess how I want to be with others. Somehow it made me more caring, more understanding, more tolerant. I now want to do things to help other people. It had a fundamental effect on my life.”

Maggie’s North East will be on the site of the Freeman Hospital, Newcastle. It has been designed by leading architects Foreign Office Architects Farshid Moussavi and Alejandro Zaera-Polo whose dramatic designs have won the prestigious RIBA Stirling prize twice.

Building on the strong grassroots support, led by the Newcastle Evening Chronicle campaign, a North East Campaign Board, (consisting of a group of volunteers from across the North East who are volunteering their skills and expertise to aid Maggie’s North East) will be looking to drive the North East fundraising campaign forward. 

The board used the Sam Taylor-Wood exhibition to launch their fundraising plans for Maggie’s at a special night on June 17th. There were speeches by Maggie’s North East campaign chair Lorna Moran and oncologist, Tony Branson, who are instrumental in helping to make Maggie’s North East a reality.  The evening was hosted by Penny Smith from GMTV, a long term Maggie’s supporter.

Chair of the Campaign Board, Lorna Moran, said: “Having visited some of the other Maggie’s centres I know how very special they are and why we need a Maggie’s North East so much. It will be a place that offers a totally different environment from the hospital wards. It will be a place that anyone affected by cancer can go to catch their breath and be themselves. It will be a place to receive practical help and advice. Most importantly Maggie’s will be a place that you can make your own and know as a home from home. “

Katerina Kantalis from Maggie’s said: “There are 5,500 new diagnoses of cancer a year within this region with a population of over 2,000,000. Those people and their families deserve access to the support that only a Maggie’s Centre can provide.  I am looking forward to working closely with the board and with our various supporters across the region to make Maggie’s North East a reality.”

GMTV’s Penny Smith, who hosted the evening said; "Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres is an unbelievable charity. It is a cancer charity that provides support, free of charge, for people who have been diagnosed with any type of cancer. The centres have all been designed by world famous architects to create a space that is calm and tranquil so that people can get the specialist help they need in a place they can feel individual and valued and so they’re not just a cancer patient.

"I think that every community needs a Maggie’s and it is great that there will be a Maggie’s in the North East soon. It is fantastic that Sam Taylor Wood's amazing 'Portraits for Maggie's' are in Newcastle. They say that every picture tells a story and I think these pictures really capture how cancer can touch people of all ages, sex, race and background. And how cancer can impact on relationships and families.

"Maggie Keswick Jencks, co-founder of Maggie’s Centres, said that ‘cancer hits you like punch in the stomach’.  Cancer does have that kind of effect on people, it can knock the wind out of them and they need help to get their breath back, help to get back on their feet, help to live with, through and beyond cancer. That is what Maggie’s is all about."