WE have a treasure in Newcastle which I do not think we value enough. It’s called the Laing Art Gallery.

You can get a really good cup of coffee there at a reasonable price, but they also put on excellent exhibitions.

I manage to get to quite a few and many are curated by self-important people who are more interested in telling you their interpretations than simply explaining the background and letting the paintings or sculptures speak to you themselves.

The recent Henry Moore exhibition at Tate Britain in London was like that.

My interpretation of Moore is quite different from what the curator tried to make me think.

The current John Martin exhibition at the Laing is not like that at all. Julie Milne sets out the background and lets you understand the pictures yourself. Do hurry though. You only have until the end of this week to see it.

My only complaint is that the title, Heaven And Hell, is a bit limp. The title of the book about him, Apocalypse Now, is better, but my choice would be The Great Day Of His Wrath, which is also the name of one of his best-known paintings.

Martin’s pictures may be out of fashion now, but in their time they had a great following. They look to us like the sets of disaster movies.

Many of Martin’s pictures draw on biblical or mythological subjects to show great disasters confronting mankind.

So what does the exhibition say to us today? Are we going to face the apocalypse? Recent events in Japan could suggest we are unless we get to grips with effective ways of reducing our carbon emissions and living more in harmony with nature.

I couldn’t help thinking that Martin’s fantastic cities looked like the towers of Wall Street or Canary Wharf, and the whole edifice of cheap money out of thin air has come crashing down around us.

Whatever your conclusions, art is important.

That is what we are trying to get across with the Apollo Pavilion in Peterlee, so try to get down to see it some time and see what you think. Art should be for everyone and speak to all of us.

David Taylor-Gooby, chairman of the Apollo Pavilion Community Association