A career spent at the highest levels of public life shows little sign of slowing down. Sir Ian Wrigglesworth talks painting, politics and people to Alastair Gilmour. **********
 The huge portrait on the office wall suggests that sitting at the desk in front is a megalomaniac and an admirer of 20th Century despots. Either that, or here is a man with an acute sense of humour coupled with an egalitarian spirit. For, staring down the back of Sir Ian Wrigglesworth's neck is Vladimir Iliyich Lenin - Russian statesman, leader of the Bolsheviks and originator of Marxist-Leninism. Fortunately, the twinkle in Sir Ian's eye indicates that there's nothing more sinister hanging in the air than wittiness and an impish poke at leadership. "I've got my ten reasons why I like him here displayed beside the painting," he says. Playfulness is confirmed - with a serious note, in case anyone should get the impression that a man who heads up a multi-million pound property company, former MP and recently-installed chairman of the Baltic Centre For Contemporary Art, is a closet Communist. Sir Ian is chairman of Gateshead-based, fast-growing property company, UK Land Estates, which is targeting nationwide growth as it moves towards a £1bn valuation. Founded less than ten years ago by Sir Ian and Chris Whitfield, has built up an extensive portfolio through some high-profile deals. Now the man who led the North-East Capital of Culture bid has returned to the cultural frontline at the Baltic, pledging to make the region's flagship contemporary art gallery "more visitor friendly". He is delighted to take up the new position. "The Baltic has had an absolutely tremendous start but the big challenge now is to sustain the reputation and to carry it on," he says. "It has got to embrace a wider audience than it has so far. It is tremendously important that we improve the visitor facilities at Baltic in every respect and I think there is quite a major job of work to be done there." Sir Ian says UK Land Estates' managing director, Michael Spriggs was taking more of the workload off himself and chief executive, Chris Whitfield, leaving him free to take up the Baltic appointment. The first important task is to recruit a director to succeed Stephen Snoddy, who resigned in November. Four new trustees have already been appointed. "I am strongly in favour of cutting edge, contemporary art," he says, " but artists and the gallery have to communicate what that's all about to the audience. I want it to be an international icon, and it's already getting established as that. I want it to be like the Guggenheim in Bilbao, or a big gallery in London - a place where great new, cutting-edge art is produced and displayed. "The Baltic is not a Laing, it's not a Shipley, not a National Gallery, it's an active, creative centre. The best example of that is Antony Gormley and his Domain Field. I want to do stacks more exhibitions like that with popular appeal." The Wrigglesworth hand will remain firmly on the region's economic tiller, however, and he is not afraid to criticise where he feels it is due - and as any art critic likes to do - bring issues out into the open and stir up debate. He warns that efforts to revive the North-East economy will fail if they are led solely by Government and that the region will only reach parity with the national average by increasing the number of home-grown businesses. Also, strategies run by regional development agency, One NorthEast, will have limited success, as it cannot treat businesses "like flocks of sheep". Speaking at a public lecture at Newcastle University, Sir Ian said: "Reading One NorthEast's regional economic strategy reminds me of George Brown's national plan. It failed because it was too prescriptive, too complicated and it tried to second-guess the market." He criticised "the astronomical sums of public money being spent to support private business", including £200m spent by One NorthEast on five business Centres of Excellence. "This is a programme with a desirable idea," he says. "But what I found is that every other regional development agency is doing the same." He says there needs to be 31,000 new businesses in the North-East to take it up to national average levels, and attracting inward investment is not a substitute for encouraging enterprise. This is a long-held view - he tells of how, being brought up in a working-class household in Stockton-on-Tees, most of the family had been employed at the local Malleable Iron Works - 300-year total that included his grandfather starting in 1866, through his father working 53 years there, along with two uncles, his brother and several cousins. "One of the keys to the lack of entrepreneurialism in the North-East is the continual employment of families with big enterprises." he says. "It is assumed you will do that and that you are always going to do that. You just did not think, shall I start a business?" The young Wrigglesworth became a involved in Stockton politics with Bill Rodgers, who later became one of the founders of the SDP, and, after working for the NUT, the Co-operative Party, then National Girobank, he was selected as Labour candidate for Teesside Thornaby. "I was always on the right of the Labour Party and my position, really, has not changed," he says. He started to develop his business career during his time as an MP. He was a non-executive divisional director of Smiths Industries from 1975 to 2000; acted as a consultant to the First Division Association, the civil service staff association, for two years, and also to Barclays Bank in his final two years in parliament from 1985 to 1987. After that he became deputy chairman of John Livingston & Son Ltd of Middlesbrough, an engineering machine-tool and industrial property group, and the following year became a director of Fairfield Industries, responsible for the London office and its property portfolio. In 1995, he met his present business partner and they formed UK Land Estates. Facing Lenin on the opposite wall of Sir Ian's office is an oil painting of a suit on a wire hanger. It is simple, direct, extremely well executed and almost as much of a talking point as the leader of the October Revolution is. "It reminds me of one of my sons," he says. "He was always methodical - still is - and had every suit and item of clothing hanging in his room, on picture rails and door handles. There was nothing in the wardrobes, though." This light approach to art will surely filter right through to the Baltic's audience. It had better. Big Brother Vladimir is watching. ********** The portrait on Sir Ian Wrigglesworth's office is accompanied by an explanation as to why it is there. It reads: 1 It's provocative and a talking point.
2 It reminds us of the extraordinary power and danger of ideas.
3 It reminds us of the extraordinary power and danger of leaders.
4 It reminds us of their impact on the world in the 20th Century.
5 It's counter-cultural. A communist in a capitalist den.
6 It's striking.
7 It's technically quite a good painting.
8 It's the dead genre of Russian State Art, so a collector's piece.
9 It will probably make money (pace Lenin!)
10 I like it. | 
