There was a definite chill in the air last Saturday afternoon but that didn’t stop a good crowd braving the great outdoors for We Are Eastside’s East Stride, a tour of some of the area’s key arts venues led by local historian Ben Waddington.
We started off from The Old Crown, which as Ben pointed out, perhaps isn’t as old as it purports to be. We then made our way to where much of what makes up Digbeth all began, at Bennie Gray’s The Custard Factory. Those hanging about didn’t appear to be the usual skater kids that frequent its skate park, they seemed to be a much more rag-tag bunch.
'Aggressive Localism'
It turned out they were the creations of people participating in the Craftspace Collective ‘Aggressive Localism’ workshop led by Juneau Projects. You’ll be seeing these Morris dancer inspired costumes worn by skateboarders in the Lord Mayor’s Parade later this year.
The Uses of Enchantment at Rhubarb East
From thereon we visited the newly opened Rhubarb East Gallery in Rhubarb Studios on Heath Mill Lane, which is exploring The Uses of Enchantment with some lovely fine art photography from The Jackson Twins and Vee Speers, whose child portraits I found particularly captivating. Rhubarb-Rhubarb’s Creative Director Rhonda Wilson spoke of her joy in at last having a space to display work:
For years we have watched while the sometimes extraordinary talent emerging from our reviews and mentoring schemes, has been shown by other people, both in the UK and in international spaces. Now we have the pleasure of exhibiting the results of our efforts, in collaboration with some of the world’s most interesting image makers.
The pod space in VIVID
We carried on down Heath Mill Lane, stopping off at Eastside Projects to enjoy The Curtain Show and hear Gavin Wade talk about the artist-led, ex-industrial space and VIVID, where Director Yasmeen Baig-Clifford told the story of its versatile pod space developed by architect Ranbir Lal, a perfect solution for an arts organisation renting rather than owning their premises.
Jim Simpson
Ex Black Sabbath Manager and Birmingham International Jazz Festival founder Jim Simpson popped by and chatted with Lisa and Jenny from Capsule about the rougher, tougher type of music that seems to stem from industrial Birmingham.
St Basil's by Steve Cadman
Ben’s tour also included elements of local history and interest, such as the amazing brickwork on St Basil’s headquarters, which used to be a High Anglican Church.
Pip McKnight
Whilst we were oohing and aahing who should pass by but Pip McKnight, who told us all about how 7 Inch Cinema began whilst Birmingham Film Festival was folding, which was a cloud with a silver lining as they got a lot of the old equipment!
Spacesuit at Grand Union
We got to have a chat outside Ikon Eastside, where many of the tour later got to enjoy Flatpack and Capsule’s screening of Burning, before crossing the road to find the tucked-away Grand Union. The current exhibition Gon-goozler is well worth a look with a fun space-travel theme that includes a spacesuit, a weather-balloon and of course, cheese, some of which had disappeared before the night was out.
Grand Union artist studios corridor
What was really impressive about Grand Union was the studio space, where about 8-10 artists get their own, cheap self-contained work units to get creative in. The artists we met were as happy as pigs in mud in this place and spoke of the need for more like it. Like VIVID, Grand Union are tenants rather than owners of the old industrial space, but the units are flatpack so should they need to move, their studios can move with them to be reassembled in a new home.
James Langdon and Ben Waddington talk the We Are Eastside typeface
We bumped into artist James Langdon whilst we were there, who spoke with Ben about his development of the distinctive We Are Eastside typeface. If you look carefully you’ll find the A’s are a particularly curvaceous treat and as Ben pointed out, not unlike the outline of Eastside itself, although whether this is by accident or design I’m unsure.
Claudia Borgna installation at Rea Garden
Last stop on the tour was the Rea Garden on Floodgate Street, where Arlene Burnett of Behind Closed Doors spoke about their development of the space, and resident artists Claudia Borgna and Alex Lockett of Project Pigeon explained their very different installations. Claudia’s plastic bag flowers looked like seeds from another planet had landed in the bottom half of the garden and taken it over.
Bluen with her chick by Project Pigeon
Project Pigeon is a longer-term installation in the space, which means we get to see the pigeons develop from eggs to fully-grown birds. I got to stroke Bluen’s tiny chick (above), which is now the healthy, strapping 28-day old bird below.
Alex Lockett with Bluen's fully-grown chick
Unfortunately Ben didn’t have the time to take us to see Friction Arts’ The Edge or The Lombard Method, but both are well worth taking the time to venture over to the other side of the High Street.
Curtains at Curtain Show, Eastside Projects
There’s been some interesting online discussion about We Are Eastside since its launch, including a brilliant post by Jon Bounds at BiNS about increasing engagement in the arts, both by simple awareness raising and more in-depth local collaboration. The latter is something I’d like to see lots more of Digbeth – there’s some amazing cultural stuff going on around here, such as Irish Heritage and St Patrick’s Festival Birmingham which, for whatever reason, feels completely unconnected to much of the arts activity in the area.
Cheese at Grand Union. Mmmmmm....
From my resident’s perspective, both camps are making interesting, creative and exciting stuff happen, so it would be great to see them bounce off each other more. I suppose that’s why I’ve kind of fallen in love with Friction Arts, because they are so embedded within the community. I’d love to see arts organisations reach out more and work with local people who are already getting together and doing brilliant things under their own steam, my guess is that all involved learn an awful lot!
This coming weekend sees the famous St Patrick’s Festival. The fun kicks off with a Festival Launch Party at The Irish Centre on Friday night, ‘a free evening of entertainment, dancing and a buffet’. To request tickets for the event email stpatricksbirmingham@gmail.com.
A Saturday of The Reel around The Bullring leads into the big Sunday parade, which starts with Mass at St Anne’s Church before the street parade and dancing around the St PatROCKs stage in South Birmingham College.
Post-weekend, the celebrations take a cultural turn with Irish film, literature and theatre events. NLP Theatre perform Singin` I’m No a Billy, He’s a Tim on Monday 15th March in The Paragon Hotel. On Tuesday 16th March you have a choice between an Irish Film Night at The Spotted Dog or a St Patrick’s Literary Festival at The Old Crown Inn. On St Patrick’s Day, Weds 17th March, Irish Storyteller Katrice Horsley will be weaving her magic at The Irish Centre, as will musicians John McNicholl and John Kiernan. Rather amazingly, all of these events are free.
We Are Eastside
Friction Arts' The Edge - part of We Are Eastside
Once you’ve recovered from the St Patrick’s festivities you’ve a little time to pause for breath before the launch of We Are Eastside on 27th March, ‘an online and printed guide to the artists, collectives, promoters and spaces helping to transform Birmingham’s industrial heartland into a thriving creative playground’. The weekend will be jam-packed, with the Flatpack Festival being joined by local arts organisations showcasing their wares.
On Friday there’s a Curtain Show at Eastside Projects whilst The Lombard Method goes all Cinematic on us. I personally will be striving to catch Monuments at Ikon Eastside and mischievous audio-visual antics Synth Eastwood: Fast Forward at The Rainbow Warehouse.
Supersonic 2009 - Capsule are leading We Are Eastside and I get to post a picture of someone's bum
Saturday promises to be rather magical, with the new Rhubarb East gallery opening with The Uses of Enchantment, ‘inspired by fables and fairy stories, nostalgia and psychology’ and Laterna Magicka at Ikon Eastside, which later hosts the new concert film Burning, featuring Mogwai. VIVID will be providing the late-night space to let your hair down, with an Eastside Plasticine Party of ‘Psychedelic claymation’ by Bruce Bickford, which I think I’ll need to see to understand.
If you’re still standing on Sunday there’s plenty going on, with Paul Sharit’s 70′s Flicker films at Ikon Eastside and Belbury Youth Club’s evening of haunted audio and creepy telly at VIVID. I love a good scare…
So there we have it – we can finally see an end to the long, bitter winter and taste spring in the air, with lashings of Guinness and culture in equal measure. Swap your winter coat for a fetching emerald green number and enjoy!
And then I learn that Mr Ralph has lost his early lead in BiNS Brummie of the Year and been overtaken by UB40′s Brian Travers, which is well deserved, especially for his sterling support for The Rainbow, but a little saddening all the same. I think I need some chocolate to cheer me up.
Back in September, Michael Grimes (aka Citizensheep) kick-started a lively online discussion about small but significant changes the Custard Factory could make as ‘It’s looking run-down, and suggests no-one really cares anymore about promoting it as a vibrant space, and no-one really goes there (except for loud music at weekends).’
A couple of months on and it’s looking even more under the weather – the boardwalk is more patchwork chipboard than flooring and going to the toilet is still a cold and uncomfortable ordeal. The website isn’t regularly updated, which can make it hard to find out what’s in store there. Far worse, a few tenants have suffered break-ins recently (I’m aware of three over recent months – two studios and one ground floor shop unit).
I’m not just saying this for a pointless moan – the Custard Factory is a vital piece of Digbeth’s vibrant make-up and is home to some of the most exciting elements of local life – Capsule, Rhubarb Radio and 7 Inch Cinema to name but a few (let’s face it, I could never name them all). As a regular visitor, seeing it fall short of its brilliant potential for a long period can be really frustrating, especially with its sister development Fazeley Studios serving as an example of how good things can be.
I’m hearing great rumors about the forthcoming opening of Devonshire House on Digbeth High Street. I really hope its restoration rubs off onto the original Custard Factory complex, and we can see it return to its former glory.
Thanks to Created in Birmingham and More Canals Than Venice for reminding me that Capsule’s tenth birthday is almost upon us (I’m rubbish at remembering birthdays, as my poor mother will testify). It seems VIVID on Heath Mill Lane will be playing host to the month-long birthday party:
Capsule will be taking over Vivid, an arts space in deepest darkest Digbeth where you can expect a number of exciting concerts, exhibitions and workshops with special guests including LIGHTNING BOLT, GEOFF BARROW of PORTISHEADS latest project BEAK>, MODIFIED TOY ORCHESTRA and many more. There will also be a night at the very prestigious Town Hall Birmingham with old and new friends as well as an evening with two heavy weight doom merchants SUNN 0))) + OM and of course plenty of cake.
Glad to hear there’s lots of birthday cake. VIVID will be hosting:
The launch party on 1st Dec with Monotonix and special guests Beestung Lips, Cum Dogs and Esquilax.
Another gig on 11th Dec with Pram ‘creating an eerie musical nightmare’ and Light Trap. After seeing Pram perform at Supersonic earlier this year, this is definately one I’ll make.
Afternoon tea with 7 Inch Cinema on 13th Dec with a light buffet with a healthy serving of films ‘of hairy men shouting and small dogs in space’. Weirdly, this is the one I’m most excited about.
Yet another gig on 16th Dec with Beak> (Geoff Barrow – Portishead), local lads Einstellung and Thought Forms.
‘Knowing Me, Knowing You’ (Aha!) on 17th Dec, a fee event with Created in Birmingham ‘bringing some of Birmingham’s most exciting independent creatives together for a quickfire evening of show and tell.’ There’ll be drinks, cake and music to keep the creative juices flowing.
A Closing Party on 19th Dec with the fantastic Modified Toy Orchestra, PCM, Calvados Beam Trio, Una Corda and Stinky Wizzleteat.
There’s lots more going on outside of the VIVID gallery over December too – check out Capsule’s Coming Up page for details.
My friend Antonio Gould once said that ‘living round here can be hard sometimes.’ He’s not wrong. I find Saturday mornings the hardest, when I’m torn between my love of lazy lie-ins and the Saturday Guardian, which sells out pretty early in the small local shops. I’ve found a compromise of sorts – going to the Alcester Street newsagents’ in my pyjamas when I awaken to buy a Guardian and one of their great bacon butties to take back to bed with me.
I usually indulge in flicking through the trashy magazines whilst they’re cooking up my sandwich. I almost dropped my paper last Saturday after opening Pick Me Up to find Pip McKnight staring back at me. Pip is a Custard Factory tenant – one half of 7 Inch Cinema, the other half being her husband Ian Francis ‘with his trendy jeans and scruffy hair.’ He’s only gone and run off with her mother.
Okay, so no he hasn’t. She was actually talking about her Stitches and Hos knitting group. Woke me up, though.
It’s been a busy week for the Ikon Eastside gallery. Thursday saw the launch of their exhibition of Andy Warhol films The Eternal Now. Empire, eight hours of footage of the Empire State Building, was popular but of course the most intriguing for me was Blow Job, showing the head and shoulders of De Veren Bookwalter thrown back in apparent ecstasy. I couldn’t help but watch thinking, ‘is he, or isn’t he…?’
The event was full of what Custard Factory-based cartoonist Alex Hughes calls ‘liggerati’. You know the type – the gang of same old faces that attend the opening of an envelope, get wasted on the free wine and live on a strict diet of canapes. Alex is building a cartoon strip made up of these usual suspects and their lives of ‘ligging’. I’m rather ashamed to say I used to be one of these myself and when I told Alex of my experiences I think I managed to contribute to a new character. I can’t wait to see what cartoon form they’ll take.
Last night the Warhol exhibition made way for Individual Happiness Now, an evening of of films by Len Lye, presented in collaboration with 7 Inch Cinema. A lot of them were adverts he was commissioned to do, which made me lament the state of telly advertising today. Yes, we have some cool stuff like the Sony Bravia bunnies but we’ve also got DFS, which leaves my celebrity crush Charlie Brooker‘squirming…half to death with embarrassment by-proxy’ for the poor actors.’
And then there’s those bloody John Henshaw Post Office ads, which in my eyes are made all the worse by the fact that the GPO used to commission Len Lye and advertise with the fantastic art films we saw last night. N or NW was by far my favourite.
Don’t forget your postcode, you’re not properly addressed without it.
1. Brian Duffy – a brilliant talk from a truly astounding intellect, which made Pete create Brian Duffy Has A Big Brain. We also got a sneak preview of Modified Toy Orchestra’s latest pop video starring Hula Barbie. Brian and Mike in Mono’sZX Spectrum Orchestra later that day was very impressive, if only to learn the prison-stretch lengths of time these guys spend programming to produce the simplest sounds. Geek Pride!
2. Heavy Metal in Baghdad – a heartbreaking film as much about the Iraqi’s impossible living situation as it is about metal band Acrassicauda.
3. Nintendo Gameboy – instrument of choice for DJ Scotch Egg, Marousa (think Animal playing a mac) and the fantastic Fuck Buttons.
Last night Vivid launched Flux-Fest, ‘a season of Fluxus inspired activity featuring rare film, participation, food and performance’.
I’d never heard of the Fluxus movement before and find I cannot begin to attempt a definition after experiencing it because it defies one, as shown by George Maciunas’ headache-inducing Flux family tree, Expanded Arts Diagram.
However I do appreciate Fluxus’ fondness for good food and drink. The tasty dumplings from Feng Ru-Lee’s Secret Recipe was nicely followed by SharedTable’s pretilly boxed gingerbread cocks, a tempting appetiser to their FluxFeast on 9th July. All washed down by Island Bar’s especially-created cocktail Subversion, a surprisingly tasty snot-green concoction served in a variety of strange receptacles.
I only got the full effect of this when I walked out of the room and re-entered to see crowds of arty types talking earnestly whilst drinking out of teapots, squeezy sauce bottles and, in one poor guy’s case, a dogfood bowl. There’s something impish about the spirit of Fluxus which really appeals to me.
Refreshments were followed by playful performances by original Fluxus member Al Hansen’s daughter Bibbe, with her husband Sean Carrillo. This culminated in Car Bibbe, a chaotic orchestra of car horns, revving engines and slamming doors which was great fun to watch and I’m guessing even better to take part.
Flux-Fest continues until 13th July. Try to catch the Re:Flux Fluxconcert at St Paul’s Cathedral tomorrow evening or Flux-Films at Vivid on Saturday if you’re about this weekend. 7 Inch Cinema’s presentation Flummoxed at The Rainbow next Thursday 3rd July also looks pretty promising. See Vivid’s website for details.
