Last night Boxxed opened the doors to its new home of The Wild Building on Floodgate Street, which has formerly hosted the Flatpack Festival and Jibbering Art, amongst others. I’ll let Boxxed’s About page do the introductions:
boxxed has been created to provide a unique and meaningful programme of arts exhibitions and music events, alongside providing services, space and support to local artists, musicians, creatively minded individuals and collectives.
Alongside that core ideal, the directors of boxxed have partnered with local educational institutions to provide equipment, services, workshops and space to teach their arts & media orientated courses. [The main local educational institution Boxxed are currently partnered with is Birmingham City University.]
Boxxed kicked things off with an art exhibition, courtesy of local lad Chu & Tiger Beer, who are celebrating the New Year of The Tiger with 5 exhibitions across the UK. Chu’s creation is a big box in the middle of the warehouse space, the inside walls painted with red-and-blue outline images best viewed through 3D specs.
Using his own bare hands he’s put together a huge wooden 3D cube inside our warehouse, and after putting on the magic specs, intrepid art goers…will get to see the end result of Chu’s stunning work. He’s composing a piece of art that’s not only in ’special glasses’ 3d, but in physical 3d, melting the edges of his giant wooden box. Genius? We think so.
I’m not sure how long the exhibition is on display for, or what’s in store for Boxxed, so watch their space and call in if you can.
The Frankfurt Christmas Markets open in Birmingham city centre tomorrow, and it would seem Floodgate Street in Digbeth is on the migratory path of the stalls coming in from Germany.
As more and more people work in Digbeth, finding a parking space becomes increasingly harder. But take care to park considerately and not block off driveway entrances, or you’ll be called nasty names.
It’s not every day you see men washing shellfish in urban Digbeth. But that’s exactly what workers from Eastside Projects have been doing for the past couple of days on Floodgate Street. It’s in preparation for the launch of the new exhibition Abstract Cabinets on the evening of this Friday 25 Sept.
Abstract Cabinet Show is a public sphere of groups, collaborations, galleries in galleries and other phenomena joined together to execute functional constructions and to alter or refurbish existing structures as a means of surviving in a capitalist economy.
So expect to see these shells turned into into something thoroughly useful.
Other events coming up at Eastside Projects include a Comedy Night on 8th Oct (7pm, as part of Birmingham Comedy Festival), the Mother of All Book Launches from 6.30pm on 22nd Oct and the launch of The Event on 6th Nov, which looks particularly promising:
For the Launch of The Event, the 2nd festival of artist led activity in Birmingham, there will be two new major performance works. Stan’s Café will provide live commentary of the launch night as a durational performance from the top of the large tunnel structure in the gallery and Juneau Projects present a new multi-media performance in the form of a live gig with hand made instruments/sculptures, outfits and sound reactive visuals and audience percussion.
Seems Digbeth Residents’ Association’s calls for more local amenities haven’t gone unheeded. We now have a new cashpoint on Floodgate Street. Didn’t seem to be accepting my card when I tried it, though. We also have a new bus stop on Alcester Street. What buses stop there and where they go remains a mystery.
On Thursday evening I went to Jibbering’s Shambala Art Exhibition at the Wild Building on Floodgate Street. It was a great ligging opportunity with widely-advertised FREE BEER, although you’d have to have been a heartless soul not to donate something when all profits were going to the Banunule School for Orphans, Kampala, Uganda & Malawi Education Project, Malawi.
I felt a lot more relaxed than I normally do at these art launch events, probably because it didn’t feel as self-consciously uptight as most. There were crowds of people chilling out in the back yard and the only hint of officiousness was the pretty girls with clipboards taking bids for the art pieces.
But I must admit to getting a lot more excited by the YrWall in a side room than I did about the artwork. It’s like a giant telly screen you use a spray can topped with an infa-red light to graffitti over, or in the designer Tommo Hogan’s own words:
‘YrWall is a new and exciting interactive drawing tool where users create images on a large wall using a modified spray paint can. The can contains no paint, only a button and an infrared light which is tracked using a computer and a camera. A digital palette is provided on the left side of the wall which enables the user to work with digital paint, images and animated clips.’
It’s loads of fun and according to my new friend graffiti artist Newso, pretty close to the real thing. It’s been doing the festival rounds this year and has been really successful. I can see why, when users can email themselves their creations to come home to festival souvenirs in their inbox, which they can forward at will. ‘This email will have a link to the YrWall website, from which t-shirts featuring their design, with the option to include your festival logo, can be ordered.’ This guy’s a genius.
The Shambala Exhibition remains on display in the Wild Building until this Friday 17th October, open 10.30am-6.30pm.
