I’m at once amused, baffled, frustrated, and in concordance with this demarcation: it makes perfect sense in terms of following the existing lines of major roads etc, but I’m galled by the idea that what was once intended to be the ‘Cultural Quarter’ (I don’t know if that’s still the case) can be defined by a staked out territory and then filled in. Of course departments and policies need to name and define, but I have trouble mapping that onto creativity and culture which I conceive of more as bubbling out from particular points where circumstances collude to allow things to transpire…
As well as a lot of building sites and demolition, Nikki also finds uncertainty from her GPS devices, resulting in pretty pictures of lines:
The spring reopening of Ikon Eastside this Friday evening is coinciding with exhibition launches by VIVID and Eastside Projects as well, which means it’s Digbeth Art Crawl time again. I asked Gavin Wade, curator of Eastside Projects, about this and the Halloween 2008 crawl and it seems that these three spaces do get together and consciously arrange this. Great stuff. So here’s the drill:
VIVID’s launch of new work by artists Ran Huang (UK) and Nika Oblak & Primož Novak (Slovenia) starts earliest at 6.00pm and goes on until 9.00pm. Get there on time to see Mike Stubbs, Director of FACT in conversation with VIVID resident Ran Huang. Exhibition continues to Sat 16 May.
Next to open is Ikon Eastside at 7.00pm with an exhibition of work by Polish video artist Józef Robakowski, a pioneer of independent Polish film, between 1970-2000. Exhibition continues to Sun 07 June.
At 7.30pm Eastside Projects will open their doors to launch The Sculpture Show, which features: Athanasios Argianas, Art & Language, Mel Bochner, Susan Collis, Michael Dean, Tatiana Echeverri Fernandez, Lothar Hempel, Torsten Lauschmann, Marko Lulic, David Medalla, Scott Myles, Elizabeth Price, Tommy Střckel, Sue Tompkins, Franz West. Exhibition continues to Sat 13 June.
After that, I don’t know about you but I’m heading to the pub for a pint as I’ve a feeling my head will need some serious clearing. All exhibitions are free admission.
I celebrated St George’s Day in a rather weird and wonderful way. After a busy day’s work at ACE dance and music I went to street artist Chu’s solo exhibition at the Floodgate Kino Wild Building, curated by Jibbering Art.
What was most impressive to me was Jibbering’s use of the old warehouse exhibition space. They closed off the downstairs entrance to the main area, forcing punters to go directly to the upstairs gallery to see an impressive range of Chu’s work.
This meant our first sight of the main warehouse space, and Chu’s big box, was from the very best viewpoint – above at the upstairs entrance.
Be sure to stand on the Sweet Spot whilst you’re in there. The Fifty One Degrees exhibition is on until 6th May. Jibbering Arts’ next exhibition there, Line Steppers, is on 22nd-31st May, with a private view on the evening of 21st May. Chu will be back with a range of graffiti and street artists including Cyclops, Kid Acne, Pure Evil, Rowdy, Sickboy, Timid and Vermin. They sound like a nice bunch. Like the Seven Dwarfs of my nightmares.
After the Jibbering exhibition I headed to Eastside Projects, where I was lucky enough to take part in one of Bill Drummond’s The 17 choirs. It basically consisted of standing in a darkened room making non-verbal noises on given sharp notes to vocalise the 5 Ages of life, which was a lot more fun than it sounds. After we’d completed the exercise, our efforts were played back to us, the five different notes laid over each other to reach what felt like a physically crushing crescendo. It sounded scary and amazing and I wish I could play it back to you. But I can’t, because after each 17 choir hears its work, the piece is immediately deleted.
After this Bill chatted to us about his work to date on The 17. He would like to return to Birmingham to see a choir to perform the Cast score on a manhole cover in Selfridge’s car park. Only silly Selfridges won’t let him. Please make some on and offline noise about this if you can to try and convince them, Bill feels he’s found his perfect spot and it would be sad for The 17 to miss out on it because Selfridges are too blind to see what freakin’ fantastic opportunity this is.
He also told us all about The Curfew Tower in Cushendall, Northern Ireland, where artists stay for temporary residencies and leave behind them any form of work inspired by their surroundings. At the moment the space is being curated by a Belfast gallery but their time there is due to end later this year. Gavin Wade expressed an interest in Eastside Projects being the next to curate the space as he saw some parallels in the cumulative, collecting nature of visiting artists leaving their mark behind them in the tower space and Eastside Projects. Looks like something interesting could potentially happen here.
After that I stopped off in The Spotted Dog for last orders, where they’re building a huge smoking shelter in their back garden.
Considering I stayed within one square mile, I fitted an awful lot into St George’s Day!
Of Comic Nerds and SteamPunk – The Digbeth Slacker posts his thoughts and photos from the Birmingham International Comics Show at Millennium Point – ‘by far the best graphic novel shindig this side of London’.
Artist Curator Gavin Wade – NP Exclusive Video Interview – Billed as ‘an exclusive video interview with artist curator Gavin Wade at the opening of the new gallery Eastside Projects in the heart of Digbeth the new cultural quarter of Birmingham UK’. It’s actually someone who filmed their brief moment with Gavin on a mobile phone, but what he says is interesting. “There’s a lot of references from…radical exhibitions that have never been carried through.” Eastside Projects intends to do just that.
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