Video from Birmingham | SCHUDIO – online Chu – Grafitti artist Chu is filmed decorating Adderley Street and preparing for his Jibbering Art exhibition, Fifty One Degrees at The Wild Building, Floodgate Street.
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!
Jibbering Art are hosting graffiti artist Chu’s solo show ‘Fifty One Degrees’ at the Wild Building, 104 – 108 Floodgate Street, Digbeth. The exhibition is on display 24th April – 6th May 2009 with the Preview Night: 23rd April from 6pm.
Chu’s new exhibition, Fifty One Degrees charts a journey in the UK from the town of Walsall to the city of Birmingham, along the A34 road, the flagship route for bus number 51. This journey passes Chu’s secondary school, crosses the busiest stretch of motorway in Europe, co-habiting with a plentiful supply of pedestrian walkways and vehicular spine routes through socially disparate areas and estates throughout north Birmingham.
12 new paintings and simultaneous, limited edition, screen print releases will be shown alongside a warehouse space containing an installation created specifically for this long awaited comeback show.
Flatpack Festival Birmingham – The festival programme is now online. If you look at the venues you’ll see Digbeth features heavilly, with the Custard Factory Theatre, Eastside Projects, The Edge, Fazeley Studios, South Birmingham College, Ikon Eastside and Floodgate Kino (Wild Building) all being put to good use. If you’ve time to venture a little further afield, you might want to check out the Filum chosen by yours truly, Felicia’s Journey, at The Victoria on Sun 15th March at 2.00pm.
Jibbering Records in Moseley to close – But Moseley’s loss is Digbeth’s gain because ‘we are all set to move into a new multi-use venue/arts centre in Digbeth, The Wild Building.’ More ‘details and rumours’ will be available soon.
2009 sees the very welcome return of 7 Inch Cinema’s fantastic Flatpack Film Festival, ‘a celebration of eclectic, genre-bending cinema where the magic of early film rubs shoulders with the best new animation, graphics, and live music.’
The festival, taking place 11-15 March, is set to make the most of Digbeth and Eastside ‘in venues ranging from Floodgate Kino, a warehouse in Birmingham’s Eastside district which will be transformed into a picturehouse for the weekend, to art project spaces IKON Eastside, Eastside Projects, The Edge and the Electric…’ It also looks like they’ll be bringing the poor, neglected Curzon Station to life.
It seems the Festival also falls in with St Patrick’s Day Parade weekend. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a nice, Irish filum.
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.
Custard Factory – Lost in S.P.A.C.E. – That’s lost in the ‘Society for the Promotion of Artistic and Creative Enterprise’. The first exhibition will be held in the Custard Factory Gallery and runs from Thursday 23rd until Thursday 30th of October and features work from painters, furniture makers, jewellery designers and milliners amongst others. Entry is free, so becoming the next Saatchi and Saatchi art collector needn’t cost the earth.
Make Thursday 9th October an essential date for your diary! – Jibbering is proud to invite you all to the Birmingham leg of The Shambala Art Exhibition Launch, at the incredible Wild Building, 104-108 Floodgate Street, Digbeth, from 7pm til Midnight. The exhibition features the work of 30 heavyweight, cutting edge, internationally acclaimed artists.
Blog Action Day 2008: Poverty – Birmingham does it with a Social Media Surgery for Birmingham community and voluntary groups 5.30-9.00pm on Wednesday 15th October at BVSC, 138 Digbeth B5 6DR. If you’re social media savvy and have the time to spare, get in touch with Nick Booth.
Emilie Autumn at Barfly on 3rd October – bit of a shaky Youtube camera video, but I missed the performance and this makes me think she’s kooky-bonkers-crazy in a kind of good way.
Digbeth/Deritend Conservation Area – ‘Birmingham City Council has prepared a draft Conservation Area Appraisal and draft Supplementary Planning Policies for Digbeth, Deritend and Bordesley High Streets (Digbeth/Deritend) Conservation Area. Public consultation on the document will run for a period of six weeks from Monday 6th October to Friday 14th November 2008. Your comments are welcomed.’
