There’s a free Artist and Designer Talk and Book Launch at Eastside Projects from 6pm this evening:
Join us for the launch of the publication ’Jennifer Tee: Local Myths/Love Spells’, which accompanies Tee’s exhibition at Eastside Projects. The book is designed by Richard Niessen and James Langdon and includes a new essay by Monika Szewczyk. At the launch the book will be available at the special price of £15 (RRP £20), and Extra Special People members can pick up a copy for £12.
Entry is free but booking is essential. Email info@eastsideprojects.org or call 0121-771-1778 to reserve a place.
You may have noticed these Save the Arts posters appearing across Birmingham recently. Created by artist Mark Titchner, they were commissioned by Eastside Projects in response to proposed Goverment funding cuts to the arts.
Gavin Wade, Eastside Projects (Birmingham Post picture)
You’ll also find this huge billboard poster demanding ‘CUT US DON’T KILL US’ outside the Eastside Projects gallery on Heath Mill Lane. As gallery director Gavin Wade told the Birmingham Post:
…the idea behind it is a very serious one. We’re saying that we’ll do whatever it takes to keep our beloved art world from being harmed. The art scene in Birmingham is thriving. In the last few years we have built up a lot of respect for this city and the creative community who work here. Now we have a worldwide reputation. Cuts will do major damage to everything we have built up here.
However not all local arts organisations are supportive of Save The Arts. In this particularly thought-provoking post, which needs quoting in is entirety, Friction Arts admit the campaign…
…makes me feel a bit sick inside. I’ve said before how disappointed I am about the de-politicisation of art, how artists rarely say anything really meaningful. Mostly these days artists ‘explore’, ‘examine’ or ‘reference’ things – but so rarely seem to have something to actually say. But threaten their pockets and suddenly there is a national movement of people, poster campaigns, protest marches, etc. When there are so many things to protest about, our involvement in a clearly unjust war, poverty, all kinds of societal injustice and what do artists do about this – nothing, on the whole. Now, I don’t think it is a good idea to pull funding from arts, but I also think that pulling funding from all kinds of public services is just as bad, and is going to affect people a lot more directly and painfully than arts funding cuts are likely too. Yes, times are going to be tough, but we’re going to need to look at new ways of working, new ways of making our art and our livings, without relying on the public funding jamboree we’ve been used to in recent years. Art and artists will survive, well, the good ones, the inventive and committed ones will. Perhaps there will be opportunities and benefits in the new financial landscape – more partnerships, collaborations, support networks, new methodologies and approaches. The arts don’t need saving, it’s not like art is going to die if there isn’t so much funding around, and maybe, just maybe, the arts will emerge from this stronger, and more relevant to people’s lives. Let’s be a little less self-interested and a bit more entwined with the rest of society – that way maybe next time everyone will campaign to save the arts, not just us.
From 6pm tonight in Eastside Projects there’s the launch of the first group exhibition in the second gallery area. The work is by three young Birmingham-based artists Gene-George Earle, Joanne Masding, Ultra High Temperature (initiated by Rebecca Bibby). The exhibition remains until closing time tomorrow (16th October). You can read the full press release blurb here.
Tickle your funnybone at Eastside Projects tonight from 7pm with Doug Fishbone’s ‘The World According To Me’, which should get you thinking as well as laughing:
Doug Fishbone’s ‘stand-up conceptual art’ approach is presented in both video works and a one off performance as he introduces a warped imagination of recycled outrage and excess, providing the arresting, repulsive, elaborate visual tapestries of fact and fiction, myth and propaganda, comedy and advertising, making movies in Ghana and hypnotising the audience into submission.
Entry is £3 or free to Extra Special People. Above is a sort film of Doug Fishbone talking at the Union Gallery, London in 2008.
Helen Brown from Grand Union, tackling the ‘lack of decent studio provision’.
Robin Kirkham and Harry Blackett, the brains behind the Birmingham art zine An Endless Supply, giving local creatives ‘an incentive to make something’.
There’s tonnes of the stuff – in the galleries, on the streets, in the garden, at the bus stop… Here’s a quick run-down of what’s going on (be sure to schedule in a Saturday morning lie-in – Friday is going to be a long night!):
At The Rea Garden, Graham Dunning’s ‘Visitor Centre: an excavation of sound’ is now open daily from 11 – 4pm until 3rd October. ‘As well as the evidence of site excavations and sound works in the main shed, there is also some of the objects of interest found whilst digging on display in the small green ‘shed gallery’.’
The Last Tape opens at VIVID tomorrow (Wednesday 22nd Sept) with a launch event from 6pm. The work is British artist Harzoon Mirza’s ‘film and sculptural assemblage’ which ‘sews together Krapp’s Last Tape a one-act play written by Samuel Beckett and Mirza’s exploration of post-punk pioneers Joy Division’. It’s at VIVID until 16th October.
Local Myths at Eastside Projects
On Friday 24th Sept it looks like your best bet is to start the art crawl at Eastside Projects, which is opening its doors at 6pm for the launch of ‘Local Myths’ by Jennifer Tee in the main gallery and Elizabeth McAlpine’s ‘Square Describing a Circle’ in the second gallery.
In Local Myths ‘Tee’s sculptural forms lie, stand and hang…’ – two suspended mobile works counterbalance a grounded 3.5 metre tall marble column which has the text LOCAL MYTHS carved out of the surface. The column is set to be a long-term work at the gallery that will later ‘be located in a permanent site in the Eastside area’ – would be interesting to know where’s in mind for this.
‘Square Describing a Circle’ is a sculpture that will hold two projectors facing each other which use ‘the two essential elements of film: light and time’ to maintain a square projection of captured sunlight that moves ‘a degree at a time during the course of the day’.
Hiker Meat at Grand Union
VIVID will be open again on Friday evening for you to pop into on your way to Ikon Eastside, which is open from 6pm for the launch of Danish artist AVPD’s new exhibition ‘Hitchcock Hallway’, which like the film Director uses ‘spatial effects to create psychological intensity’. When you try to get in, you’ll find the gallery entrance is replaced by a door. ‘What lies beyond is for the visitor to discover.’
If you manage to re-emerge it’s just a quick skip across the road to Grand Union for the grindhouse film fever of Jamie Shovlin’s ‘Hiker Meat’ – ‘One Trip You’ll Never Forget’ with the fans and musicians of fictional German noise band Lustfaust, who will be performing a live film score. The exhibition contains graphic material that is not suitable for children, which sounds promising.
Friction Arts' Inside Out Festival
Last but not least it’s time to venture across Digbeth High Street to Friction Arts’ The Edge on Cheapside for the launch party of Inside Out. Brought to you FOR ABSOLUTELY FREE in association with Sonic Asylum, there will be ‘Drawdhino type cleverness from Antonio Roberts and his Fizzpop cohorts, Live acoustic loveliness from Youssouf Karembe (from the Dogon tribe in Mali) and the Wilderness of Manitoba (from the harmony tribe in Canadia) as well as installations and artworks from our A45 project (connecting Coventry artists with Brum)’.
This big bash will kick-off a jam-packed weekend that includes:
Art trails around Digbeth that take in transformed bus stops, ‘hidden’ artworks and contributions by the Rea Garden and Lombard Method.
A Saturday night ‘Happy Artist’ disco and social club with Dr David Ethics, Brendan Higgins and DJ Miserable Bastard.
A Sunday morning Artists’ Brunch with Stoke Newington Airport, Quarantine and Brian Duffy.
An exhibition of works from the festival at The Edge from Monday 27th Sept.
So there we have it – a pretty exciting weekend in store for Digbeth (please let me know if I’ve missed anything, it’s hard to keep track with so much going on). Be sure to keep your cameras, mobiles and gadgets charged and handy, there will be much to record!
Things are gearing up for what should be an action-packed Highgate Funday this Saturday 4th September. Friction Arts have been working hard filling up the Sports Zone, Kids Zone, Health & Beauty Zone and Arts Zone with treats such as a bouncy castle, 7 Inch Cinema tent, face-painting, Eastside Projects stall, pedal go-karting, dancing, eyebrow threading, trick tennis and a Graffiti Board workshop. There’ll be live entertainment throughout the afternoon from the likes of St Eugene’s Choir, Stand-up Stanhope comedy, Paradox, Nick Anderson and Buddy the Dog.
So join us from 12pm in Highgate Park on what should be a lovely sunny day. And whilst you’re there, please pop and by the Heroes & Heroines tent and say hi – I’ll be in the Heritage and Place section (look for the maps and sofas) collecting peoples’ Street Stories and would love to hear yours. Hopefully see some of you there!
It’s a good time to be a book-lover in Digbeth. On Saturday, I went to see Inbindable Volume at VIVID – a video installation by Karin Kihlberg & Reuben Henry projected onto three large screens with narration that ‘describes the lifespan of a building from conception to abandonment’, but what I loved about it was the lingering shots of Birmingham Central Library’s Brutalist architecture and lots of lovely books…
Birmingham Forward: a symbol for endless demolition?
After I watched the film it was time for local historian Chris Upton and author Catherine O’Flynn to discuss their reactions to the piece, which were pretty insightful. Catherine described herself as being in a ‘perpetual state of nostalgia’ for lots of lost Birmingham buildings and wondered aloud if the hammer on the Birmingham Forward symbol is a motif for the endless demolition that takes place? Both her and Chris seemed to agree that, whatever our feelings towards the aesthetics of Brutalism, to wipe away the physical mark of an important piece of Birmingham history would be like erasing a piece of the city’s memory.
Fellow book lovers may also be interested in a talk at Eastside Projects this Thursday 19th August from curator Moritz Küng in the third of a series of book talks:
In the spirit of ‘Curating the Library’ (founded by Küng at deSingel in 2003) Küng has been invited to select publications to become part of the Eastside Projects Library. His selections have been on display at Eastside Projects throughout ‘Book Show‘, and on Thursday Küng will discuss how each title informs his practice.
I’m a big fan of books, not just what’s written inside them but the books as physical objects in themselves. Dusty covers, rustling pages, scrawled blue ink inscriptions on the title page – all overly romantic, slightly fetishistic reasons why I love nothing more than a day out in Hay-on-Wye.
So I was rather taken with The Book Show at Eastside Projects, which launched on Friday evening. There were big bulky books.
There were torn up books.
There were foreign language books.
And there were the sort of books that needed no translation.
And then there was the total absence of books – there were the shelves and library trollies for them, but these were completely empty. I found it a little spooky – where had they gone? It was like entering the world of Farenheit 451.
.jpg "The Last Tape at VIVID")
