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Getgood Link

Written by Nicky Getgood on Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 ( Start discussion )
Tags: custardfactory, Digbethisgood, links, toblog

The Custard Factory – Agent One & JWA with Another Designer Clothing Sale, 30th April – 1st May – Yet another sample clothing sale, where there’ll be some small-sized bagains to be had.

Getgood Link

Written by Nicky Getgood on Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 ( Start discussion )
Tags: custardfactory, Digbethisgood, links, toblog, vaadgallery

The Custard Factory – Wolverhampton University presents The Future Exposed at Vaad Gallery, 24th to 29th May 2009 – Wolverhampton University end of 3rd Year Photography Degree Show. Private Viewing: Saturday 23rd May 5pm – 8pm. For further info see The Future Exposed.

Getgood Link

Written by Nicky Getgood on Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 ( 10 responses )
Tags: custardfactory, Digbethisgood, links, nme, TheRainbow, toblog

If Dalston Is The Coolest Place In Britain, God Help Us All – In The NME Office – It’s not the article I found interesting here, but a comment on it left by ‘Whom?’ which argues Digbeth, not Dalston, is the coolest place in Britain:

Digbeth in Birmingham is the coolest place I have been to in this country. I’m glad the NME have ignored it. People from London have their heads so far up their bumbums which makes anywhere in London pretty undesirable. Places like the Custard Factory, The Rainbow, And all the random warehouses are constantly doing something creative and fun but it always gets overlooked. Id rather have all the good stuff overlooked by magazines and the media than live in Shoreditch anyday.

Okay, a bit in the ‘angry anti London’ vein but I definitely agree with the first point – Digbeth is the coolest place in this country. Biased? Moi?

Getgood Link: Exhibition now open

Written by Nicky Getgood on Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 ( Start discussion )
Tags: Digbethisgood, frictionarts, links, theedge, toblog

Exhibition Now Open! – Yet more insights into the Echoes From The Edge exhibition from Friction Arts, to whet my as yet unsatiated appetite. Damn its incredible, fully-booked popularity.

The show resembles a performance, yet there are no performers, a contemporary art exhibition, yet the work is very accessible, and a celebration of local history, yet there are layers of meaning to every exhibit.

Mayday Art Crawl

Written by Nicky Getgood on Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 ( Start discussion )
Tags: eastsideprojects, fact, gavinwade, ikoneastside, jozefrobakowski, mikestubbs, myverywncinema, ranhuang, sculptureshow, Vivid

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.

Strange St George’s Day

Written by Nicky Getgood on Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 ( Start discussion )
Tags: billdrummond, chu, cushendall, eastsideprojects, fiftyonedegrees, floodgatekino, gavinwade, jibberingart, linesteppers, selfridges, the17, thecurfewtower, thespoteddog, wildbuilding

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!

From the sportswear era through to more obscure labels of the paninaro times of slick Italian and French dressing.

Getgood Link: The Cause for the Canonisation of John Henry Cardinal Newman

Written by Nicky Getgood on Monday, April 27th, 2009 ( 2 responses )
Tags: bishipcazabon, cardinalnewman, Digbethisgood, links, stanneschurch, toblog

The Cause for the Canonisation of John Henry Cardinal Newman » Bishop Gilles Cazabon at Alcester Street, Birmingham, England: “Cardinal Newman, faithful servant of the Church” – Canadian Bishop Gilles Cazabon was the principal celebrant at Mass in St Anne’s Church on 22nd April and talked about Cardinal Newman during 1849-1852, ‘that often overlooked period of Newman’s life, when he undertook such demanding pastoral work here in Digbeth.’ I did not know this. A lovely post with some good photos of the church on Alcester Street that made me go ‘ooohhh…well, I never’. You can also download the full text of Father Chavasse’s homily on PDF.