Created in Birmingham

The lovely Ben Whitehouse made an excellent point on Twitter this evening – we spend time celebrating the various celebrities of Birmingham, but there are some terrible glaring omissions too.

On the top of Ben’s list (by default, she’s the easiest to make a case for..) is Dame Barbara Cartland – BORN IN EDGBASTON!  Other missing talent includes: David Lodge, John Wyndham, Barbara Cartland, Dexy’s Midnight Runners, Sir Barry Jackson, Arthur Conan Doyle.  Admittedly, Dexy’s strikes me as the odd one out in that list – but even so, it’d make for an eclectic alternative ‘walk of fame‘ instead of the obvious Ozzy Osbourne and Frank Skinner.

If you were to add anyone to the walk, who would it be and why?

And if you were to create a more ‘cultural’ walk, where would you put it and why?

Okay.  Still trying to creep back into things after spending ludicrous amounts of time in a darkened room with no technology to make me worse.  If I’ve missed your ‘thing’ then sorry, and if you have a ‘thing’ you think is good, tell me about it!

In the meantime, two things that compliment one another have come to my attention.

Firstly, an opportunity:

INTER?OGATION: WALSALL

Call to Artists:

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to become a secret agent for a day in order to interrogate the public spaces of Walsall.

Using the New Art Gallery Walsall as a base you will investigate the artist’s role in the post-industrial world through one of four methods:

INTER?OGATION: ACTION RESEARCH     (09/09/09)
INTER?OGATION: CONSULTATION         (16/09/09)
INTER?OGATION: COLLABORATION     (23/09/09)
INTER?OGATION: INTERVENTION         (30/09/09)

INTER?OGATION: WALSALL explores the impact that one artist (you) can make in one place, in one day.

This programme of work is organised by Longhouse and the New Art Gallery Walsall, working with lead artist Anna Francis (who can also be found here), and is designed to investigate the impact of short, sharp interventions within the public realm.  Deadline for expressions of interest is fairly soon – 12pm Friday 28 August 2009 - so go visit the site to find out more.

Secondly, I really enjoy the idea of creative practice being fused with more spy-like activities – interrogations and investigations.. where everyone gets to be a secret agent and have their own missions!  So for those of you whose toes are curling at me daring to mention WALSALL in a CiB post, I wanted to temper that with a signpost towards a great Birmingham artist – Nikki Pugh. I feel she really embodies this excitement within her practice, but best of all has taken the time to document in detail how she’s used this approach with great effect in her “How to Wow” series.

Do you know of any other local artists who work in this way?

This Friday will see the culmination of three weeks’ creative activity by forty apprentice artists in Birmingham, as Gallery 37 hosts an arts showcase at Pavilions Shopping Centre.

Now in its eleventh year, Gallery 37, the award winning Birmingham City Council backed arts training programme, offers young people from Birmingham aged between 16 and 24 years the chance to discover and develop their creative talents and interests.

Sponsored and hosted by Pavilions Birmingham, this year’s students have been working alongside professional artists in collaboration with four of the city’s leading cultural organisations: The Birmingham REP, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and Sampad (South Asian Arts).

From 4.00-5.30pm, the finished artwork will be displayed at the project’s city centre hub, Pavilions, at Moor Street level.

The Deputy Lord Mayor of Birmingham, Councillor Chauhdry Rashid will be attending, and Gallery 37 artists will deliver speeches and take part in performances.

There will be an opportunity to see a live performance from The REP, ‘The Way Back’, a vibrant new piece of children’s theatre devised entirely by the Apprentice Artists telling the story of three young people setting out on an adventure.

Performances staged in collaboration with Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and Sampad will also be screened at the Showcase.  Visual art inspired by the work of artists in Ikon Gallery’s current programme, including Carmen Herrera and Birmingham based artists Simon and Tom Bloor will also be on display in a window installation at the Gallery 37 hub.

Continuing their support of the arts, Pavilions have sponsored a celebratory meal and will display the work as a lasting legacy of the project for shoppers to enjoy.

Well, hello stranger. I just popped in to say hello and tell you all about An Endless Supply, a zine (if you will) created by some of the movers / shakers / candlestick makers of the Brum arts scene. It’s a monthly, black and white, print-to-order, A4 booklet.

I was invited by the curator of the latest issue, Kate Pennington-Wilson to the launch party held at The Victoria on Thursday. This latest issue is spawned from  a piece of micro-fiction from Birmingham-based artist, Edward Wakefield.  Titled ‘Midnight Silverfish Around The Hot Freezer’, the narrative continues thru text and illustrations from the following: Simon Baker, Ana Benlloch, Lavep Blucher, Nadia Chalabi, Rhys Coren, Olly Forrester, Caitlin Griffiths, Lewes Herriot, Bethan Hodges, Anthony Johns, Michael Kirkham, Amy Lee, Rosa Middleton, David Miller, and Stuart Tait.

There were 4 live readings, the first, apologies -  I missed the title, consisted of two people reading passages simultaneously, which worked well as it encouraged you to think about how we listen (the performance style was loosely based around hypnosis tapes and subliminal messaging). The second, a piece by Olly Forrester really reminded me of old spam emails, with a loose narrative which weaves in and out with no real grounding, which worked well and was reminiscent of The Brother Mcleod‘s animation, Spamland. The other readings were let own a little by the writers need to perform in character, notably Tom Waits.

Being loosely linked with Ikon Gallery has ensured the venue was packed to the rafters and teeming with artistic spirit. This sort of publication is going to become more popular over the next few years as there seems to be a ever-growing popular fetish for physical handmade reading matter.

They are currently looking for submissions of work, be it a drawing, a photograph, a pattern, a piece of writing, a text, etc, etc.

Thanks for the thoughts and input into the future of CiB.  I hope it didn’t seem I was suggesting it be disbanded – I wanted more to open up debate on how technology itself has moved on from when CiB began and that the direction/organisation/intention of CiB needs looking at.  Your suggestions have been very interesting and insightful – many of you proposing things I have been musing over anyway (eg. a collaborative approach, funding avenues, etc.) and in the next few weeks I’m going to be following some of these things up.

In the meantime, Birmingham’s creative communities continue to toil away and many things have been going on.  Here’s a snapshot of where we’re at right now!

‘Hey for Lubberland!’ can be spotted gracing the canals around Brindley Place.  This work, by Simon and Tom Bloor (and part of Ikon’s off-site projects) will be in situ on the towpath behind Bank Restaurant in Brindleyplace until 13th September 2009.  Visitors can be transported by this working barge, and whilst onboard peruse the floating library of utopian design.  The title ‘Hey for Lubberland!’ was derived from a 17th century English ballad about the New World, mistaken for utopia, but in fact a kind of fool’s paradise.  You can be transported between 13:00 and 17:00 on Tuesdays – Sundays, and best of all admission is free!

If you’re interested in creative networking opportunities, then there’s a new group which will have it’s first meeting on August 13th.  Creative Playground is being organised by Steve Gray and Kate Manion, and offers:

..a chance for people who work in a professional capacity in the creative and digital sectors to get together for drinks and a chat, make new friends and hopefully make some new collaborations as well. Ultimately it is about strengthening the city’s creative community and we’ll be looking to the RDAs and various bodies for support to help us do this.

It looks like a slightly different group of people to those you might meet at BSMC etc. and will hopefully prove rather interesting!  You need to signup with meetup.com and then apply to become a member as there is a selection process as explained here:

The ground rules of joining are: 1) You must be in a professional role within the creative industries, 2) You or your business must be located in Birmingham, 3) You must fill out all the introductory fields in your profile with sufficient detail, 4) You must upload a photo of yourself to your profile. No company brands etc.

Also on Thursday 13th August is the private view of a brand new collection of work, entitled SAMPLE:

New work has been created by a range of Midlands artists including Daniel Westwood, Martin Donnelly, Matt Clugston, Steve Ellis, and Joe Mitchelmore.  The work will be available to view online after the launch at the SAMPLE website, so even if you can’t make it you don’t have to miss out!

And lastly, so that this post isn’t completely ridiculously long, on a transatlantic note, Birmingham-based photographer Chris Keenan (who recently featured in the Visual / Art of Ideas 2 exhibition) has had a piece of work selected for a world-class international exhibition, Art of Photography.

This year they received 16,000 entries from 57 countries.  111 images were chosen for the final exhibition and Chris Keenan’s Franz Joseph Glacier (above) was one of them. The selection was made by Charlotte Cotton, curator and head of the Wallis Annenberg Department of Photography at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).

If you’re likely to be in and around the San Diego area any time between 29th August 2009 and 1st November 2009 then stop by the Lyceum Theatre Gallery and marvel at some Birmingham talent!