Art

Horace Panter exhibition

Horace Panter is the bass player in The Specials.

‘Blues Paintings & Beyond’ is the first ever exhibition by 2 Tone icon Horace Panter. His love of Chicago Blues and his fascination for traditional iconography provide the underlying theme for this unique ensemble of portraits and prints from his Chicago Blues & Other Paintings collection.

The exhibition, in association with the Teenage Cancer Trust, will be at St Pauls Gallery until 12th May 2012 (that’s Thursday).

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SHAG is a human hair sculpture. The hair has been sourced from wigmakers’ suppliers and originates from Europe and China. Additionally, hair donated by staff at Aedas has been incorporated into the carpet. SHAG contains over £700 worth of hair.

Bharti Parmar‘s work will be presented by Aedas Presents at Colmore Plaza until 1 June.

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48 Sheet

4th
Apr
2012

48 Sheet is back and bigger than last time, with arty billboards all over town and a central base at the Mailbox. It’s a great project, three cheers to everyone involved.

I think this sums it up pretty well:

Twitter @ryanDC Spotted a few @48sheet billboards

There’s an interactive map thing here too but try and get out and see them before they disappear at the end of the month. Got any faves?

48Sheet

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Bling rhino

31st
Mar
2012

Gay rhino

Personally, I think it’s brilliant news that, as the Birmingham Mail says:

HARD-UP Birmingham City Council is putting £10,000 towards the cost of a rhinestone-encrusted model of a rhinoceros to mark the entry to the city’s Gay Village.

and I’m pleased to see I’m not alone in that. Although the story goes on to say that the money will probably be repaid to the council anyway (it’s a s106 thing, planning law fans).

It’s a bit of a shame it’ll be all the way up on top of a building though.

There are some blog posts here showing how exactly one might go about making something like this.

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Fierce kicks off

29th
Mar
2012

Fierce Festival 2012 kicked off today. I wasn’t there to see Laura and (an apparently headless) Harun kick things off but here’s a photo from the Fierce Twitter account to prove it happened.

Twitpic via @fiercefestival

There’s loads of fantastical stuff happening. The obvious must-sees for me are the Dachsund UN, Track, the Holy Mountain Party (with a performance by the guy from The Knife) and… oh, I dunno I reckon it’ll all be good.

Even if it’s not great, you’ll at least have something more interesting to say on Monday morning when you get into the office and someone says ‘So what did you do over the weekend?’

As you’d expect, the website and brochure have all the info.

And while I’m at it, here’s a trailer.

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Culture Cloud

27th
Mar
2012

CultureCloud

CULTURE CLOUD is a digital space for artists to upload their artwork onto a web portal where a team of recognised national and international curators and audiences will vote for the works they like. The most popular and intriguing will be exhibited at New Art Exchange in August 2012 in a unique exhibition that will see two of the finalists crowned the winners of CULTURE CLOUD.

There’s something a bit odd about this one but I like the image and the mac are involved so here it is.

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Barr Street Gallery

18th
Mar
2012

Barr Street call for artists

I’d not heard of Barr Street Gallery before and, truth be told I’m in a rush and haven’t been able to check them out or anything. I will do later on though – in the meantime I thought I’d fling this up.

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VIVID to close

12th
Mar
2012

Announcement VIVID to close

Via VIVID:

The Board of Directors have been working closely with Yasmeen Baig Clifford, the company’s Director, to decide how best to move forward following the news in March 2011 that VIVID would be one of the 206 organisations to have their funding cut completely by Arts Council England from April 2012 as a result of the new national portfolio review process. After an extensive Feasibility Study, which consulted a number of key stakeholders, the decision has been taken that Birmingham Centre for Media Arts, which trades as VIVID, will close this spring.

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Ted Hiscock

27th
Feb
2012

Ted Hiscock is:

a Birmingham-based artist with a flair for drawing, oil and Gouache.

Wikipedia informs me that Gouache is “a type of paint consisting of pigment suspended in water”. I bet you knew that. Anyway…

His new exhibition, called ‘Sixty Five and a Half’, features a collection of his most recent paintings and will be on display at Number Nine The Gallery in Brindleyplace from 3 to 9 March.

You can preview the exhibition on his website.

Ted Hiscock

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The Sanitised City

21st
Feb
2012

Nikki Pugh’s talk at the last Birmingham Salon:

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A painting by Chris Murtagh.

born with every bright morning

This is in a way a continuation of my Digbeth series, most of the buildings are of that post industrial type, with some of them battered or missing, or past their prime

If you look really closely (or read this blog post) you’ll see that the buildings feature graffiti from some of the area’s more prolific artists.

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Irminsul: You Are Lost

A group of artists from across the UK are descending on Birmingham’s great Perrotts Folly in partnership with Trident Reach the People Charity part of the Trident Housing Group

There have been a few things at Perrotts Folly over the years – Ikon have done a few shows there, at least – but I’ve yet to get down there for anything. Maybe this time. The artists involved include Alexis Soul-GrayEleanor PearceAlex Carr, Fiona Eastwood,Gaetan SigonneyCaroline UnderwoodHannah Turner Duffin and Elizabeth Jordan, with texts contributed by Charlotte Levine and Jonathan Orlek. More info via Redstart Project.

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Mapping The Landscape is the:

Day to day blog of Artist Paul Hirst as he creates new work on his art residency at the Bond in Birmingham

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Factory Nights

2nd
Feb
2012

Factory Nights:

is a series of inspiring working sessions for ANY visual artists, photographers, writers, poets, musicians, filmmakers and any other creatives! Factory Nights is not a discussion event, seminar or workshop. Factory Nights are free sessions that simply provide an opportunity for creative people to come together in an interesting venue and supportive environment to make work or initiate ideas

The organisers are Rednile Projects and they’ve put out a call for “artists and anyone creative” for the next one:

Factory Night @ The Historic JA Crabtree & Co. Ltd. Factory (now the characterful  Lyndon House Hotel), on Thursday 16th February 2012, 6-8pm . In collaboration with Multistory and The Crabtree Society

 

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Or, more accurately, Google Maps in Eastside Projects. You can now use Google Maps to take a tour around the gallery and their Painting Show.

Eastside Projects on Google Maps

I’d seen the Google Art Project and I knew they’d started mapping inside shopping centres, airports and comic shops but I didn’t know they were doing anything in the UK. Fancy that.

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