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).

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.

I think this sums it up pretty well:

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.