The picture above is Boundary II by Barbara Walker. Looking at it on screen really doesn’t do it justice though and I wholeheartedly recommend you go along to Birmingham Seen at BMAG to see it nice and big.

It’s a great exhibition with a fair few highlights – the early photography of the city is absorbing, the Derek Fairbrother timelapse is morbidly fascinating with few sticking around to watch it a second time and the 1940’s (?) plans for the city’s civic area were .

I also loved the paintings by Paul Hill, a long-time Castle Vale resident. Unfortunately it’s tricky finding any decent examples of his work online. I also liked Michelle Lord’s work, including this titled Ultimate City #1:

So yes, get along and see it if you can. It’s at the Gas Hall until 3 Jan.

© chrisunitt for Created in Birmingham, 2009. | 2 comments |

Swimming Without Water is a group exhibition taking place in January 2010 at Moseley Road Bath Centre.

Contemporary artists Flora Gare, Debbie Akam and Tim Skinner will create a site-specific exhibition with the aim of encouraging the local and wider community to rediscover Moseley Road Baths and experience them in a different way. It will also potentially help towards the conservation of a building of historic importance.

The Friends of Moseley Road Baths are currently campaigning to secure the building’s future. You can find out more about that on their website.

© chrisunitt for Created in Birmingham, 2009. | One comment |

From 12-14 November, Jo Gane will be exhibiting at The Old Science Museum, 144 Newhall Street:

Critically commenting on the traditional British landscape and our continuing search for an authentic and historical representation of it, Coventry based photographer Jo Gane questions the mythologies and values placed upon specific historical sites across Britain. Adopting the traditional wet plate collodion process for her work, the artist goes in search of relics and objects found within the customary British landscape, specifically sighting out those that hold some evidence of historic authenticity

Jo will also be in the gallery on Thursday 12th Nov from 2-6pm creating some of her glass plate negatives.

I’d not come across TROVE before:

TROVE is an arts organisation that uses Birmingham city as its gallery space. Often happening in unused spaces, in the back of vans or in gardens, TROVE brings to Birmingham some of the best emerging art talent from across the world as well as representing some local emerging Birmingham artists

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Starting today we’re setting up a project @ Punch HQ called “Counter / Culture” studying those who’ve begun changing the nation from our city’s streets; radicals, chartists, abolitionists, suffragettes, artists, rockers, bhangramuffins, rastas and punks.

If this inspires you, get in touch. Consider this a manifesto

The inspiration for this is the Urban Curators from Providence, Rhodes Island. The aim of their project is to:

engage the public in the celebration of the decaying urban environment, recognizing its inherent aesthetic qualities as well as the important role that it plays within our cultural habitat

Which they do by:

literally hanging gold, gallery-style frames in derelict spaces within the city, framing objects and views that are of aesthetic or cultural value

Their full mission statement is on the very fantastic Wooster Collective blog. As Ammo said, if this inspires you, get in touch.

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As part of the redevelopment of Digbeth coach station, National Express are working with EC-Arts on the Digbeth Public Art Project. It’ll be launched in December and will feature three permanent commissions:

• Boundary – “In essence the boundary fence of the Coach Station will be public art in both form and function”
• Irish Quarter Visual Art – “designed by artist Dave Sherry… The visual art installation will represent the Irish Quarter and encapsulates the history and vitality of the area, creating a landmark for the Irish Quarter and the City”
• Short Film – made by a group oy young people, this “will document the public art process, community engagement, artist interviews, workshops, events and the fabrication and installation process”

© chrisunitt for Created in Birmingham, 2009. | One comment |

So, in chronological order…

At the end of June this year, Terry Grimley revealed that a feasibility study was being undertaken into developing such a museum. The Arts Council and AWM had each chucked in £90k and the city council have apparently also contributed £200k ‘to enable Ikon to mount a programme of high-profile events in Eastside as a test bed’.

The idea for this was first mooted in 2006, around the time Ikon Eastside was first opened. Unfortunately I can’t find Terry Grimley’s article from back then.

Coun Martin Mullaney was quoted saying:

I’m keen to support this. We want it to be on a par with Tate Modern and the Guggenheim in Bilbao

and suggesting the site of the wholesale markets as the location. The Birmingham Central blog picked up on this, adding:

With the Wholesale Markets moving and a large space being created it would offer a central focal point to attract visitors to the Southside area and build on the creativity of Digbeth.

The idea was discussed by a panel at The Art of Ideas II – A New Museum for the 21st Century on 8 July, but I’ve no idea what was said. Does anyone know if there was a recording?

A few weeks later, The Guardian’s Matt Price asked ‘Does England really need another contemporary art museum?‘ He put some bones on the proposal:

From the public discussion earlier this month, it was clear that Watkins (Jonathan Watkins, director of Ikon, and the person leading the proposal) is thinking big: he wants vast spaces capable of presenting large-scale sculptures and installations, with an acquisitions policy aiming to collect the most celebrated artists currently working around the world

He also pointed out some of the rationale behind the project – that many towns:

don’t actually own much of the art they show; public collections of contemporary art around England simply aren’t as good as they should be. Arts Council England acknowledged this in a 2006 report, bluntly asserting that “regional collections in England do not represent the visual art of our time”

Providing some balance, he goes on to point out that many West Mids museums have good, specialist collections of contemporary art and that developing these might be worthwhile (not to mention cheaper). However, the conclusion to the article, and so Matt’s answer to the question, is ‘yes, it could be really good if it works’. Well, yes…

Curator and writer, Charlie Levine, chipped in with an article ‘Tricky: A new museum for Birmingham?‘. Although initially convinced by the arguments espoused at the Art of Ideas II, she sounded a few cautious notes and wondered whether it would not be better to invest in and support local, emerging artists ‘to create a successful and supportive art economy’.

Which leads us to the item that sparked this post – a news piece on the Arts Council website proclaiming that ‘Our chair welcomes plans for Birmingham contemporary art museum‘.

Arts Council chair Liz Forgan, at Ikon’s annual dinner this week, said:

It is truly ambitious. I know that it is early days, and the feasibility study is only just being developed. But Birmingham needs the visual arts to flourish in the city; it needs to realise its aspirations for the visual arts that it has already achieved in other art forms. People may say that it’s not an auspicious time to raise funds for such an ambitious project. But I say ambition is good!

We at the Arts Council support ambition and excellence and we will do our utmost to support you in this endeavour. Of course I can’t make any commitments, and I am sure you wouldn’t expect me to – not here, not tonight anyway! But I do want to say that we have supported you, we are supporting you and now we are keen to try to apply some of the innovation we have talked about tonight to find new ways of supporting you.

Although she also made some odd claims about Ikon’s existence halting the proliferation of lap dancing clubs in the city. You can download Liz Forgan’s speech here.

So where does that leave us? Well, the feasability study’s yet to be completed and there’s been very little mention of the cost of the thing so far, which must be a big issue at the moment. There seems to be a lot of intial support for the idea though, so I guess we wait and see what that report says.

© chrisunitt for Created in Birmingham, 2009. | 3 comments |

Friction Arts have been out in South Africa since the end of September on a project run by Visiting Arts called Square Mile. They’ve been working:

with local artists and Johannesburg Art Gallery to create a series of interventions examining the areas cultural, environmental and bio diversity

They’ve been blogging regularly and it’s been fascinating keeping up with what they’re up to. Plus the most recent post features bonus photos of giraffes, rhinos and elephants.

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his exploration of the infinity of data between 0 and 1, an abstraction of reality that challenges our perception of the codes present in everyday life

It was quite nice and sunny on Friday afternoon, so stepping off Fazeley Street and walking straight into a pitch black space was a little disconcerting. Especially with no-one else around, the air filled with a high-pitched whine and clicking with the large wall at the far end taken up by a projection of streaming data.

For a second it all felt a little too Poltergeist/Ring-esque – I half expected Sadako to start crawling towards me. That didn’t happen.

What looked like white noise from a distance turned out to be precisely determined; calculated data with it’s own, very particular, order (albeit one I couldn’t make out – but I’m happy to accept it’s there). Interesting, then.

data.tron will be at Ikon Eastside until 8 November, while on 24 November there’ll be an audio-visual concert – datamatics [ver 2.0] – by Ryoji Ikeda at the CBSO Centre, hosted by BCMG.

The work will also form the backdrop of Ikon Eastside’s closing party on 12 November:

Dress code is black and white, lights and atmosphere will be suitably monochrome, music and bands organised in collaboration with Colour

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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!

© Adrienne for Created in Birmingham, 2009. | One comment |

The Event - 2007

The first two weeks of April 2007 saw the culmination of a series of artist-led activities within Birmingham, and this was ‘The Event‘.  At that point in time, the number of artists choosing to stay and work within the city had increased, and an intensification of artistic production had taken place.  It felt very much like Birmingham projected a unique sense of identity, and it was easy to believe that the city held great potential.

Consisting of exhibitions and performances devised by ten of the brightest young visual art organisations in Birmingham at that point in time, the sixteen-day celebration focused on a myriad of event-based practices and exhibitions in such a way as to implicate the whole city into its logic.  Participating organisations included: a.a.s., Capital Art Projects, Colony, [insertspace], International Project Space, Modulate, Periscope, 7inch Cinema, Spectacle, and Springhill Institute.

A lot of interesting work took place, and indeed some of these organisations have developed and flourished (surely most notably 7inch Cinema) – but those without links to their work above, and even some who do have links, are either no longer working as artists / arts organisations, or have begun working under different names without leaving on online breadcrumb trail for me to follow.

In 2007, whilst not all that long ago, there was a definite sense of optimism and indulgence in the arts and arts practice – much moreso than we now have in 2009.  The recession will inevitably have played a large part in this shift, with organisations cutting back or closing down – but what other changes has Birmingham faced that has brought us to this point, so different to that of 2007?  Is there still intense artistic production?  Do people still believe that Birmingham has this great potential?  Have artists changed their practice in response to the current financial climate and retreated back into their stereotypical draughty garrets?

In a timely fashion, The Event has returned once more to open up and explore contemporary art making.  Through an open submission process, artists are invited to send proposals to be included in the November festival.  The deadline for proposals is quite soon – July 13th – but submissions can also be emailed.  I’ve included the details taken from the website below, but please send any specific queries to kaye@the-event.org I will be keen to see which artists are selected, and how their practice reflects the current mood of the city – and also how different the artforms will be, if at all.  Will The Event be inundated with digital submissions, and will there be any entirely virtual submissions running concurrently?

Open Submission

Deadline Midday 13 July 2009

The Event is a contemporary arts festival in Birmingham, showcasing the best in artist-led activity.

We are currently seeking proposals and submissions from artist projects and artist/curators in the Midlands for inclusion in The Event, November 2009.

Proposals with a budget of up to £2000 can be considered. Deadline for submissions is midday on Monday 13 July, proposals received after the deadline cannot be considered.

Proposals must include the following information:
Project proposal (maximum 200 words)
Brief biog/CV
Indication of project costs
Supporting material

Postal applications should be clearly marked:
BCAF Steering Group
The Event
Eastside Projects
86 Heath Mill Lane Birmingham
B9 4AR

NB. Please enclose a SAE for return of material.

e-mailed application should be compiled into one document and emailed to:
kaye@the-event.org

Please contact Kaye Winwood 07834 244 609 or email kaye@the-event.org with any queries.

© Adrienne for Created in Birmingham, 2009. | One comment |

I’ve often wondered why museums and galleries aren’t using their web presence in more innovative and useful ways.  I worked within a gallery for a number of years, and this gave me the unsurprising insight that many factors contributed to this: underpaid overworked staff, simply no capacity (in terms of time) to explore new avenues, gallery staff restricted to working within strictly defined roles with little room for experimentation, and those who do maintain the web side of things being under supported and in need of upskilling.  Plus above all, there are many challenges facing gallery collections (from conservation to valuation to interpretation and beyond) that the additional pressure of creating new ways of accessing that information sits at the bottom of anyone’s agenda, particularly when it could just end up as a copyright/intellectual property/Digital Rights Management nightmare.

Finally, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery have been brave enough to tackle these issues head on with the decision to publicly release their world-class Pre-Raphaelite collection, the largest in Europe, becoming the focal point for this work.  With assistance from JISC, BMAG appointed Birmingham-based digital agency TAK! after a five way pitch to design and develop a website application to achieve their goal.  And the resulting site is a beautiful, delicate and sensitive piece of design.  Visitors will be able to access high quality content which will enable schools, universities, and the general public to have a greater understanding of the collection in their own time, and in their own space – which in turn could encourage new visitors and raise the profile of the museum.

“TAK! have helped us create the largest online Pre-Raphaelite collection in the world” concludes Linda Suprdle, Project Manager at BMAG. “It’s a fantastic resource and provides an unparalleled level of access and quality to the works on display. Anyone with an interest in art should visit the site and discover the importance of the Pre-Raphaelites.”

I hope that this project will encourage other museums and galleries to consider making their collections accessible online.  They have the opportunity to create such valuable learning resources which could cross so many diversity and access barriers, and it seems a shame that the majority of artworks only ever see the light of day if and when a curator deems them relevant enough. Using online technology, all collections could eventually be available to view regardless of current exhibition theme!

If and when that does happen, I will be interested to see how the role of ‘the curator’ responds to that change.  The Pre-Raphaelite collection site already encourages users to create their own personal collections, so how far a leap would it be for people to share those collections and reasons for their choices with other users?  Imagine an itunes playlist or an amazon reading list – but for art, complete with personal interpretations, anecdotal thoughts, factual evidence and academic input.  THAT would be something I could become obsessive about!

© Adrienne for Created in Birmingham, 2009. | 3 comments |

Through these acknowledged satires we have become accustomed to the structures and artifices of The News. Gilligan does not take direct aim at newsmedia (it seems rather a redundant target). Instead, her film articulates the advanced Viewer, and the state of dramatic irony we have reached — newsreaders continue to play out their roles as narrators of reality to a distrusting audience.

(...)
Read the rest of Melanie Gilligan, Michael Stevenson, Emily Wardill at International Project Space by Harry Blackett (472 words)

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To celebrate, mac in association with sampad has awarded six artists’ commissions to create new site specific work. The commissions include three permanent pieces of art for the new building and three projects working with the people of Birmingham to reflect the new mac.

Inside The Building:

Sweet Nothings – conceptual artist Jason Bowman will work with a local glassblower to create a rotating mobile of glass-blown mirrored tears in a kinetic sculpture exploring our emotional responses to art and culture.

Sijelo – Myfanwy Johns, working with members of the Bosnian Cultural Centre Midlands, are creating designs for a new first floor carpet, an area of wood panelling in the new café and floor tiles in the foyer, using the patterns and shapes created through crochet.

50 Tiles – Sara Taylor will create a collection of 50 individually designed tiles representing 50 years since the mac vision was first introduced, with design influences including both the natural setting and trees of Cannon Hill Park and traditional Islamic patterns.

Outside The Building:

Amplifying The Map – Kate Chapman and Charlotte Goodwin are inviting people who live, work or play close to mac to re-discover familiar places and explore places they have never visited before, sharing their thoughts and observations to create an audio map of the changing landscape.

The City Sings – Artmusic’s Helen Ottaway is composing an anthem for mac to ring out across the city, played and sung by people of all ages and from all backgrounds and culminating in a processional performance leading to the new centre.

Time and Place – writer and artist Laura Guy is leading a participatory work that will gather public information and personal recollections to form a unique archive leading to a creative visual retelling of the story of mac and the significant presence it has in Cannon Hill Park.

The artists have their own website devoted to themselves and the artworks and will be blogging about the progression and development of the work shortly.

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John Akomfrah: Handsworth Riots – Twenty Summers On © Pogus Caesar / OOM Gallery Archive 1985

- The launch of ‘Handsworth Songs’ at the Birmingham Film & TV Festival in October 1986

- Q&A with Dennis Hopper at the Triangle in 1985 or 1986

Please contact Harriet intern@vivid.org.uk or 0121 766 1304.

You can read more about Handsworth Songs in a previous post by Pete.

© Kate Spragg for Created in Birmingham, 2009. | One comment |

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 Støckel, Sue Tompkins, Franz West.

I have linked to articles or websites about all of the artists. Have a look around and I’m sure you will agree this is indeed an exciting exhibition of contemporary works.

Just up the road that evening VIVID will hold a late opening from 6-9 pm, to present new work by Ran Huang and Nika Oblak & Primoz Novak. The artists will be in residence at VIVID throughout Spring 2009 as part of the two year European Media Artists in Residence Exchange programme. Mike Stubbs, Director of FACT will be in conversation with Ran Huang at 6pm.

Next door, IKON Eastside will be opening  Józef Robakowski’s My Very Own Cinema, a highly subjective body of work produced between 1970 and 2000 by a pioneer of Polish Independant Cinema.

If you have never ventured to this historically industrial area of Birmingham, this will be a great opportunity to experience the type of art you might not find on the tourist trail.

© Kate Spragg for Created in Birmingham, 2009. | One comment |

Bewick’s work is rarely seen in a modern art gallery.  Ikon, pulling his eighteenth-century illustrations from the archives, staking a claim for his re-assessment for the imagined, great timeline of Art History, recalls Bewick’s opening of natural history to the working classes: it grants his work a new audience, a new context.  Its transition to the gallery as a little-known yet fully formed life’s work, makes it something of a novelty.  Magnifying glasses are handed out and the spectator is encouraged to explore surface (though the implication is History).

(...)
Read the rest of Review: Thomas Bewick Tale-Pieces at Ikon Gallery (296 words)

© Harry Blackett for Created in Birmingham, 2009. | 2 comments |

Degree shows are a great place to invest a relatively small amount of money into the art world, support upcoming artists and to pick up something you’ll enjoy for years to come. I am hoping to take a trip to this year’s shows in galleries, Uni’s and empty shops and bag myself something nice. Over the coming weeks I will keep you informed of those all important private view dates.

Firstly, BCU’s private view at Vaad Gallery, Custard Factory.

Eleven of the hottest new talents in contemporary art emerge this spring with an ambitious debut at the Vaad Gallery. Final year students from Birmingham City University will showcase their work in what will be an eclectic display of multi-disciplinary artworks that promises to show the diversity of practices born from a broad education in the visual arts.

Private View: Monday 27 April 2009 6-8pm

© Kate Spragg for Created in Birmingham, 2009. | 2 comments |

The event brings together 7 artists working in diverse practices including pinhole photography and guerilla knitting. The phone boxes will be transformed into startling and intriguing art works which explore what the red telephone box means, now that communication is ubiquitous. The seven phone boxes are sited centrally on Victoria Square,  Temple Row and Eden Street.

2.5 Hours of Oxygen e-flier

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Here is a few exhibitions on around the West Mids, are free to the public and are open on a Sunday. Go on! Put on your favourite woolly jumper, brave the cold, and go get some culture.

Armando Andrade Tudela
A new series of films reflects upon a modular construction designed by French architect Jean Pierre Maneval in 1963.

4 February – 29 March 2009
Ikon Gallery
Open: Sunday 11am-6pm

In Touch
In this new interactive gallery visitors can engage in and experience a variety of works through touch, sound and light.

01 Jan 2008 – 01 Jan 2012
Birmingham Museum
Open: Sunday 12.30pm – 5pm

Fresh Out of the Box
Exhibiting artists include: Artists Anonymous, Sarah Lucas, Marc Quinn and Gavin Turk.

Runs till 14th October 09
The New Art Gallery Walsall
Open: Sunday 11am – 4pm

I wanted this to be a longer list but not that many galleries are open on a Sunday, especially the more independant contemporary ones, which seems odd. Can anyone shed some light on why this is?

© Kate Spragg for Created in Birmingham, 2009. | Add a comment |

HamFisted! has an opportunity for visual artists to work in primary schools and children’s centres. The day-long workshops will take place in schools in the Aston, Lozells and Newtown area of Birmingham between Tuesday24th February and Monday 9th March.

During the workshops the techniques used will be screen printing and collage. They will be creating a large aspirational image based on the children’s ideas. The fee for this work will be £1,000.

Interested? Email Johnny O’Hanlon: headquarters@hamfisted.org.uk using Aston Project in the subject line.

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When I was looking at Ben Javens’s website shop yesterday I had a flash of inspiration. Here is my idea:

• Brum’s best known 2D artists donate an original image, drawing, photograph etc. to CiB
• CiB sets up an online shop using a website service like Cafe Press.
  
• CiB sells limited edition t shirts, canvas bags, pin badges etc which sport the original images
• All the profits go to a Birmingham based charity suggested by you, the CiB readers.

So, that is the bare bones of an idea which could be made into a rather nice charity project, with a bit of your help. What I am asking you, the readers is:

• Would anyone like to offer an image / illustration to be used?
• Can anyone recommended a Cafe Press type service?
• Most importantly: What Birmingham based charity could the proceeds go to?

Answers in the comments please! Any other ideas / comments gratefully received.

© Kate Spragg for Created in Birmingham, 2009. | 33 comments |

The Winter Show at the Vaad Gallery is an exhibition of Walsall College’s finest up-and-coming artistic talent, running from 27 Jan to 2 Feb.

(Via the Custard Factory blog)

© chrisunitt for Created in Birmingham, 2009. | Add a comment |

He also has a blog here and is on MySpace and Facebook too in case you want to pledge your allegiance.

© chrisunitt for Created in Birmingham, 2009. | Add a comment |

(PS – if you’ve not yet voted for Created in Birmingham today, please go here – http://2008.weblogawards.org/polls/best-uk-blog/)

© chrisunitt for Created in Birmingham, 2009. | Add a comment |

Secret Wars Birmingham is, well, I’ve leave it to the rather excitable blurb:

Secret Wars is happening right now, you just don’t know! Similar to Fight Club it thrives on word of mouth. Put simply, it is a war between artists. The ultimate question however, is who will reign supreme? The only weapon they carry is the Edding pen they hold in their hand.

In the dark backstreets of Digbeth, there’s a bright shining light and a large queue of excited people…

“This is Secret Wars. There can only be one winner…. paint will spill!”

“The World’s premiere street art competition, Innovate don’t imitate!”

The next event is on 17 Jan at The Rainbow and will feature the final battles of the quarter final round, with Tony Cryze vs Newso and Sam Bevlak vs Obenzah.

Here’s a video of what happened at the last event:

Secret wars Brum quarter final from Trav on Vimeo.

© chrisunitt for Created in Birmingham, 2009. | Add a comment |

.

Thanks to blairdashpb for sending me this.

© chrisunitt for Created in Birmingham, 2009. | 3 comments |

Places are free but need to be reserved in advance.

The themes for (and links to) these workshops are:

• 7 Feb – This workshop will explore the themes and ideas of the current Zhang Enli exhibition
• 17 Feb – This workshop will explore Armando Andrade Tudela’s current exhibition
• 19 Feb – Zhang Enli again
• 7 March – Armando Andrade Tudela again

Also, from 6.30-8pm at the School of Art, Margaret Street, the Ikon will be hosting Zhang Enli and Jiang Jiehong in Conversation (with English interpretation). Again, places are free but should be reserved.

(Please vote daily for CiB in the 2008 Weblog Awards)

© chrisunitt for Created in Birmingham, 2009. | One comment |

Via debut

© chrisunitt for Created in Birmingham, 2009. | One comment |

harbor all those crazy little snippets of ideas that we all have from time to time in the format of photos, drawing and collage (any 2D images)

It costs £1 (plus postage) and you can get hold of one in person or by emailing galleryofowls@gmail.com.

If you’d like to see something of yours included, there’s some info about submissions here.

© chrisunitt for Created in Birmingham, 2009. | Add a comment |

In May 2008 Damian re visited us in Birmingham and we took the opportunity to talk to him about his experience of being here, and how the residency had impacted on his creative path since then. We also collaborated on a piece of work, something we hadn’t done much during his residency.

These conversations are in the form of three videos:

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