I could never draw much more than a stick man on an Etch-a-Sketch but as part of The Big Draw, mac have been inviting people to show off their knob-twizzling skills and produce Etch-a-Sketch artwork for Re:sketch.
And the creativity hasn’t been restricted to the classic etch-a-sketch picture, as artists have been actively encouraged to paint and take apart their red framed tablets to create something new.
All of the artworks will be displayed in a public exhibition between 1-16 October and the deadline for submissions is 5pm, 27 September 2011, so there’s still time to get etching. For details on how to get involved, contact learning@macarts.co.uk.
This new collection of work by Birmingham based artist Louis Sidoli, inspired by Andy Warhol, has taken the mugshots of twelve of the most notorious and iconic bad boys from popular culture.
The collection includes the likes of rock legends Mick Jagger and Kurt Kobain, Hollywood stars Frank Sinatra and Al Picino, plus gangster Al Capone.
A homage to 1960′s silkscreen portraits, Sidoli call the collection as “…a bit like Andy Warhol on steroids”.
The first Visualise Festival will be held on 21 – 31 October, as a major celebration of young people’s visual creativity. They’re calling for anyone under the age of 24 to submit their artwork as part of the Young People’s Open Visual Art Competition, which will hold a high profile exhibition in Birmingham City centre.
All forms of artwork are accepted (apart from films), and must be no bigger than A3 in size. There are also some prizes up for grabs and will be awarded to 1st, 2nd and 3rd place entries in each of the age brackets, along with an art box for every shortlisted entry.
Deadline for entries is 4th October 2010, and notification of selected entries will be made during the week commencing 18 October.
So if you haven’t already heard of this programme, read on, because artists this sounds Amazing (yes, it deserves a capital).
Extra Special People (ESP) is a membership programme run by Eastside Projects, for anyone who would benefit from engaging with a dynamic, ambitious, artist-led environment.
ESP members are offered a range of opportunities to develop their practice and career through critical group discussions, practical support and guidance, exhibition and residency opportunities, networking events and one-to-one support from established arts professionals and ESP staff. Dialogue between members is generated through a weekly programme of informal and formal event including seminars, talks, film screenings and visits to projects, exhibitions and events in other UK cities.
There are a number of opportunities currently available, visit the website to read more and apply, along with a rundown of this months programme of events.
ARC takes place on the last Wednesday of the month, showcasing work selected by guest curators. This months ARC is on 25 August, 6-8PM at The Vaults (Jewellery Quarter), and has been curated by Laura Coult.
an exhibition of artist’s moving image, performance, and sculpture exploring the ways in which we experience sound as light, movement, noise, and colour.
Artists include: Linda Bagnall, Benedict Drew, Laurence Hunt, Juneau Projects, Ben Russell, Alexander Small, Joe Snape.
This fresh faced quarterly magazine has been put together by a small team who have created, produced and printed LABB magazine in Birmingham.
Aiming to harvest and showcase emerging talent in art, fashion and photography, LABB allows readers to explore something new as oppose to the same churned out work seen in fellow coffee table mags.
Fashion, it’s like a science, you always want to push the limits, find something new, but its always based on the existing. Not everyone who works in a lab wears a white jacket… WELCOME TO OUR LABB!
Issue 1, Volume 2 is currently available, with Volume 3 on the way for September. In the meantime they’ve also got a blog, LABB Loves, which is great if, like me, you like flicking through dozens of highly stylised fashion photography.
Notable among the early posts is the gallery’s Summer Exhibition which will run until 7 July. The second part of the exhibition launched on Friday 11 June featuring artists Stuart Free, Cameron Galt, and Stephen Earl Rogers, and the final stage will showcase the sculptures of Laurence Broderick?, the artist responsible for ‘The Birmingham Bull’. who is also making limited edition bronzes of The Bull available for the first time in Birmingham at the gallery.
BASS Festival is the UK’s only month-long celebration of Black Music and Art. The festival is now in its fifth year and this year’s line up of events, produced by Punch Records, includes new commissions, gigs, exhibitions, master classes, showcases, club nights, theatre, conferences and film.
Handily, you can check out the brochure and browse what’s on right here:
There’s also a theme for this year’s festival, which is explained here:
The theme for BASS 2010 is DNA Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) forms the building blocks of life and controls the development and functioning of all known living organisms. But what does DNA mean to us individually in the 21st century? Identity, test tubes, control, heritage, science, ID cards, family, databases, samples, genomes, protest? The fifth BASS festival will explore how DNA varies and develops, whether caused by external forces, or by personal development, enabling us to rethink our evolving identities.
I’m not usually one to pander to titles with an obscure mix of upper- and lower-case letters in them, but for this I’ll make an exception.
hobbypopMUSEUM is a new solo exhibition at Eastside Projects by the Düsseldorf- and London-based artist group of the same name formed by Sophie von Hellermann, Christian Jendreiko, Matthias Lahme, Dietmar Lutz, André Niebur and Marie-Céline Schäfer in 1998.
As a group they have created potent site-specific installations, fusing painting with sound, performance and film. Here’s some more on them:
hobbypopMUSEUM installations can be seen as textures woven out of figures linked together by iconographic and formal criteria. Their arsenal of figures spans histories of painting, drawing, photo, film and sound to words, performance, sculpture and architecture. Which form the figures take, depends on a basic confrontation with the conditions of site and chemistry of the group.
Eschewing the socio-political agenda typically associated with collective artmaking hobbypopMUSEUM stake their identity on the theatrics of fantasised scenarios and the strong narrative trail or journey through their exhibitions and happenings as a long-term ‘fight for ideas’.
The exhibition opens at Eastside Projects on 7 May at 6pm and will run from 8 May to 12 June 2010.
The Public art gallery in West Bromwich has joined forces with ITV Fixers to present an exhibition of works, including painting, sculpture, photography and short film, by young and up-and-coming artists. Here’s the background:
Fixer Todd Wooton (22) is a young artist. Throughout school and university he has found it almost impossible to get his art seen. So he has become a Fixer to sort it out. With the help of his Young People’s Co-ordinator, Todd has organised for the work of about 17 young aspiring artists to be exhibited at The Public, a community arts space, in West Bromwich. The exhibition will last two weeks from 19th April to 3rd May 2010 and will display pieces by undiscovered Midlands-based artists.
I was browsing the internet a couple of years ago and I came across a little character with a yellow t-shirt and a red cap. I thought he was pretty cool and used him as my avatar on Facebook and Twitter for a while. I didn’t think much more of it.
Then the other day I was browsing the Jibbering Art website to see what they had on offer and, lo and behold, I came across some prints by that same artist – Tom Lewis.
He was born in Birmingham and works as an artist and illustrator in Warwick. If asked how he’s ended up where he has he’ll tell you that
The story is too long to be told now although, briefly, it led to the creation of a mythological 18th century French philosopher, the forging of a sword and the images that you see today.
That’s Mr Tilly at the top there. Prints are available from his own site and from Jibbering Art.
The Edge, “Birmingham’s first dedicated live and time-based arts venue”, wants to put the joy back into making art:
Saturday Sesh is not networking, it’s not a series of seminars, it’s just a place for artists to meet, to share ideas and resources and to make things happen.
All of which is highly laudable, so more power to their collective elbow. Anyone interested should feel free to drop in from 3pm on Saturday 3 May and every Saturday after for drinks, nibbles and a chat. Admission is free.
The Edge can be found at 79-81 Cheapside, Digbeth, Birmingham B12 0QH, or roughly where the green arrow is on this map.
Over the past two years the organisers of this show have visited in excess of one hundred private art collections within the Birmingham postal district. Now, almost 40 paintings, watercolours, drawings and prints have been brought together to reveal the range and variety of treasures that exist outside the realm of public galleries.
So you can marvel at works by Turner and Picasso, as well as more contemporary artists like Hockney, Rego and Parker, that are usually squirrelled away out of public view.
You never know when the next chance to see these will come around so if you’ve got a spare hour or two this weekend then why not pop down? Admission’s free, if you need any more excuse.
