Internationally renowned visual artist and producer Mohammed Ali will bring together the words of Tshaka Campbell, the sounds of percussionist Daniel Waples together with live-spray painted art.
Breaking Down the Wall is on Saturday 12 November at New Art Gallery Walsall and it’s free. It looks a little similar to the Writing on the Wall event at The Rep last year, which was apparently very good.
Following the one-off live event back in January before part of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre was demolished, Soul City Arts in association with mac and The REP presents Mohammed Ali’s Writing On The Wall – The Documentary.
Taking place 3 September, 4-7pm at the mac, the event will screen the documentary, plus live performances and a Q&A session with Writing On The Wall artists: Mohammed Ali, Zena Edwards, Amir Sulaiman, Dreadlock Alien and Jonzi-D.
Pete Ashton will also be on hand, chairing a panel discussion on the topic of ‘Creative collaboration – the way forward for cross-cultural arts and public engagement in B’ham?’
Take a peek at the documentary trailer, which we posted up a few weeks ago.
Tickets can be booked at www.macarts.co.uk, and are £5 / £3 concessions. This also gives you entry to a bonus event the following day: In Conversation with Amir Sulaiman & Performance, at The Hubb.
I’ve still not made it over to The Hubb which is starting to feel remiss of me. They’ve got an interesting thing happening there next week which looks good – a Chinese and Arabic calligraphy collaboration.
We’re still in the process of giving back all the stock from the CiB Shop. One of the items in particular stands out – not because it’s the biggest (although it is) but because it’s amazing.
Back in January, The REP hosted Writing On The Wall which featured:
world famous aerosol artist, Mohammed ‘Aerosol Arabic’ Ali for a one-off evening of live graffiti-art and poetry in The REP’s due-to-be-demolished workshop
The workshop was painted from floor to ceiling – here’s a work in progress pic:
In fact there’s a whole website dedicated to the Writing on the Wall project.
The finished piece was photographed by SalShan Photography and reproduced on a canvas 2.5m wide and 50cm high. It’s beautiful and drew many an admiring look hanging in the CiB Shop just behind our till (not least from me – it’d look great in my house).
Anyway, it didn’t sell in the end and it’s currently sat in the office, which seems a shame. This should be taking pride of place somewhere.
Here’s Pete holding it up (in a somewhat Angel of the Midlands-type pose):
You’ll notice it’s still partly in it’s protective wrapper – we’re taking care of it. Here’s a detail (in case you didn’t get the scale of the original work from the first picture, that’s a door in the bottom right-hand corner):
And here’s the signature on the back – no. 1 of 50:
If you fancy owning this thing then get in touch. The price is £850. You’re welcome to come in and inspect the goods before buying.
Ah there’s a video too. Seriously, someone should snap this up.
This sounds good – a new arts centre called The Hubb is opening on 29 April next to Aldi on the Stratford Road, Sparkbrook (postcode is B11 1QS, if that helps).
As the flyer says, the launch will feature Sheikh Jihad Brown, Peter Sanders, Dreadlock Alien and Mohammed Ali, from who’s blog I’ve nicked this quote:
The Hubb Arts Centre is an exciting new innovative space launching shortly at the very heart of inner-city Birmingham. The Hubb is the brainchild of award-winning street-artist Mohammed Ali aka Aerosol Arabic.The venue will be utilised for public exhibitions, workshops and performances
I’m not sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was this building that’s being converted.
Sounds like the Writing on the Wall event at The Rep the other night went well – it even created some amusing fuss on the event page’s comments thread.
There’s more Aerosol Arabic action at Bullring this weekend, with Mohammed Ali creating a big mural in the shopping centre.
There’s an online interactive element to this one – he’ll be taking suggestions from Twitter users for words, phrases, thoughts or whatever to influence his piece. Just tweet @lifefeelsbetter during the day.
After a fair amount of globetrotting, Mohammed Ali seems to be doing a fair bit more in his home city at the moment – there’s a snippet of him doing a bus tour of Birmingham mural’s from Midlands Today here too.
Mohammed Ali is holding an evening of live graffiti-art and poetry in The REP’s soon-to-be-demolished workshop (Kate Beatty’s photos of which you can see here) on 21 January 2010. Tickets available from The Rep.
Jonzi D is directing the event with Dreadlock Alien, (the superb) Zena Edwards and Amir Sulaiman performing new poetry.
After the performance itself you can pop into the workshop to see the graffiti on:
Apparently there are a few things happening in the workshop area before it’s knocked down. At this stage I have no more info than that. I’d go and investigate but right now there’s a cinnamon bun calling to me.
Spiritual artist Mohammed Ali, known for merging graffiti style with Islamic art, has just won an ITV South Bank Award in the Arts Council England Diversity category.
Although aerosolarabic (aka Mohammed Ali) travels worldwide to create new work he is still based in Birmingham. Recently he has painted murals in the city addressing the recent Gaza crisis and is known for painting murals highlighting the plight of the Palestinian people. Worldwide politics aside, Ali has been at the forefront of the discussing local graffiti politics, as mentioned in a post back in Jan ’08. On an international level he has managed to connect people of different communities through his art.
Overwhelmed at receiving the award, Mohammed Ali said:
“It’s an honour to accept a mainstream British Arts award. The art that I do is for everyone, it is universal. I truly believe that art enhances people’s lives and brings communities together and I hope that my work continues to inspire people from all walks of life.”
The awards will be screened on ITV on January 28th 2009.
Those that were wondering about Aldi’s involvement with Aerosolarabic‘s graffiti mural (mentioned here the other day) that overlooks the Aldi car park on the Stratford Road now have an answer. To quote the artist:
Aldi are not keen on the Feed the Poor mural, as it overlooks their car park, and they feel its not something Aldi wants to have their customers using their car park, wanting to see…?! The building that is painted, has nothing to do with Aldi
Apparently yesterday’s completion of the project went quite well until the police and Aldi’s regional manager showed up.
There’s a chance the mural may have to be painted over so Aerosolarabic, aka Mohammed Ali, has documented this on his blog where there are pics showing the mural’s progress.
Graffiti artist Mohammed Ali started work on this mural in the car park of Aldi on the Stratford Road, Sparkhill today and will be back down there at about 12pm tomorrow to finish it off.
This is a message for all the traffic that mounts along this busy road, as well as all the buses. Not very artistic, but rather a big bold message for everyone to ponder on….
Ali also goes under the Aerosolarabic name and fuses graffiti art with Islamic calligraphy. He’s worked throughout the UK and abroad, with trips to Montreal and Melbourne booked later this year. He also blogs here (where the above image is taken from).
