It’s nearly the end of term, and you know what that means… showcases! Birmingham City University are already on the case with Exhibit This by its final year Media and Communication students. And the plan is…
…to display their creative work to industry professionals and the general public while celebrating their achievements throughout their degree.
As you can see from the flyer, you can expect work from a range of media disciplines, from photography to web and new media, so if you want to check out some new talent in the field, it might be worth a poke around.
Exhibit This is at The Bond in Digbeth on 7th and 8th June, between 6pm and 8.30pm.
There’s not much info floating around about Emerging apart from a couple of flyers, but it looks mighty interesting all the same. It’s a photography exhibition featuring Niall Patterson, Paul Watt, and Hannah-Beth Todd amongst others, and you can see it at the Custard Factory between 1-8 June, 10am-7pm.
Sola is a photographer with a specialty in ‘lightbombing’, or ‘light graffiti’, ‘light art’ or whatever else you might call it. I’m led to believe it involves long exposures and waving torches around in the dark. I’m sure that description doesn’t do it justice, but however he does it, the results are stunning.
For anyone assuming the images are knocked up on a computer, this is for you:
All of Sola’s work is created in camera and there are no special tricks or manipulation of the images – in short, what you see is what he shoots.
So there you are.
There are a couple of Sola canvases lurking about in the CiB shop, and you can see more of Sola’s work and buy prints on his lightbombing website here.
Photographer Jak Flash is embarking on a project to re-illustrate the 22 Major Arcana tarot cards as photographic images for exhibition. Jak explains a little more on his website:
My next project, based around the imagery of the 22 major Arcana Tarot cards, is funded by Birmingham City Council and supported by Birmingham City University Students’ Union. I’m going be creating 22 images for EXHIBITION in Birmingham. The aim is to create a collaborative experience where people interested in being involved with art in Birmingham can come together.
Jak’s looking for models of all shapes and sizes, make-up artists, stylists and costume designers to help with the project too, so if you’re interested in getting involved, drop him a line on info@flashyourjak.com. The shoots are going to be taking place from the end of January till the end of February.
Here’s one of the tarot cards that is set to be turned into a photograph:
Lucy Pryor is the snapper behind Angelfire Photography. In her own words:
Over the years she has photographed countless bands, gigs, events, concerts, portraits, and has branched out into wedding photography over the last two years. She is an avid contributor to many websites including BrumLive.com and PushToFire.com, and offical photographer to up-and-coming stars of 2009 – Rebel City Radio.
Here’s one of Lucy’s particularly effective promo shots for Rebel City Radio:
Helen Flanagan is a photography student. Her ‘About Page’ says this:
Helen Flanagan is currently studying for a BA hons in photography at Falmouth College University.
Interested by the human psyche, obscurity and those tender, glorified moments of absence.
She’s done some interesting little projects by the looks of her website and blog , including an exploration into the issues around online adult dating called ‘No Strings Attached‘.
Jade Sukiya is a photographer with an eye for a striking image or two. Here’s her intro:
I was born in the mid-eighties to two admirably creative people. Years later that inevitable reality struck as having both my brother and I forced them to get ‘real’ jobs and lead a fairly restricted existence. My story begins at this point, although I can’t recall a thing up until the age of about four and even that’s a little hazy, sometimes I think I made my memories up…
More of Jade’s images like the one below, and many other completely different ones, can be found on her Myspace page and her Flickr account. She’s also got a tumblr with bits and pieces of her favourite stuff in it to check out too.
Here’s what fashion and portrait photographer Alis Pelleschi has to say about herself:
Alis Pelleschi is a self-confessed chip buttie lover. A proud Bradford gal, currently based in Birmingham. Taking photographs of those she deems curious and intriguing characters; becoming the people in her dreams; and drawing the icons of tomorrow.
Check out a photo from her series called ‘Rabbit‘.
So how many of you were awake at 4am on the 04/04/09? And how many of you visually documented that moment?
As was previously mentioned here on CiB, the 4am Project is the genius concept of Karen Strunks, a Birmingham photographer who singlehandedly convinced thousands of strangers across the world that it would be a great idea to stay awake/get up at 4am to document that moment for no other reason than to be part of a larger group of people doing just that.
And people, in their droves, agreed that it was a great idea and stayed up (or set their alarms, like me!) and took photographs and sent them to the 4am website, or tagged them on Flickr so that everyone could see a snapshot of the world, of their world, at such an uncomfortably late/early hour. Who knew you could create such extensive social capital before breakfast?!
Building upon the success of the previous event, 4am photos have continued to flood in, without being prompted to do so – and Karen has now decided it’s time to coordinate another 4am en masse. The date of the next event is: 21/06/09. (And in case you somehow missed it, the time will be 4am, and the place will be wherever you are!)
In addition, the 4am Project has been nominated for the Digital Press Awards, and if you think (like I do) that this project is a fab idea and a lot of fun, then vote for it to win!
John Garghan is a photographer who, to be mundane about it, takes beautiful photos of the details of burnt out cars. He puts it much better:
My aim is to capture the disturbance to surfaces created by acts of joy riding and arson by zooming into disfigured vehicle parts that are occupied in the lifecycle of metals, fabrics, and glass. Their corrosion is a natural process that tries to reclaim human made objects to an elemental state more in line with the energy of the molecules these objects are made of, torching accelerates this journey of returning to the earth and I look to capture, investigate and at times distort results of the advancement of its lifecycle
John has a Flickr account too. Happily, Flickr has just made it easier to embed photos and slideshows on other sites (like blogs) so here’s a slideshow of John’s work (not all are of burnt cars):
Thanks to Jon Bounds for spotting John Garghan’s blog and Joanna Geary for the Flickr embed info.
an online application that stitches together digital photographs of an area and converts them into a three-dimensional map
Unfortunately it’s hard to do justice to it in words. However, when this video was released a couple of years ago there was a lot of ooh-ing and aah-ing about it:
About this point you’re probably wondering what this has to do with Birmingham. Well,
The Birmingham Post has teamed up with its creators Microsoft to produce Birmingham’s first ever online, 3D representations of Victoria Square and St Philip’s Cathedral
Which strikes me as jolly interesting. Unfortunately I’m blogging this blind because, according to Microsoft’s special version of wisdom, Photosynth has been made Windows only and I’m labouring away on a Mac. Gah!
Self-published author takes competition to bestseller rivals
Birmingham-based Irish writer Mary Rochford’s collection of short stories Gilded Shadows (Tia Publishing) has been longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award (the most prestigious of its type) alongside Roddy Doyle and Anne Enright.
Inside The Animal Book
“ITV Local have produced a fascinating behind the scenes look at the making of The Animal Book, the RTS-nominated, stop-motion short by Birmingham’s Second Home Productions”. I can’t get the vid to play unfortunately.
Ikon Gallery – Ruth Claxton in conversation
Artists Ruth Claxton and Richard Deacon joined Ikon Director, Jonathan Watkins before an audience during Richard Deacon’s Ikon exhibition. You can click through to the audio. Good to see the gallery doing this, others should take note.
Birmingham Architectural Association – lecture from Maciej Hawrylak
What does it mean to be a second city? The next in the BAA’s series of lectures is form Maciej Hawrylak, leading tutor of the urban design course at Wroclaw University of Technology. At the Old Joint Stock, 20 May.
