Galleries Night (Mince Pies and Wine)

Dean Kelland - Performance still 2011

Five of us met up at the IKON to partake of a FREE Art Bus, Guided tours, mulled wine and mince pies. The latter were brilliant but we only managed a tour of the RBSA and The Ikon as time ran out getting from one venue to the next. We decided the Barber Institute would have to wait for another day and also the pub, never did get there.

Travelling from the IKON to the RBSA it was decided that that would be our starting point. Once there and having indulged ourselves of the food and drink available we realised if we were to try and get to the rest of the venues it would take longer than getting the last bus back to the centre of town.

Scrambling on the bus at the RBSA we saw the outside of Eastside , The MAC and the Barber Institute and then returned to the IKON.
The RBSA is exhibiting Pat Landon’s work on the cafe wall until 10^th December 2011 and Open all Media in the two upper galleries until 24^th December 2011.

The Ikon exhibitions we visited were Dean Kelland’s  Living Room Series (Episode 2): The Desperate Hours which is on until the 5th February 2012
“Dean Kelland works with performance, photography, film and appropriation to explore portraiture, producing engaging observations of our collective cultural identities”
and then John Myers’s exhibition Middle England on until 5th February 2012
"This is the first major exhibition by Midlands-based artist John Myers. Comprising black and white photographs made in the 1970s, Ikon’s selection includes Middle England (1970–1974), a number of portraits of individuals and families living in and around Stourbridge and the Black Country”.
View John Myers video about his work on Vimeo

The last exhibition we visited was Stuart Whipps - Why Contribute to the Spread of Ugliness? on until 5^th February 2012
“Ikon presents an exhibition of new works by Birmingham-based artist Stuart Whipps, a selection of photography and video reflecting on the changing nature of cultural value.
A new two channel video installation, England and the Octopus, Britain and the Beast (2011), focuses on the town of Blaenau Ffestiniog in North Wales, a former quarry town at the geographical centre of Snowdonia National Park. When the Park’s borders were created in 1951 the grey slate waste tips that surround Blaenau Ffestiniog prevented its inclusion, a decision made in part by the eccentric architect of Portmeirion, Clough Williams-Ellis. Whipps shows new film footage of the town teamed with a Welsh-language script sourced from texts written or edited by Williams-Ellis”.

Time to catch the train which was delayed, so arrived home at 10.45pm pub visit was abandoned.

Maureen Toomey 

BMAG is Lost in Lace

Michael Brennand-Wood – Lace the final frontier

Cutting, painting, aluminium, acrylic, wood

The large Gas Hall gallery provides the perfect setting for this exhibition, by 20 leading international artists, of large scale works honouring the tradition of lacemaking whilst pushing the boundaries of the textile. As you enter the gallery you are confronted by design firm Atelier Manferdini's 'Inverted Crystal Cathedral'  created from 1000 steel cables and 1,000 kg of crystal, 600 strands of which have been donated by Swarovsky. Michael Brennand-Wood (an artist very familiar to a couple of jammers) has a striking red piece consisting of patterns developed from cutouts of planes, bombs and soldiers.

 “My intention is to construct a’ military lace’ emblematic of conflict and the annexing of resources and territory. Imagery for the roundels is drawn from 3 sources; lace, weaponry, and the Rorschach (inkblot) test. The visual field of the work echoes the instructional, pricked, diagrammatic papers on which bobbin laces are constructed – in this case a fusion of Islamic and Western geometry” Brennand-Wood



Chiharu Shiota – After the dream

Site-sensitive installation – wool, cotton, paint

Another work which appealed to me was by Chiharu Shiota. The Japanese Berlin-based artist has ensnared everything from the wedding dresses seen in the 2009 Walking in My Mind exhibition at the Hayward gallery, to a grand piano and childhood toys. In one of her sleeping performances, you might even find Shiota herself ensconced beneath layers of mesh. Here, white dresses are encased in the random scrawl of the artist’s characteristic woven black strings.

“My installations with clothes always refer to the clothes as a second skin, which carry the memories of the people who wore those clothes” Shiota

 

The free exhibition runs at the Gas Hall until 19th February 2012 so if you don't like crowds you can see it after the Christmas and New Year chaos is over. Jackie Mackay

Canal Work

 

Following on from our day visiting the Birmingham canals I have worked up many sketches and now generated the first canvas on this theme. The picture below shows three stages of how the canvas was developed from the rough idea and then pared down to the essential elements I thought typified the landscape we walked through – simplifications of the reflected arch of the bridge, factory, chimney, with wooden panels and bushes scratched through the many layers of acrylic paint. Some of the glazes were worked using KY Jelly mixed with the acrylic as suggested by artist John Myatt. Two more canvasses are now on the go.

Jackie Mackay