All artists have to do is submit and present their work to the Young Curators on Saturday 29 June 11am – 6pm. Artists will be asked to donate £5 per piece of art, which will go towards extending the Next Generation programme, which supports young people to forge a creative career.

Successful artists will be supported to develop their careers, from pitching to pricing and promoting their art, while at the same time the Young Curators will work alongside industry professionals, learning the many skills needed to produce an engaging exhibition. In addition TOP will demystify the curating process, as storage of the art will be ‘on show’ within the cleverly designed gallery spaces conceived by Juneau Projects.

The Open Project will have four ‘micro exhibitions’, each on show for four days. The fifth and final ‘salon’ exhibition (22 August – 8 September) will display all the art, enabling the artists and the public to enjoy the exhibition in its entirety.

Trevor Pitt, Artist and Curator said:

‘The Open Project is just that – an open invitation to artists across the West Midlands to show their work at mac birmingham, while at the same to receive help to develop a career as successful artists. We aim to break down the barriers and the often closed  institutional world of the curator and offer visitors to the gallery a welcoming insight into the world of making art shows. Who knows, we may even help discover the next Grayson Perry or Tracey Emin of the West Midlands, while at the same time skilling-up the next generation of curators!’

Artists can find out more and register their art here.

Image:  Joey Vivo – Anticurate Exhibition at mac birmingham 2011.

Check out the latest edition of AREA CULTURE GUIDE featuring art, music, fashion & shopping, comedy plus the opportunity to win tickets to over 30 festivals. Click here to see the digital edition or pick up your copy from outlets around the West Midlands.

ART
Findings – Colmore District
The Nature of the Beast – New Art Gallery, Walsall
Francois Morellet – Ikon Gallery

MUSIC
Laura Mvula – Glee Club
Reggae City Festival – Rainbow
Troumaca
The Who – LG Arena
Evil Alien

FEATURES
Your guide to getting in to festivals for free
WIN Festival tickets

COMEDY
John Shuttleworth – Wulfrun Hall

FASHION & SHOPPING
Festival must haves

COMPETITIONS
Win Verbatim Festival Essentials
Win a Ted Baker Watch
Win tickets to see An Evening of Burlesque
Win tickets to the BBC Good Food Show

Ever since early hunter-gatherer tribes first sought the protection and benefits of settlements –beginning with Uruk, Eridu, Ur and Çatalhöyük – towns and cities the world over have offered a rich source of fascination and inspiration for artists of all disciplines.

The Mesopotamians documented the beliefs of their society through obelisks, reliefs and statues. The Indus Valley civilization used their skills in pottery, painting and sculpture to depict their flourishing trading community. The Greeks and Romans gave the world architecture, music and literature amongst the other forms of art and expression born and nurtured in vast ancient cities.

The representation of densely populated areas and the imcomprehensible number of lives, interactions and happenings contained within cities is obviously a significant part of art today, whether through the awe-inspiring and instantly recognisable photograph Lunch atop a Skyscraper, the fearful expressionism of Fritz Lang’s 1927 film Metropolis, L.S. Lowry’s scenes of industrial life in the North of England or the Chicago house music derivatives produced from ghetto culture clashes.

It is from the multi-faceted theme of the metropolis that a major new exhibition in Birmingham takes its cue, presenting a collection of thirty-five contemporary works in a variety of media including photography, video and paintings.

Visions of modern cities and urban life by internationally-recognised artists including Miao Xiaochun, Zhang Enli, Grazia Toderi and Beat Streuli will go on display during a three month residency at Gas Hall, thanks to BMAG, Walsall’s New Art Gallery, Walsall and Ikon Gallery, all part of the £1 million Art Fund International Prize.
Birmingham’s own Ladywood district, Pallasades shopping centre and mix of buildings old and new around St Martin’s Square will sit side by side with illustrations of metropolitan Beijing, eerie snapshots of modern India and the ‘forgotten’ banlieues of Paris.

Video courtesy of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

Metropolis: Reflections on the modern city 

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery
23 March – 23 June

www.bmag.org.uk

Words: Lyle Bignon

For this exhibition Hancock has chosen to render his subjects using photo realistic style water colour portraits. Even though the theme of Hancock’s work is modern, his style has its roots firmly based in the Pre-Raphaelites with signifiers taken from various historical sources. Particular focus is given over to the intentional real appearance of each Cosplayer and the intricate details present on their costumes. This has enabled him to capture both the personality of the sitter and their costumed alter ego at the same time.

For this exhibition Hancock has not only immersed himself in the culture of Cosplay but has especially created pieces featuring Midland based Cosplayers in various locations around the city of Wolverhampton.  Hancock is interested in examining the world of escapist fantasy which Cosplaying allows its participants to enter and by using the city as a back drop he is able to show how Cosplayers transform the ordinary world around us into a realm of fantasy.

Words: Stephanie Potter

David Hancock: Cosplay
Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Lichfield Street, WV1 1DU
01902 552055
Admission free
www.wolverhamptonart.org.uk
Until 1 June

For those with a love of architecture, civic buildings, unused structures and art, Thrift Radiates Happiness helps bring it all together.

The historic Grade II listed landmark is set to open its doors to the public for the first time in ten years when it plays host to a captivating four day contemporary arts exposition showcasing a creative programme of drawings, images, sound and light, video and music from local, national and international artists.

The showcase event is the result of an arts and business collaboration between Birmingham based gallery TROVE, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), the Birmingham Architectural Association (BAA), Birmingham City Council and global architect practice Aedas.

At the launch event on the 14th March (5-8pm) attendees will be invited to ‘invest’ £2 in a key. The randomly selected key will open a safety deposit box which will contain a limited edition art print.

A public debate will be held on Friday 15 March (5.30pm-7pm) on the subject of ‘Design Culture Birmingham’. The Birmingham Architectural Association together with RIBA will host a panel that brings together architecture, art, local government and the heritage sector discussing the benefit of ‘design culture’. The event will look at the common benefits of a well-designed and well-preserved built environment, as well as a vibrant cultural offer for cities and their inhabitants.

Thrift Radiates Happiness
Municipal Bank, Broad Street, Birmingham
thriftradiateshappiness.com
15-17 March, 12-6pm

Beauty. It’s a big brassy world. It’s a 53.7 billion dollar world and it’s a world which is extensively and cross-culturally explored by Zed Nelson in his latest exhibition  Love Me.  

This investigation presents a somewhat thought provoking and challenging examination of youth and beauty; the power of commercial forces who paint an idealised image of ‘physical perfection’ leaving societies to preen, sculpt and starve their way to achieving it.

Nelson presents the idea that an increasingly limited beauty ideal is shipping its way around the globe one billboard, glossy mag and cosmetic counter at a time. It is becoming universally accepted. And with this, men and women and teens, are undergoing a myriad of unnatural processes in order to obtain a prescribed package of natural beauty and youth.

In order to formulate his ideas, the multi-award winning documentary photographer has spanned his research across a period of five years, 18 countries and five continents exploring what he considers to be a new form of globalisation. Images of cosmetic surgeons, housewives and body builders provide a narrative which tells of the extents people from all parts of the world are willing to go to in order to become so much more than “aesthetically average”. These people are in most cases trying to be fitter, thinner, taller or tighter and in all cases they are trying to become what is considered beautiful. For some it requires Barbie-esque body parts and smooth skin. For others, a well sculpted nose or tiny toes. Bone hugging skin appears to be a must in order to encapsulate the heavily branded boxed-beauty ideal.

Whilst his subjects appear to be willing and at times proud participants, Nelson’s exhibition suggests that they may also be seen as innocent prey at the mercy of societies bid for conveyer belt beauties. His work depicts an Iranian mother alongside her 19 year old daughter whose face is bandaged from forehead to mouth following a nose job; their country, it would seem, has the highest rate of rhinoplasty in the world. Next, a New York woman who has undergone cosmetic surgery in the shape of toe shortening – depleting her digits for the sole purpose of wearing designer Jimmy Choo shoes more easily. We see body builders formed from nothing but spirograph-like circles of muscle whilst in other images the ruler-straight line of bone is all that protrudes.

Nelson’s project forms it’s own juxtapositions. Young faces on old bodies, teenagers in adult garb, female prisoners in beauty queen crowns; synthetic intervention to create supposedly natural outcomes. Hair removed, rods put in. Fat removed, silicone put in, it would seem that now on a much wider scale people have things that they are keen to either ‘delete’ or ‘enter’ in a quest to fit a beauty ideal.

The touring exhibition is divided between the two neighbouring galleries.

Words: Kaye Patrick

Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Lichfield Street, WV1 1DU
wolverhamptonart.org.uk | @WolvArtGallery
Light House, Fryer Street, WV1 1HT
light-house.co.uk | @lighthousemedia

Check out the all-new sparkly edition of Area Culture Guide for March and April. Take a look inside for Art, Music, Comedy, Theatre and listings…

Featured in this issue

Exhibitions at:
Wolverhampton Art Gallery – David Hancock
The Public – Black Country Legends
BM&G – Metropolis
Thrift Radiates Happiness
The Hores
Shout Festival

Music:
Huey Morgan
My Bloody Valentine
The Wonder Stuff
Swim Deep

Comedy:
Josh Widdicombe
Pam Ann

Theatre:
RSC’s As You Like It
Birmingham Rep 100

But both fragility and strength are represented by the myriad of assorted tyres – some still whole but with treads wholly worn, others torn and shredded right down to expose braiding and individual fibres.

The description of ‘discarded, utilitarian objects…collected as if they were trophies of an ignored parallel world – a dark, abject monument’ perhaps offers a brief insight into Nelson’s approach to art – previous works have included William Burroughs-inspired pieces, an attempt at recreating Babylon in Shoreditch and a claustrophobic construction of rooms entitled The Coral Reef.

With M6, the two-time Turner Prize nominee and Britain’s representative at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011 presents obvious connections between the work and Birmingham’s love affair with motors, the city’s history of automotive industry and the conspicuous concrete raised road that splices North from South and makes up part of the ‘backbone of Britain’ motorway network.

That the tyres were reportedly sourced from a gigantic storage area (is there a lost property office for general highway detritus?) close to the M6, brings more colour to the otherwise stark black and white work on display.

It’s an artwork to consume and digest in person for sure, along with Rachel Lowe’s mesmerising and discomfort-inducing Revolving Woman, running in another space at Eastside Projects, one of Birmingham’s foremost artist-run exhibition spaces. Go see.

Until 9 March
Admission free.
http://www.eastsideprojects.org/

Words: Lyle Bignon

Led by Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, in partnership with the Barber Institute of Fine Arts and Grand Union, the exhibition, which is to be staged across three sites, will provide a pivotal pathway for more than 20 recent Visual Arts graduates from the West Midlands five University Art schools.

Aspiring applicants, stemming from Birmingham City University, Coventry and Staffordshire University, and the Universities of Wolverhampton and Worcester, were offered high quality professional development opportunities and a chance to showcase their new talents in a selection process carried out by three nationally renowned artists and curators: Jeremy Millar, Artist and Tutor in Art Criticism at the Royal College of Art, Lynda Morris, Chair of Curation and Art History at Norwich University College of the Arts and Keith Piper, Artist and Programme Leader of MA Fine Art, Middlesex University.

One graduate from each of the five universities involved were awarded further with a bursary and an invite to work alongside Grand Union curators to produce critically engaging work which is to feature in the exhibition.

Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery: 15 February – 19 May 2013
Grand Union, Birmingham: 15 February – 16 March 2013
The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham: 8 March – 19 May 2013
http://tpwm.squarespace.com/
@tpwestmidlands

*image: After Cecil Beaton by Grace A Williams

Words: Kaye Patrick

Novikov’s seemingly simplistic use of bright patterned fabrics with appliquéd motifs and beading hide a multitude of deeper messages, reflective of the political state in Soviet Russia, and of the ideals of the New Russian Classicism movement, of which he was a prominent figure in defining in the late Twentieth Century. The group went against the cultural grain, wishing to deviate from popular culture in favour of a return to the Golden age of classical ideology, producing works steeped in Neo-Academicism. Novikov draws subtly, yet undeniably, upon the ideals of Victorian revolutionary Oscar Wilde, hidden amongst a charming and humorous composition, manifesting his commitment to New Russian Classicism through Wilde’s definitive opulence and grandeur that translate into a return to classical ideals. Novikov’s reference to Wilde also marks his own political optimism, the Victorian revolutionary’s ideas relating directly to Novikov’s political ideology at a time of great change in Russia, on the brink of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

A key theme in Novikov’s work is the image of the horizon, often presenting itself clearly through the joining of two starkly different fabrics. This image, present throughout Novikov’s work, fits in clearly with his ideologies, indicative of not only the new horizon upon which Russia was looking, but boldly symbolic of the joining of cultures; the popularity of modernity with classical ideology.

Novikov’s exhibition at the Ikon, running into the spring, is an absolute must-see; if not for his quirky and engaging use of fabrics and motifs to brighten up this dreary British weather, but for an intelligent manifestation of revolutionary and engaging political and artistic ideology in a time of great turmoil.

Timur Novikov
Ikon Gallery
13 February – 21 April

Words: Charlotte White