Launch Thursday 14th March 2013 5-8pm
Open Friday 15th – Sunday 17th March 12-6pm
Municipal Bank Building, Broad Street, Birmingham, B1 2JS
www.thriftradiateshappiness.com
@TRH_Bham
Artists: Spartacus Chetwynd, Elly Clarke, Tom Crawford, Caitlin Griffiths, Ellie Harrison, Mecanoo, Sparrow+Castice, Julie Tsang, Nicole Wilson and Mary Yacoob.
Curated by Charlie Levine.
Thrift Radiates Happiness is the first contemporary arts exhibition to be held at the Municipal Bank in central Birmingham, UK.
One of Birmingham’s most historic landmark buildings 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.
From 14-17 March 2013 the former Grade II listed Municipal Bank on Broad Street will showcase a creative programme of drawings, images, sound and light, video and music from local, national and international artists.
The title of the exhibition is Thrift Radiates Happiness. The line has been taken from an inscription found carved across a main beam within the building. All the art projects featured will appropriately focus on finance and investment.
The main foyer space will host a specifically commissioned sound piece by Elly Clarke, the offices off this central entrance will house pieces of work by Tom Crawford, Caitlin Griffiths, Ellie Harrison and Nicole Wilson, all of whom work with and present works based on commerce, current economical issues, up-cycling objects and investment.
For the second part of this exhibition audience members will be invited to ‘invest’ £2 for which they will be given a number to a safety deposit box, within which will be a limited edition print by one of the contributing artists. Their £2 investment immediately rising and resulting in an original piece of artwork made for the exhibition by artists and architects Spartacus Chetwynd, Mecanoo, Sparrow+Castice, Julie Tsang, Mary Yacoob and a piece from the Library of Birmingham archives.
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.
Entrance to the exhibition is free thanks to funding awarded by The Arts Council, RIBA and Aedas.
For further information visit www.thriftradiateshappiness.com
]]>Björn Karlsson (SWE) and Hanna Ljungh (SWE)
Curated by Charlie Levine and Suvi Lehtinen
Launch 22nd January 2013 5-7pm
Open Monday – Friday 10am -5pm until 20th February
ARTicle, B.I.A.D., Margaret Street, Birmingham, B3 3BX
Cross-overs, connections, ties and links can expose themselves at random moments. Relationships can be born out of incidental meetings. The curators of the exhibition Band / Ties, Charlie Levine (Birmingham, UK) and Suvi Lehtinen (Stockholm, Sweden) met over a dinner during the summer in Berlin, through a mutual friend and curatorial partner Elly Clarke. It was during this chance meeting that the idea of the exhibition was developed.
Charlie and Suvi decided to bring together two Birmingham based artists and two Stockholm based artists for an exhibition that focuses on relationships, with people, places, families, and communities. The artists involved explore where it is they belong (or don’t), looking at where they’re from (or how this notion of origin is complicated), or the communities they’re involved in. The exhibition aims to forge links between cities and between the artistic communities of these places.
Natural overlaps and connections are made within all the works, and new opportunities develop.
This exhibition took place in Stockholm in December 2012 and is coming to Birmingham for January 2013.
The artists are: Elly Clarke (UK) and Caitlin Griffiths (UK), Björn Karlsson (SW) and Hanna Ljungh (SW)
]]>Preview: 7th December 2012 6-8pm
Open by appointment between 8th – 20th December 2012
email TROVE [email protected]
This December, TROVE presents Bristol based art collective, MadeScapes^.
Proxy is an exhibition that showcases MadeScapes^ practice for presenting brightly illuminated collaborative installations. They combine traditional materials with the inspiration they take from growing up during the mass use and production of digital culture. These are then constructed into isolated sequences of objects, colour and light.
Proxy highlights a fragmentation that appears as a result of twenty-first century narratives as we – the first generation of digital natives – come of age. We construct this exhibitions story, around and through its interactions with the screens and surfaces of mass culture. We depict each structure as pixels and combine them to create the whole. Relics and ideas from the past, present and future are combined and looped, and we navigate our way around them.
MadeScapes^ are made up of Jack Addis, Alex Cotterell, Tom Johnson, Will Kendrick, Trevor Smith and Lewk Wilmshirst.
]]>TROVE’s 3rd Birthday Party
12th October 2012 5pm – 9pm
TROVE Birthday cards and gifts by: aas, Sophie Bancroft, Tom Butler, Darrell Buxton, Graham Chorlton, Elly Clarke, Rosie Curtis & Steph Bryant, Anna Francis, Jo Gane, James Gill, Caitlin Griffiths, Anne Guest, Jaime Jackson, Victoria Jenkins, Dominic Johnson, Calum F Kerr, Matthew Krishanu, David Lee, Paul Newman, Maria Mattos, Laura McDermott, Karen Mc Lean, Milk, Two Sugars, Katy Morrison, Bharti Parmar, Sally Payen, Trevor Pitt, Antonio Roberts, Matthew Robinson, Daniel Salisbury, Polly Saunders, Elizabeth Short, Vishwa Shroff, Helen Snell, Viv Sole, Sparrow+Castice, Kate Spence, Jane Tudge, Sam Underwood, Sam Voong, E.Louise Wachler, Cathy Wade, Ed Wakefield, Emmett Walsh, Luke Williams, Caroline Wright, Mary Yacoob
With permanent pieces in TROVE by: Vicky Cull, Adrian Johnson, Hannah Kershaw, Alistair Levy, Vishwa Shroff, They Are Here, Zoe Williams and Mary Yacoob
This October TROVE will be celebrating it’s 3rd anniversary.
Over the past three years TROVE have worked with 146 local, national and international artists that have created, exhibited and performed as part of TROVE’s programme.
TROVE have realised over 36 shows in the wonderful TROVE home, the Old Science Museum, and in offsite projects, with venues including Curzon Street Station, mac birmingham, Edible Eastside, DownStairs Gallery, FarGo, The Burlington Fine Art Club, Coexist and ARC.
TROVE is an independent art gallery who have worked with Fierce Festival, Hereford Photography Festival, Hedge Enquiry, Minnie Weisz Studio, Museum of Lost Heritage, Birmingham Architects Association, Birmingham City Council, Clarke Gallery, Birmingham City University and Crowd 6.
For further information on TROVE’s previous exhibitions, please see the Archive page of our website HERE.
At Pop! Bang! Wallop! there will be presents, piñatas and pass the parcel! There will be artworks and cards from past TROVE artists! There will be a bouncy castle! And much much more!
Come and celebrate TROVE’s 3rd Birthday on 12th October 2012 5-9pm.
TROVE, Newhall Square, off 144 Newhall Street, Birmingham, B3 1RY.
7th September 2010 6-8pm
Open by appointment until 21st September 2012
West Midlands based artist James Gill is presenting a new body of work at TROVE this September in an exhibition entitled Solely a Shape.
Solely a Shape’s reading starts beyond the official form and function of the objects on display. The pieces, found in a reclamation yard, reveal a secondary secret function, achieved only be looking at the item as solely a shape, to uncover their hidden personalities.
Gill says “The content of the show is therefore dictated heavily by the individual objects new found identity, which is further enhanced by the fabrication of other objects and materials.”
Gill’s reimagining of these once functional objects includes using existing furnishing and on-site finds at TROVE to finish his ‘set’. This unique installation creates a scene that audiences look upon, creating their own narratives and exploring ideas of the secondary function of unused objects.
]]>and Edible Eastside present:
Post Colonial-Now
Karen Mc Lean
Launch: Sat 14th July 2012 12 – 5pm
part of the Warwick Bar Summer Fete
Talk: Sat 18th August 2012 1 – 4pm
with Charlie Levine, Cathy Wade & Karen Mc Lean.
Lunch served at 1pm, talk begins at 2pm.
Open: Thursday, Friday and Saturday’s
between 12 – 5pm
Edible Eastside,122 Fazeley Street, Digebth, Birmingham, B5 5RS
2012 saw two allotment/art projects open at two very different venues in Birmingham, UK.
First was the established institution, mac birmingham, that launched, in January 2012, ALLOTMENT – a project showcasing 10 regionally based curators, independent galleries and artists in a rotating plot programme; each plot owner growing and adapting during the 9 month long project. TROVE, an independent art gallery and programme based in the old Science and Industry Museum in the Jewellery Quarter, are one of the mac birmingham ALLOTMENT plot holders.
The second allotment project is the concrete garden, Edible Eastside. Situated in a former derelict canal side space in Digbeth it is home to actual allotment plots as well as a contemporary arts programme run by Hedge Enquiry.
Hedge Enquiry/Edible Eastside have invited TROVE, for their final installment/plot rotation at mac birmingham, to go off site to their other allotment/art project happening in Birmingham, and to take place in the Warwick Bar Summer Fete event.
For this project TROVE has invited artist Karen Mc Lean to reassemble her shack piece, Post Colonial – Now, at Edible Eastside, and decorate their mac birmingham ALLOTMENT plot with her hand made wall paper.
Born and raised in the Caribbean, Mc Lean’s move to the UK over 10 years ago provoked her to look into the interconnectivity of the two places. The Post Colonial – Now shack displayed at Edible Eastside resembles, to UK citizens, a shed – especially when placed at an allotment. However, when looked at closely, this ‘shed’ appears to be a home, the architecture of the structure changes with the addition of things, such as a clothesline, and the shed becomes a shack, a shelter, a hut. Based directly on some of the homes found in her native Trinidad, this shack motivates thoughts of displacement, identity, home and globalization.
These thoughts are also echoed directly in the wallpaper piece, Primitive Matters at TROVEs mac birmingham plot. The wallpaper immediately domesticates the space, though the strong colonial imagery found within it confronts viewers about cultural heritages, and links the two sites projects.
www.TROVE.org.uk | www.edibleeastside.net | www.macarts.co.uk | www.hedgeenquiryedibleeastside.com
]]>Open: 16th, 23rd and 24th June 2012 1-4pm
or by appointment
email [email protected] for further information
Artists include: Rosie Curtis & Steph Bryant, Emilie Crewe, Claire Davies, James Gill, David Lee, Maria Mattos, Duncan McKellar, Kate Morrison, Richard Peel, Daniel Salisbury, Kate Spence and Sam Underwood
In June 2012 TROVE, with Antonio Roberts, are hosting an exhibition about toys. This project leads on from the discovery that the Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham, where TROVE is based, used to produce more ‘toys’ than jewellery, guns or pens during the industrial revolution; all things it is now more famously known for producing. When researching what toys were produced in this area of Birmingham it was discovered that the term ‘toys’ was used to describe items such as buttons, cuff-links and belt buckles.
With the misinterpretation of the word ‘toys’ TROVE are presenting an exhibition of the contemporary understanding of the word. With a mixture of performance (preview night only), film and modified/hacked toys, this group exhibition is lively, fun and playful.
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TROVE at mac birmingham, launching on 28th January – 9th September 2012
For TROVEs third ALLOTMENT exhibition, three new periscope cabinet’s, designed by Daniel Salisbury, are being added to the plot. Each periscope will contain a collection from Tim Robottom, Caroline Wright and Will Kendricks.
The first/original cabinet, designed by Sophie Bancroft includes artists Anna Francis, Matthew Robinson and Milk, Two Sugars. The second cabinet, designed by Kate Spence, includes works by Liz Hingley, Bharti Parmar and Helen Snell.
ALLOTMENT at mac birmingham is an innovative programme which sees the Arena Gallery divided into plots and tended by independent curators, artists and creative groups. By extending the opportunity to curate to a wider community, the ALLOTMENT plots are imagined as a space to identify, profile and nurture the region’s new and emerging visual art talent.
Other plot holders include: TROVE, Dan Auluk, Clarke Gallery, BCU MA Curation students, mac staff, Moonbeams, Next Generation, Sparrow+Castice, Helen Foot and Dialogue.
]]>at TROVE for Fierce Festival, 2012
Love Letters Straight From Your Heart, Uninvited Guests (UK)
Sat 31st March & Sun 1 April, 9.30pm
Let’s raise our glasses to long lost loves and current lovers, to mums, to dads and to absent friends. Uninvited Guests stage an event that is somewhere between a wedding reception, a wake and a radio dedication show. We speak of our own and other’s loves – deep, passionate, ambivalent and unrequited – and dedicate songs to them.Using dedications contributed before the event, the performers recite words exclusively written by those in the audience, creating unique content for every show that is then interspersed with back-to-back songs played in an amateur DJ battle.
Audience and performers are seated at two long tables, where cava is served, toasts are made and speeches given, continuing the company’s practice of blurring the lines between theatre and social festivity. If you want to join us on this happy occasion, send a dedication to someone you love to [email protected].
Uninvited Guests is a UK/German company founded in 1998 and based in Bristol. They are dedicated to producing innovative, collaborative and challenging work that uses the high-tech and low-tech, visceral and virtual, new and second-hand material, to produce original and ground-breaking performance pieces. Love Letters Straight From Your Heart is presented alongside another show from this company Make Better Please during Fierce at two separate but historically resonant sites. http://www.uninvited-guests.net/home
A BAC Scratch and an Arnolfini We Live Here commission. Also commissioned by Leeds Met Studio Theatre. Produced by Fuel, presented in association with mac.
Gifts of the Spirit: Automatic Writing, Ron Athey (US)
Sat 7 April, 9pm
A performance installation conceived, scored and directed by Ron Athey with automatic composition and music performance by Othon Mataragas. Ron Athey will read extracts from his memoir, Gifts of the Spirit, accompanied by 16 automatic writers, a piano, 6 typists, 4 editors, 1 reader, and a glossolalia chorus – all in a hypnotic trance. The performance focuses upon notions of channelling through automatic writing. This performance is sited in TROVE, Birmingham’s former science museum and the setting of Dominic Johnson’s Departure in Fierce 2011.
Ron Athey has a rich association with Fierce Festival notably through his curation of the multi-artform platform Visions of Excess which featured scores of invited artists in Fierce 2003. Athey has been a crucial figure in the development of performance art, body art, club performance; the intersections between punk, queer and alternative cultures; sexual politics, specifically in relation to queer practices and the politics of HIV/AIDS; and the representation of religion and ritual.www.ronathey.com/bio.pdf
For more information about Fierce click here
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TROVE at mac birmingham, launching on 28th January – 9th September 2012
For TROVEs second ALLOTMENT exhibition, a new cabinet is being added to the plot. The first, designed by Sophie Bancroft included artists Anna Francis, Matthew Robinson and Milk, Two Sugars. The second cabinet, designed by Kate Spence, will include the works of Liz Hingley, Bharti Parmar and Helen Snell, while Will Kendrick’s gets added to Sophie’s initial cabinet.
ALLOTMENT at mac birmingham is an innovative programme which sees the Arena Gallery divided into plots and tended by independent curators, artists and creative groups. By extending the opportunity to curate to a wider community, the ALLOTMENT plots are imagined as a space to identify, profile and nurture the region’s new and emerging visual art talent.
Other plot holders include: Dan Auluk, Clarke Gallery, BCU MA Curation students, mac staff, Moonbeams, Next Generation, Sparrow+Castice and TROVE
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Starting 1st February 2012 TROVE are launching their first online exhibition THREAD. This project focuses on art in fashion and fashion in art. The TROVE THREAD blog will be updated every week with different views and aspects of the collaboration, with artists showcasing outfits of importance to them, how fashion and art cross over and how artists become iconic through what they wear.
TROVE are also accepting submissions from you, which will be uploaded onto the TROVE THREAD blog. Email an image and story of an item of clothing or material that means the most to you, to:
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TROVE at mac birmingham, launching on 28th January – 9th September 2012
New to 2012 at mac birmingham is ALLOTMENT, an innovative programme which sees the Arena Gallery divided into plots and tended by independent curators, artists and creative groups. By extending the opportunity to curate to a wider community, the ALLOTMENT plots are imagined as a space to identify, profile and nurture the region’s new and emerging visual art talent.
Plot holders include: Dan Auluk, Clarke Gallery, BCU MA Curation students, mac staff, Moonbeams, Next Generation, Sparrow+Castice and TROVE
For ALLOTMENT, TROVE is producing a series of in house designed cabinets. The first, designed by Sophie Bancroft, will contain a series of curious objects, the collection of which will expand throughout the project and spread onto additional cabinets, one of which will appear every 8-week cycle throughout the 9-month project. Artists included in the first curiosity cabinet are Anna Francis, Matthew Robinson and Milk, Two Sugars.
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Opening: Thursday 8th December 2011, 6pm-8.30pm
With A Slide Show by… Andy Field at 6.30pm
12 months on from its last presentation at Franklin Furnace in New York, Clarke Gallery is honoured to unpack the contents of WUNDERKAMMER once again, this time at TROVE in Birmingham, UK.
Translating as Cabinet of Curiosities, WUNDERKAMMER is a travelling show of sixteen small works by artists from Germany, the UK, Canada and the USA that grows and changes as it goes. Incorporating sculpture, photography, painting, (a new) ‘smart phone-dependent art’ (piece by Daniel Sailsbury) and a live presentation of “A Slide Show by… Andy Field” on the opening night, this is the forth stop WUNDERKAMMER has made. Starting out at Clarke Gallery in Berlin the exhibition then travelled to Eastern Edge in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada and Franklin Furnace in New York. For this presentation at TROVE, works by two additional artists are introduced: New York-based Columbian artist Juan Bethancurth (who I met during the last exhibition in NYC) and British Birmingham based artist Daniel Sailsbury.
Works were selected that not only would fit within the confines of a hand-luggage size Wunderkammer but which also referenced story telling, dealt with the idea of the archive or that were traces of or ephemera from an event or a larger piece. The text for the type-written labels was provided by each artist.
WUNDERKAMMER is the first Clarke Gallery exhibition to have travelled beyond the confines of my Berlin apartment, where Clarke Gallery started up. After two years of hosting exhibitions in my space (involving, at different times, sculpture in my bed, performance in my bathroom, video installation in the kitchen, slide shows in my living room; art objects nestling amongst my personal things) – it felt right to branch out and bring the mobility that we as individuals today enjoy, to the gallery. Now, having lived in Birmingham for a year and with plans to find a more permanent setting for Clarke Gallery in the West Midlands, it is a great honour to bring this suitcase of work to TROVE. And also, for the first time, for the exhibition to have so much space to breathe. As well as to be able to remain there for a few weeks.
Artists of WUNDERKAMMER in Birmingham are: Juan Bethancurth, Jessica Brouder, Elly Clarke, Julian Eicke, Liz Fletcher, Alexander Heaton, Sophia New and Dan Belasco / plan b, Terry Piercey, Daniel Sailsbury, Christian Sievers, Vajra Spook, Anna-Myga Kasten, E. Louise Wachler, Kym Ward and Andrea Winkler.
All work is for sale. Sales will make room for new work to be accommodated by artists from each place visited and, crucially, help fund its ongoing journey.
For further updates on WUNDERKAMMER and other Clarke Gallery activities, please sign up to the Clarke Gallery mailing list and check out the website for photos. You can also find us on Facebook. Next exhibition is The Mobility Project, which is showing at The Meter Room in Coventry, opening 19th January 2012.
www.clarkegallery.de
[email protected]
Second star to the right
An exhibition co-ordinated and curated by Sophie Bancroft, Daniel Salisbury and Kate Spence about the cosmos at TROVE, Birmingham.
Launch: 25th November 2011 6-8pm
Open: 26th – 27th November 12-4pm
2nd – 4th of December 12-4pm
For any other times you would like to visit the show it can be arranged by appointment, please email [email protected]
Recent graduates and current MA students at BIAD have come together for this exhibition based on Space, the Cosmos, the Universe. Highlighting in particular it’s never ending and unlimited source for ideas, thoughts and inspirations.
Artists include:
Sophie Bancroft, Rachel Blake Butler, Michael Clulee, Benedict Davenport, Ryan Hughes, Hannah Humphries, Hannah Kershaw, Daniel Salisbury, Polly Saunders, Bronia Sawyer, Kate Spence, Matt Webb and Dane Worrallo.
With a very special performance on the launch night by Richard Peel
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TROVE presents: Non obsolescence
with the Hereford Photography Festival
Launching Saturday 29th October 2011
Photographic techniques have rapidly changed within the last century; the immediacy of the digital plus its accessibility to the everyman has made everyone ‘photographer.’
But what about the essence of ‘catching/recording light’?
Camera obscura’s by Minnie Weisz, collodion wet plate techniques by Jo Gane, film and chemical printing by Matthew Andrew; these formats changed the world, revolutionized documentation and altered our perceptions of life and truth. These artists represent how our views of the world changed, and these artists represent a reason why the everyman photographer should ‘go home.’
Non obsolescence opens at Down Stairs with a preview reception on Saturday 29th October from 12-8pm, with hot cider served from 3pm onwards. It then runs throughout the duration of Hereford Photography Festival 2011 from 28th October – 26th November.
Matthew Andrew explores preconceptions of what a reference photograph should be and how much information is conveyed to the viewer using a visual medium. His featured work, Mimesis, uses film photography and is a series of images exploring truth, knowledge and photographic representation.
Jo Gane’s work, Ancient and Modern, uses the wet plate collodion process, an historic photographic process invented in 1850. It involves coating glass plates with collodion chemistry, sensitizing plates in silver nitrate then exposing in the camera before developing and fixing, within 10 minutes of exposure. Her work aims to question the value placed on age and authenticity within the art/photographic market.
Minnie Weisz’s photographs are taken in abandoned and forgotten buildings in and around London. Within their rooms she creates narratives from the abandoned objects found inside that relate to the building’s history, and the view that floods the room from outside. Using pinhole technique, traditional photography and documentary, Weisz weaves stories into the interior world of a building, creating an ode to each place she inhabits through photography.
Running concurrently to Non obsolescence, the exhibition Change The World Or Go Home brings together a diverse range of artists both established and up and coming, ranging from Turner Prize winners to artists who grew up within 500 yards of the gallery. It questions the relevance of artists in today’s society and whether their work can change the status quo.
Change The World Or Go Home is open from Friday to Sunday 12-5pm until 30th December, or by appointment outside of these hours.
Non-obsolescence – Hereford Photography Festival Event
As part of HPF’s opening conference, James Stevenson, V&A Photographic Manager, will present new processes in digital 3D modelling and film at the V&A, followed by a panel conversation with James Stevenson, Charlie Levine, Matthew Andrew, Jo Gane and Minnie Weisz on classic photographic methods in contemporary practice such as collodion, camera obscuras and cyanotypes.
Saturday 29th October 3-5pm
Folly Theatre, Hereford College of Arts, Folly Lane, Hereford HR1 1LT
For full details, visit www.photofest.org
For tickets, call 01432 340555 www.courtyard.org.uk
Non obsolescence is presented in association with
www.TROVE.org.uk
www.downstairsgallery.co.uk
www.photofest.org
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TROVE: THE EVENT 2011
Launch night 21st October 2011 5 – 9pm
Open daily 22nd – 30th October 2011 12 – 5pm
Curzon Street Station, Curzon Street, Birmingham
Artists include: Wayne Chisnall, Stephen Cornford, Robert Jacobsen, Jaime Jackson, Markus Kayser, Rob Mullender, Alex Pearl, Ben Rowe, Martin Sexton, Laura Skinner, Minnie Weisz, Luke Williams and Adam Zoltowski
Curated by Charlie Levine of TROVE and Minnie Weisz of Minnie Weisz Studio
Creative Machines, Minimalist Sculpture
TROVE: THE EVENT 2011
21st–30th October 2011 12 – 5pm
Curzon Street Station, Curzon Street, Birmingham
Artist include: Wayne Chisnall, Stephen Cornford, Jamie Jackson, Markus Kayser, Rob Mullender, Alex Pearl, Ben Rowe, Martin Sexton, Laura Skinner, Minnie Weisz, Luke Williams and Adam Zoltowski
Curated by Charlie Levine, TROVE, Birmingham & Minnie Weisz, Minnie Weisz Studio, London
Creative Machines, Minimalist Sculpture is an exhibition that has developed from conversations between Birmingham curator, Charlie Levine, and London gallery director and artist, Minnie Weisz. Interested in forging and forming links with creative practices and artists outside their home cities, Levine and Weisz have formed a creative collaboration, which is linked by rail stations, both connecting north and south. So, very apt that this exhibition takes place at the very first station to link Birmingham directly to London; built in 1838, at the start of the Industrial Revolution.
Curzon Street Station had regular passenger services to London Euston until 1854. Then, it was a direct link from Birmingham to Euston, (a stones throw away from Weisz’s London studio in King’s Cross). After which it ran only cargo trains until its closure in 1966. The building, designed by Philip Hardwick, mirrored the Euston Arch Station in London, sadly demolished in 1960, just six years before the closure of Curzon Street Station.
For ‘The Event 2011’, Levine and Weisz have curated an exhibition entitled Creative Machines, Minimalist Sculpture. It brings together artists from all over the UK who either create their own machine art works or have used machinery, or the idea of mechanics, to create the final Heath Robinson-esque whimsical, playful, scientific and experimental pieces.
Jaime Jackson and Alex Pearl’s site-specific film work reflects the exhibition space and its heritage. Pearl’s series of short black and white films, created and filmed by small battery powered machines, and Jackson’s large scale outdoor projection (for the launch night only) of people passing through New Street Station, are all about trains and in particular train stations. They are diverse in scale though not in subject, Pearl’s microfilms verses Jackson’s building size projection.
The film works by Markus Kayser, are a prelude to the machines he makes, resulting in a cinematic narrative which forms part of his process and machine experiments. The audience is shown a view into his world, how he builds his machines, from start to finish.
Martin Sexton’s engaging film explores what happens when a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School interacts with 62 school children that all say they have witnessed a UFO landing and encountered its strange humanoid occupants.
Inspired by film, Ben Rowe and Laura Skinner make imagined/familiar machines come to life. Skinner’s recent final degree piece has been re-commissioned specifically for this exhibition; a dark and eerie swing moving on its own conjures up classic film noir and Hitchcock style horror. Rowe takes a lighter look at classic 80’s sci-fi film machines, recreating out of MDF such iconic machines as the ‘flux capacitor’ from Back to the Future and Bill and Ted’s time machine phone box.
Wayne Chisnall continues the lens-based theme by creating a modern cityscape from old camera lenses and found ephemera. It makes you think of the views from train windows, and how they in turn become a different lens/frame through which to see the world. Weisz exhibits a large scale camera obscura photograph, depicting an inverted reflection of St.Pancras Station, London, as if its gazing directly into the Curzon Street Station, crossing the present, past, time, memory and place.
Artists Luke Williams and Stephen Cornford continue the hand made theme of the exhibition. Williams has made two sculptural pieces that project light, both based on the cosmos, specifically the stars, while Cornford’s piece is an installation of tape cassette recorders that switch on when sensing motion. These then perform in light and sound. Both works encompassing the theme of creative machines and minimalist sculpture, they are hand made sculptural pieces which literally light up mechanically.
Finally artists Rob Mullender and Adam Zoltowski bring a 2D element to the show. Zoltowski’s multiple give-away piece of a robot drawing has been photocopied 1000 times, utilising the machine in both design and production. Mullender’s delicate rubbings of old machines have been shellacked and framed. Mullender has not used graphite to create these; rather he has etched away with his nail to highlight the original scratches and marks off the machines.
The exhibition crosses sound, film and object/sculpture all based around the narrative of creative machines and minimalist sculpture. It is a look into pure machines meets pure minimalism, in a unique gallery setting.
Artist bios:
Wayne Chisnall
Wayne Chisnall is a London based artist who exhibits in the UK and in Europe. Although known for his sculptural work he is also a painter, print maker and illustrator. In 2005 Chisnall was awarded a bursary from the Royal British Society of Sculptors.
His work has been shown in galleries, magazines and for TV, his sculptures have appeared in the feature film, ‘Scratch’.
In 2008 John Malkovich chose Chisnall’s script (later turned into the animated short, ‘Snow Angel’) as the winning entry in the Sony VAIO Scriptwriting competition.
The artist also runs art workshops for schools and businesses.
www.waynechisnall.blogspot.com
Stephen Cornford
Stephen Cornford’s practice exists at the intersection of sculpture and music using sound and noise to investigate the physical qualities of the world around him. His work inhabits both gallery and gig, always seeking situations in which the material; whether solid, spatial or sonic; controls the outcome as much as he. He is currently a Research Fellow at the Sound Art Research Unit of Oxford Brookes University. He studied sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art before completing a Masters in Time-Based Arts Practices at Dartington College of Arts.
www.scrawn.co.uk
Jaime Jackson
Jaime Jackson is a video artist, curator and consultant project manager for the planning and delivery of artist initiative projects.
Specialising in socially engaged practice and public realm commissions, Jaime is the Project Director Hereford Photography Festival. Prior to this he worked for Milton Keynes Council, where he was a Public Art Consultant; he has also worked as an officer for South East Arts Board, Southern Arts Exhibition Services and Contemporary Art Society Projects, London.
www.jaimejackson.org
Markus Kayser
Markus Kayser was born in Germany in 1983. He moved to London in 2004 to study 3D Design (Furniture&Product) at the London Metropolitan University.
After free-lancing and exhibiting his own work in London and Paris, Kayser went on to study on the MA Design Products course at the Royal College of Art, graduating in 2011.
His newly formed studio focuses on the hybridity of nature and technology.
www.markuskayser.com
Rob Mullender
Rob Mullender is an artist, who lives and works in London.
How do you record an object properly? Is it always appropriate to photograph, or draw something, for example? How about something which is similar to both, but is really neither? As a way for three dimensional objects to record themselves by imprint, making a rubbing produces an intimate but incomplete and unreliable map of something. These images are several things: time-based recordings of a tool’s journey, non-drawings, non-photographs, spectres, Atomist skins, trophies. But mostly, they are recordings of touch; memories more solid than visual.
www.silentlight.blogspot.com
Alex Peal
Alex Pearl, born in Cheshire, educated in Birmingham and lives and works in Ipswich. In the last two years has shown in: New York, Berlin, Belfast, The Hague, St Gallen, Manchester, Munich, San Francisco, London, Marseille, Stoke on Trent, Lincoln Sydney, Cardiff and Valencia. His commission for last year’s Whitstable Biennale was based on a mistake and his 17 channel installation called “Pearlville” was shown as part of Unspooling, artists and cinema at the Cornerhouse, Manchester. He was recently unsuccessful in his Arts Council funding application to slaughter a large number of rival artists.
Alex makes mini epic films, video installations, games, photographs, sculpture, blogs and books. Throughout his work there is a sense of an acceptance of failure or disappointment as important parts of the human condition. Using readily available materials and software the work often has a feeling of improvisation, an initial throwaway idea made visible. It makes light with big issues and is, in turn, haunting and funny.
www.alexpearl.co.uk
Ben Rowe
Rowe is interested in the escapism that cinema gives to the audience. Pulling from a huge wealth of sources of popular culture and primarily, films from the 1980s; Rowe reconstructs his own versions of infamous props and scenes from these films.
These handmade objects are painstakingly carved, sanded and cut from MDF (the only material Rowe allows himself to use). They are then glued and affixed together similar to the Airfix models that consumed a lot of his childhood. However now, not unpainted plastic aeroplanes (Rowe admits he never had the steady hand for painting) but life size unpainted ‘replicas’ of the props in the associated films.
These films remind Rowe of a time when he wasn’t burdened by the responsibilities of adulthood. A lot of the items Rowe chooses to focus on demonstrate a means of escape. Yet the innate un-usability of everything Rowe constructs is paramount to his concepts. By purposely adding each intricate detail to create an item that looks distinctively life like, the blandness and monotone MDF material throws back at you the frustrating fact that it is un-useable and still in many ways a fantasy.
www.benrowe.org
Martin Sexton
Martin Sexton produces powerful and controversial art. He works at the interface of ancient history, metaphysics, the psychosocial aspects of ufology & the politics of aesthetics — all countered with an overpowering poetic vision that has echoes of the wilful extremism of rock n’ roll.
He has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally, including Tate Britain, Benaki Museum Athens & the Venice Biennale. He works with ice, fire, meteorites, sound, film and text.
www.martinsexton.co.uk
Laura Skinner
Skinner’s was born in 1989, in Birmingham, England; where until the age of seven lived with both her parents. However after the divorce of her parents Laura went to live with her mother and sister. Laura’s exploration of art first began at school, where her interest in painting first began. This lead to Skinner continuing art subjects at Matthew Boulton College where she obtained her A Levels and then her Art & Design Foundation Diploma.
She has recently finished a Fine Art degree at Birmingham City University, where she attending the Margaret Campus. Creativity is her life, everyday brings new challenges that allow her to continually experiment with new ways of working and a variety of material in order to be able to create something new. By using a wide range of processes and materials, experimentation is the main focus of Laura Skinner’s artistic style. Her work has gone through many transformations from her early oil and acrylic paintings, plaster and fibre-glass body casts to her most recent series focusing on motorised sculpture.
www.wix.com/laura_skinner9/artist
Minnie Weisz
Minnie Weisz Studio, ‘the last gallery before Paris’, which runs its byline, stands opposite St.Pancras International in a row of now relic Victorian arches, built in 1850. An exchange platform for artists, ideas and a common interest in art which is inclusive, engaging, and playful are some key elements which are the creative link in shows at her studio, and exhibitions she curates off site; sometimes in abandoned buildings or other buildings of historic or architectural interest which have withstood time.
She runs workshops in early 19th Century Photography, using the wetplate and collodion process, along with lectures given by the artists she chooses to collaborate with and show under the arches.
Her own work as an artist centres around buildings as camera obscuras, stories of rooms, buildings as witnesses to change and time, and look at the idea that camera obscura unlocks a dialogue between exterior and interior worlds, physically and emotionally.
www.minnieweisz.co.uk
Luke Williams
Working using electronic components and mechanical principles Luke Williams produces devices which co exist with the space in which they are placed. Using light and sound Luke’s objects react with a space bouncing light and sound off of the walls and objects to produce an environment the audience is invited to experience or not.
Influenced by the films of the eighties the machines Luke produces also pay homage to the early pioneers of 18th and 19th century science through the use of woods such as oak and beech and metals like brass, steel and copper in their construction.
www.lukewilliams.org.uk
Adam Zoltowski
Born 1971. Adam studied sculpture at Camberwell and Loughborough in the 90′s. He now divides his time between his studio practice and working as an art director in film media.
www.skyhook-uk.com
This August TROVE presents a weekend of performance and film based on the works of Dudley born film-maker, James Whale.
Best known for his 1930s Horror classics such as Frankenstein, The Invisible Man and Bride of Frankenstein, Whale worked in the theatre as an actor, set designer and stage manager before directing plays including ‘Journey’s End’, which toured to New York and attracted the attention of Hollywood film producers, landing Whale a contract with Paramount Pictures. He later signed to Universal where he made ‘Waterloo Bridge’ a film based on a Broadway play about a chorus girl who becomes a prostitute. Throughout his career Whale often chose the ‘outsider’ as the protagonist in his films and he himself was openly gay throughout his career, living with his partner, David Lewis, at a time where many chose to hide their true sexuality.
His films, often theatrical in style, also challenged the conventions of the time in many ways. He was a trailblazer who has inspired film-makers and artists alike still to this day.
Program;
Friday
7:30 Performance – Kate Spence (Human Puppet, come and pull the strings)
8:00 Talk – Darrell Buxton
8:30 Film screening – ‘Frankenstein’
Saturday
7:30 Performance – ‘Frankenstein 2099’
Richard Peel presents a short theatrical remix of the Frankenstein myth, starring George Marchant as both the monster and the creator. Using the latest innovations in mime technology, the classic tale of alienation and revenge is blasted into the far future. And set on Mars.
8:15 Film screening – Bride of Frankenstein
Sunday
7:30 Short Films – Two shorts by artists Anne Guest and Darren Banks and a special screening of the 1910 silent Frankenstein film by J. Searle Dawley
8:15 Film screening – The Invisible Man
There will also be refreshments straight from the lab on each evening.
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TROVE IN MANCHESTER
Preview 30th June 2011 6pm till late
Open 1st July – 31st July 2011 daily
TROVE is bringing to Manchester a plan chest. Three Birmingham based artists and three Manchester based artists, plus one trickster artist who hales from both locations, have been invited to create a compact and moveable gallery space, each with their own drawer. Guests to the Club are invited to open the drawers and look inside, take the drawers fully out and sit in the TROVE space within the Burlington Fine Art’s Club.
Artists include: Caroline Collinge, Tracey Eastham, Jo Gane, Caitlin Griffiths, Craig Marchington, Paul Newman and Edward Wakefield.
At Piccadilly Place, Manchester. Directions here > http://www.piccadillyplace.co.uk/#/howtofinduspage/
For more information please visit http://theburlingtonfineartsclub.wordpress.com/about/
TROVE IN COVENTRY
29th July 2011 6-9pm
TROVE invades Fargo Space with a room full of sound in its latest exhibit presenting several artists working with sound and music.
By achieving the atmosphere of a void this project attempts to present its unique taste of meditative loud sound that envelopes the space within the confines of the mundane urban environment. This allows the audience to explore the space in a fleeting moment or stay a little longer to experience.
Artists include: Milgram, Joshua Rackstraw with Paula Feijoo, Adrian Johnson, Richard Peel, Michael Valentine West, Edward Wakefield and Kate Spence
For more information please visit http://fargospace.posterous.com/
]]>Open by appointment until 24th June 2011
with additional events – see www.architecturewm.com for further information
As part of Birmingham Architectural Association’s Made in Birmingham 2011 series, SHOWCASE is an exhibition which celebrates the current work of local architectural practices and architecture students.
SHOWCASE is part of a number of architecture and built environment events held during June at TROVE in the heart of the Jewellery Quarter and at other venues across the city.
For more information on SHOWCASE and related events across Birmingham visit www.architecturewm.com
]]>The Infinate Combinatorium Part 0.
Preview: Friday 6th May 2011 6pm to 8pm
Open by appointment until Friday 27th May 2011
For more information or/and to book an appointment please contact [email protected]
www.crowd6.org.uk
Create a more efficient way of doing things. This simple mantra has driven the advance of culture for millennia.
Better tools, smarter thinking, maximum output from smallest effort. With each new iteration of efficiency, a little more about the universe we live in is revealed. We move closer to a realization that a formula exists. There is a system. The system is perfect. The problem is not the system, the problem is purpose. The suspicion arises that the journey toward purpose will not be efficient. It will be messy. It will be the work not of the scientists, but of the combinatorialists.
Pattern will fail. Hypothesis will end. The Infinite Combinatorium has begun.
Mary Yacoob has produced 3 new bodies of work for the Infinite Combinatorium; Part 0.
In her ‘Doodle’ drawings, the artist repeatedly draws a letter of the alphabet or a number whilst she listens to the radio, mapping the changes in sound, voice, and music with changes to direction, size and colour of the unit. A site specific drawing responds to the time of installation, the voices in the gallery space, and changes to music being played. The process altered a previous the artwork, a large Tipp-Ex rectangle created by Alastair Levy.
In ‘Research for Trove’, the artist has enlarged a photograph of the site as many times as it takes for the image to disappear. The largest white area on each photocopied image describing the magnitude of enlargement.
Her ‘Draft’ drawings are inspired by the technical diagrams in mechanical and electrical engineering textbooks, and relate to the site’s previous history as a science museum.
The ‘Proposition for Trove’ drawings are proposals for large scale installations for the site. Drawing on top of photographs sent to her by the Gallery Director, Yacoob has generated ideas for 3d installations. For example, in one drawing colour lines are matched up to different tonal values in the photocopied image.
Alastair Levy and They Are Here
Preview: 15th April 2011 6-9pm
Including live performance by They Are Here 6-9pm
& screenings of videos by Helen Walker (of They Are Here) at 8.30pm
Hu, 2005 (2m 39s) / Ballet Practice, 2009 (2m 26s) / Parkesine, 2011 (approx 3mins)
Closing event: Sat 30th April 2011 7pm
Red Desert (1964) Michelangelo Antonioni (120mins)
Open: Fridays and Saturdays 16th, 22nd, 23rd, 29th and 30th April 2011 1-5pm
& by appointment, email [email protected] for further information
TROVE, Newhall Square, 144 Newhall Street, Birmingham, B3 1RZ
www.theyarehere.net
www.alastairlevy.net
Donning metaphorical lab coats and overalls, Alastair Levy and collective-practice They Are Here will instigate a series of experiments and interventions inspired by the industrial, scientific and architectural legacy of the exhibition space: a former science and industry museum (1951 – 1997) and prior to that Elkington’s silver electroplating factory, the first of its kind in the world.
Inspired by notions of chemical reactions, manufacture and associative words: catalyst, conductive surface, the striking method, plating, gold, silver etc, the artists seek to explore how these ‘key words’ might become manifest in an artistic process that reacts to site and situation.
Significantly the opportunity to present work arose through a failed funding application that would have seen an alternative set of artists in-residence had it been successful. An attitude of expediency and rapid response has been pushed to the fore, necessitated by the development of ideas and work that began only thirteen days before the scheduled opening. This limited window of opportunity resonates with future of the site itself, scheduled to be converted into an office unit later this summer. This context has been embraced as a creative challenge to making work – hopefully encapsulating the spirit of efficiency and elegance of Victorian engineering.
www.TROVE.org.uk
11th March 2011 – Fierce Archive
25th March 2011 – Dominic Johnson’s ‘Departure’ 8pm
27th March 2011 – Sheila Ghelani’s ‘Covet Me Care For Me’ 4pm-8pm
This month sees TROVE opening its doors to Fierce, a Birmingham based festival of live art. TROVE are very excited to be hosting three of Fierce’s events.
The first is Fierce Archive – the launch of Fierce’s research activity, for this project Fierce have delved into their archives to offer audiences a glimpse of their history. From the festival’s inception in 1998, then known as Queerfest, through to the current day, this selection of leaflets, programmes and pamphlets is there to start as a catalyst for conversations and memories about the festival’s past and the archive’s potential future display.
Acclaimed performance artist Dominic Johnson is premiering his new work Departure at TROVE on the 25th March, this piece is followed by a night of club performance entitled Human Salvage which has been co-curated by Fierce and Johnson. Departure sees Johnson being tattooed live in TROVE with an array of other performances, and live film feed of the event being projected around the space in this new sensitive durational piece.
Finally at TROVE is Sheila Ghelani’s Covet Me Care For Me. This extremely beautiful performance-installation hints at nostalgia, death and kitsch objects. Ghelani invites you to choose a glass heart before smashing it, then a ritual wrapping of what was inside; Ghelani then invites you to take home its precious contents.
www.wearefierce.org
Open: 12th – 25th February 2011 by appointment
email [email protected] for further information
Caroline Collinge’s A Picture Unfolds sees the first in a new collaboration between galleries TROVE, Birmingham and Minnie Weisz Studio, London. Collinge, represented by Minnie Weisz Studio, makes her first visit to Birmingham this February. A Picture Unfolds opened in December 2010 at Minnie Weisz Studio, the show looks at the history of the A-Z and its maker as well as paper folding as a textile technique in her first solo show.
The London A-Z therefore sets the scene for this capriccio, an architectural fantasy of the city streets. Fact, mythology and fantastical combinations of origami, costume and architectural elements recreate the story of the London A–Z.
Fragments of the life of Phyllis Pearsall who created the A-Z are literally woven into Caroline’s exhibition. Born 1906 -1996 Phyllis Pearsall began to note down the names of the streets of London whilst lost one evening on her way to a party in Belgravia. Lost in the city and armed with the 1919 Ordnance Survey map, Pearsall could not find the address of the party and so begins her story of working for up to eighteen hours a day, walking a total of 3,000 miles while mapping London’s 23,000 streets.
Caroline Collinge is an artist working within film, installation and performance currently a PhD student at University of the Arts (London College of Fashion). Caroline studied Theatre Design BA at Wimbledon School of Art 2002 and MA in Scenography at LABAN Conservatoire of Dance 2004. Her artwork was shortlisted for the RIBA ‘Forgotten Spaces’ Competition 2010 and exhibited at The National Theatre, she has also been shortlisted for the Museummaker Contemporary Craft Commission 2010. Her Set Design work includes theatre productions at Liege Opera House, Shunt, The Arcola, Camberwell Arts Festival, Prague Quadrennial and The Roundhouse, London.
Caroline is represented by Minnie Weisz Studio. www.minnieweiszstudio.co.uk
Darren Banks, Ana Benlloch, Tom Butler, Martyn Cross, Vicky Cull, Anna Francis, Jo Gane, Caitlin Griffiths, Gabo Guzzo, Elizabeth Hingley and Tomonaga Tokuyama, Lulu Horsfield, Calum F Kerr, Hayley Lock, Kira O’Reilly, Samantha Voong and Emmett Walsh
Preview 21st Jan 6-8pm
21st – 28th January 2011 by appointment
Paris Correspondence School is a project initiated by TROVE Director, Charlie Levine, and realised during August 2010. After reading Walter Benjamin’s Archive edited by Ursula Marx, Gudrun Schwarz, Michael Schwarz and Erdmut Wizisla; translated by Esther Leslie, Levine was thinking about how to document her time in Paris over the Summer 2010. Inspired by Benjamin, Levine decided to send postcards home instead of keeping a diary. These postcards, as Benjamin did, would be sent to friends and family and then returned to her upon her return. However, as this idea and project developed Levine instead commissioned 17 artists to design a postcard. These were then printed and packs of the final 16 postcards distributed to all the artists involved with each other’s addresses. During the month of August a postcard exchange project took place. Cards were altered, added to, written upon and cut up and sent around the world.
The project, Paris Correspondence School, takes its name from pioneer and father of postal art, Ray Johnson’s New York Corespondance [sic] School. He is documented as the first to take the idea of postal art and make it into the main theme of his practice. Beginning in the 1950s he continued to be the face of postal art till his death in 1995, he set up New York Corespondance School in 1962 by writing ‘please send to’ on the back of small collages, drawings, instructions, newspaper clippings and anything else that could be posted. With this in mind the artists of Paris Correspondence School took up the mantel set by Johnson and have since sent a mass variety of new postcard works to one another.
Upon Levine’s return from Paris in September 2010 all of the artists forwarded their collection of postcards to her. Not all had gotten through the post, some lost in the system, some discarded by wrongly written address recipients, but here on display at Paris Correspondence School is the collection that made its way round the world and back to the UK.
Paris Correspondence School is touring to Minnie Weisz Studio, London opening on 6th Feb at 5-8pm.
See www.minnieweiszstudio.co.uk for further details.
Au & Ag
An exhibition by Vicky Cull and Justine Moss
Open: Preview 16th December 2010 6-8pm
Then by appointment between 13th and 22nd December 2010
TROVE’s December exhibition, in association with Brilliantly Birmingham, presents a series of works by Vicky Cull and Justine Moss.
Au & Ag consists of Cull looking at silver, of which her interest came from many sources. It is firstly a direct response to the site as TROVE was originally the worlds first silver plating factory, this along with the Jewellery Quarter’s history she has covered her work, and the gallery, in silver. The piece 5 Kilos of Silver Glitter is inspired by stories of the old jewellery factory floors being sold separately from the building due to the amount of precious metal dust in the floors that were then melted down and collected. The second part of Cull’s work looks particularly at silvers ‘noble’ connotations with queens, armoury, medals etc. and she uses similar shapes, lines of these metal items upon her vast work entitled D.I.A.N.A. and family.
While Moss works with the other precious metal from the exhibitions title, gold, something she has been exploring since her visit to Russia earlier this year. While on her visit Moss kept a diary noting down the evident opulence and grandeur of the Russian palaces and the use of gold in both an oppressive and intimidating way. The Royal families of Russia making an obvious statement of their wealth through the perhaps overuse of the metal. For Au & Ag Moss has written part of her diary on a massive scale in 32½ carrot gold.
]]>Ravi Deepres and Deborah Mingham
Alistair Grant and Caitlin Griffiths
Stuart Mugridge and Edward Wakefield
and photo works by Michael Collins and Dave Ruffles
Preview: 19th November 2010 6-9pm with a tour of the site at 7.20pm
Open: 20th, 27th Nov & 4th Dec 12-3pm
email [email protected] for further information
TROVE have now been exhibiting in The Old Science Museum for the past 12 months, with this, their twelfth show, TROVE have collaborated directly with the Museum of Lost Heritage (MoLH), the organization that documented the demolition and reconstruction of the site, Newhall Square, ten years ago when the museums contents was moved to Millennium Point. Three of the original artists have been teamed up by TROVE with three young up and coming artists; Ravi Deepres with Deborah Mingham, Alistair Grant with Caitlin Griffiths, and Stuart Mugridge with Edward Wakefield. As a result three new commissions have been made especially for this anniversary show, Glorious Rubble, taking place over the entire Newhall Square area. For the first time since MoLH’s initial activity ten years ago the Whitmore Warehouse will be open and home to Ravi and Deborah’s collaboration. The Box, a potential new space for art in the square, will be home to Caitlin and Alistair’s performance while Stuart and Edward will be utilizing the outdoor square itself.
In addition TROVE will be showing, in The Old Science Museum Engine Room, photographic works by Michael Collins and Dave Ruffles, both of whom have been on site over the past ten years and documented its various stages of regeneration (with thanks to Birmingham City Council’s archives).
This unique opportunity for TROVE and Newhall Square to open up all its sites, while continuing to recognize its heritage past and future potential as a place for the arts, has allowed TROVE and its audience to continue to grow, with the next twelve months possibilities being even bigger and brighter for this glorious rubble.
With thanks to: Museum of Lost Heritage, Neville Topping, Pete James, Birmingham City Council, Dave Woods, Kate Spence and Michael Levine
]]>Preview: Friday 12th November 2010 6-8pm
Also open Saturday 13th November 2010 6-8pm
TROVE Newhall Square, 144 Newhall Street, Birmingham, B3 1RZ
www.TROVE.org.uk www.photofest.org
123456 Cuts and Ironman
Wang Qingsong, a Chinese artist and photographer, first showed his large scale tableaux vivant photographers in the UK by invitation of HPF in 2004. This year Caitlin Griffiths, Artistic Director of HPF invited Qingsong back for the first showing of his video work in this country. Working in a variety of mediums the artist makes deliberately provocative commentaries on the transformations taking place in China over the past three decades.
Excess & Destruction
A parental guidance label would not be amiss with either of the videos shown here at TROVE. 123456 Cuts and Ironman are visceral illustrations of excessive brute force and form a barely disguised attack on the rapidity and aggression of China’s social reconstruction programme.
Qingsong’s earlier and more renowned works – his elaborately staged photographs – are productions akin to movie sets. The artist aimed to depict the superficiality and excess of modern consumer culture through the use of a cast of extras and a glut of costumes and props. Photographs such as Night Revel of Lao Li show a degradation of culture through its own excess.
123456 Cuts and Ironman show remarkable restraint in terms of cast and scale of production. They demonstrate the more personal, more bodily, effects of excess: the bloody deconstruction of living flesh into meat and pulp. It is not accidental that this shift from public to personal actually includes the presence of the artist himself (in Ironman) and the artist’s younger brother (in 123456 Cuts). In her essay Mask and Metaphor[1] Zoe Butt ascribes the role of ‘fool’ to Qingsong, he is to play out society’s own faults and foibles for their own consideration. In Ironman he becomes Christ-like – physically taking anonymous blows to the head and deflecting society’s mistakes from the masses.
The apparent reasonlessness of the violence is what makes the work so disturbing. In 123456 Cuts we see what appears to be a butcher cutting up a small animal. But while methodical, the ‘butcher’s’ actions are not clean or clinical and he continues to chop way beyond a logical purpose; the animal ends as pulp, not as meat. Instead it is performance, meditation and endurance: and – simply -destruction. The crescendo of sound as the video draws to a close announces the completion of his task, the execution of one hundred and twenty-three thousand, four hundred and fifty six cuts. It is the action, at expense of a productive and useful outcome, which is the purpose.
Born in 1966 at the very beginning of China’s ten year Cultural Revolution, Qingsong has always been interested in the speed and sometime excess of China’s development and transformation. HPF’s Twenty exhibition includes Qingsong’s Skyscraper, a time-lapse documentation of the construction of a 35 meter high, 50 meter wide scaffolding structure – a monster of a gold building – that pushes up from the horizon. Symbolising the speed of current development in China, the film unfolds with the specific intention to charm the viewers and fetishise this construction-as-progress. The video has no visible human presence and it is the arrival of the building itself that is celebrated, with a fireworks display.
Wang Qingsong is an artist who works with photography, video and painting. He currently lives in Beijing. His photographic work has been widely exhibited and is held in collection worldwide including the Metropolitan Museum, Getty Museum and MCA Chicago in the USA, and the V&A in London
Twenty is at Hereford Museum & Art Gallery until 27th November. Hereford Photography Festival runs until 27th November at venues across Herefordshire and the West Midlands.
Sally Payen, Viv Sole and Jane Tudge
curated by Matt Price and Charlie Levine
Preview: Friday 15th October 6-9pm
Open Saturday 16th, 23rd and 30th October 2-5pm
please contact [email protected] for further information
The Kubler-Ross Model details five stages of grief; in grief one will experience, in this order, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance; but what after acceptance?
Sally Payen, Viv Sole and Jane Tudge explore these five stages as well as the non-verbalised ones at either side. Grief and Oblivion is an exhibition combining for the first time these West Midland based artists, all three of whom examine and reflect the ideas surrounding grief.
Sally’s paintings directly represent press images from famous riot scenes in both Birmingham and Northern Ireland. These paintings are not just, however, re-presentations, rather their deeper resonance lies in Sally’s approach. Working within the confines of a subtle grid formation Sally departmentalises the scenes within the whole, the paintings not just exploring a scene, rather exposing an emotion of trying to ‘run away; to forget everything.’ The denial within her work is evident in the ghostly figures, grey tones and blurred edges, the ghosts of grief rather than a direct confrontation. The short flashes of red and yellows within the paintings hint at the anger within the aggressive subject matter, completing the second of the five stages.
Viv, with her works foundation being a response to her mother’s Alzheimer’s disease, hints towards bargaining. Metamorphosis is a symbolic countdown towards oblivion, cocoon-like Russian dolls lead to the release of a butterfly-the symbol of the soul in many cultures. The butterfly is a motif used in much of Viv’s work, her altered books, and in the Wreath series. The materials chosen in the creation of butterflies for each wreath brings their own story, little boys camouflage trousers and worn Afghan soldier uniform, or bandages and slings. Another key piece is a bowl of tears made from soap, which for me links all of Viv’s stirring and emotional pieces by its simple symbol of grief and depression.
Finally this leaves acceptance. Jane’s Madeleines cans hold individual memories from Jane herself, as well as people who have seen the work previously; the cans, she says, ‘catch memories which are then held in a supermarket of the mind.’ In Jane’s other work there is an air of ‘what if.’ Acceptance turned into appreciation of what is left, after her car overturned earlier this year, Jane began to question her mortality and in return her immortality, what is kept of a person once they have passed? This is a continuance and refinement in her work that has resulted in her wanting to contain memory and keep in a tin, tied in a box or set in wax for forever.
]]>Matthew Krishanu, Wendy Mayer, David Miller, Paul Newman
Preview: 23 September 2010 6-9pm
Exhibition Open 25 and 26 September and 2 and 3 October 12-4pm
“Sing Silent Songs, they dream too long, their memories just stare”
The 60’s pop life took its toll on Scott Walker. Naturally shy and frightened of live performance, Walker tried many means of escape, even seeking refuge in a monastery. He was uncomfortable with the pop identity of the Walker Brothers and was keen to pursue more serious creative ambitions. In mid-1967, the band split.
Walker quickly embarked on his solo career much to the excitement of the many Walker Brothers fans. But Scott Walker was not about to return to the world he had just escaped; he began drawing more explicitly on the aesthetic and philosophical interests that had first fired his imagination about Europe (in particular Michel Legrand’s film scores and the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus). Between September 1967 and late 1969, he released four albums, masterpieces of a unique vision from which he emerged as an idiosyncratic existentialist crooner who paid scant attention to the period’s dominant pop music trends.
A key influence on Walker’s solo work was Jacques Brel, whose theatrical songs were a revelation to him. Brel’s social observation and biting satire, his ironic meditations on religion, death and love, his character descriptions, his sense of place and his dark romanticism all showed how elements traditionally associated with literature could be part of popular music; his linguistic flair proved that song lyrics could be poetry.
Walker credits the Belgian with unlocking his imagination and catalyzing his own writing. Inspired by the way Brel captured life’s complexities and confusion but presented no solutions, Walker focused on seemingly unremarkable, mainly urban characters inhabiting a world of kitchen-sink realism, struggling with day-to-day existence, often alone and damaged. Most importantly, Walker supplemented Brel’s realism with abstract touches, expanding simple narratives with jarring, surreal imagery: in Scott 2′s “Plastic Palace People,” cityscape and dreamscape merge, and the imaginary ascent of Billy, seemingly propelled by a balloon tied to his underwear.
The internal and external worlds of childhood daydreaming and flights of fancy explored in this song are inspiration the exhibition.
The show mirrors the mood and trajectory of the song, beginning with Matthew’s paintings. They evoke personal narratives and memory, set indoors in simple domestic environments, these moments describe quiet reverie and reflection. The subjects are solitary, silent, their minds elsewhere. Paul’s painted dreamscapes describe a dark whimsy, near abstractions of forgotten memories, places and dreams. The landscapes seem continually on the brink of collapse and regeneration. Wendy’s wax sculptures explore the transition between childhood and becoming an adult. The relationship between children and dolls, and children and adults/ their future selves inspire uncanny manifestations. David’s cabinets are inspired by furniture owned by parents and grandparents during his childhood. The teak finish and curved shape combine and confuse seventies and thirties styles, producing familiar but mysterious objects.
The show takes place on the very site that plastic was first created by Alexander Parkes in 1855. He called this material Parkesine. While no-one but Scott Walker could know what the song ‘Plastic Palace People’ is really about, we give the audience the chance to see this show within the original ‘Plastic Palace’.
Terminal Portraits,1972-1982
Guest curated by Morgan Quaintance
Preview: 23rd July 2010 6-9pm
in association with Birmingham Jazz Festival
The Baghdaddies will be performing from 7pm
Open Saturday 31st July and 7th August 12-4pm
or by appointment – please contact [email protected]
From 1972-1982 Sheldon Nadelman shot over 2,500 photographs during his stint as a tender in New York’s Terminal Bar: one of the toughest dives on Manhattan’s 8th street. Using his 35mm Pentax camera, set to 1600 ASA, Nadelman utilised the natural light available to capture the clientele who frequented the bar. In the ten-year duration of Nadelman’s undertaking, a steady stream of Irish Longshoremen, Pimps, Drag Queens, and African American gay males came through Terminal’s Doors. Nadelman made a point of photographing everybody, without discrimination. Some subjects would return while other, more dangerous or tragic figures, would only wander in for the one sitting.
Nadelman managed to capture a kind of guileless truth within his portraiture. It is a result that is seldom seen amongst contemporary subjects, all to aware of the power of projection. No instruction was given to the people who sat for portraits, allowing for their own particular types of subjectivity to shine through. The steely-eyed glare of a pimp in one is swiftly followed by a tender look in the eyes of another: drag queens stare out in defiant poise. There is no uniformity to typology, no conformity to stereotype, no uncomfortable exploitation of exoticism. What is present in Nadelman’s portraiture are all the contradictions of human nature frozen in time.
For the first time in the UK TROVE, in association with curator Morgan Quaintance, will be showing 810 Nadelman portraits, alongside interview footage, in which Nadelman delves into the particular histories of certain photographs and their subjects.
]]>Kate Farley
On permanent display in Newhall Square,
off Newhall Street, Jewellery Quarter,
B3 1RZ
See www.TROVE.org.uk for further information
The ‘Order of Things’ is a wallpaper designed by artist Kate Farley. It was designed originally for the foyer spaces of the four buildings that were going to be built on the site where the Science and Industry Museum used to stand in the Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham. However, due to building being halted the Museum of Lost Heritage along with TROVE have decided to display it in new cultural hub, Newhall Square.
Farley’s design concept was established from the original Science Museum site as well as its exciting history as a silver-plating factory. The imagery Farley uses includes photographs, rubbings and ephemera collected in site. The collages are then made as a response to the archiving and storing of the images and actual materials. Farley represents this in a grid, which she says ‘reinforces the formality of the shelving and display systems used in museums.’ Farley’s colour palette is also a direct reference to the original site as Farley collected original paint samples before the demolition of the site.
‘Order of Things’ by Kate Farley will be on permanent display in Newhall Square from July 2010
Presented in association with Museum of Lost Heritage and TROVE
]]>Preview: Friday 28th May 2010 6-8pm
Open on Saturday 5th June 2010 2-6pm
With a closing on Thursday 10th June 2010 8-10pm
And by appointment, contact Charlie or David at
[email protected] or [email protected]
David Mackintosh was born in Sunderland in 1966; he has lived and worked in the North West of England since 1990. His work encompasses drawing, painting, sculpture and performance. He has exhibited widely throughout Europe and in America, and has work in Collection Berge Madrid, Ernst & Young London and in private collections throughout Europe and America. Mackintosh recently published his first monograph Imagine you’re in a room full of blind fools desperately grasping at nothing with an essay by Simon Morrissey. He has had major solo exhibitions at Hammersidi London, Mobile Home London and at Arnolfini Bristol 2003, and presented a solo show at Spike Island in Bristol in 2008.
David Mackintosh is represented by works|projects.
* ADDITIONAL OPENINGS *
TROVE will now be open Saturday 8th May 12-4pm
and a special late night Thursday 13th May 8-10pm with additional projections by Luke Williams
Preview – 30th April 2010 6 – 8pm
Exhibition open 30th April – 16th May 2010
Contact Charlie or David for further information
[email protected] or [email protected]
image courtesy of Pete Ashton from his series The former Museum of Science and Industry
TROVE have been situated in The Old Science Museum in Birmingham ‘s Jewellery Quarter for the past 7 months. The Museum used to house the city’s science and industry collection before it moved to Birmingham’s Millennium Point 10 years ago. Since then the space has been occasionally used for art initiatives directed by The Museum of Lost Heritage. This group gave over access and free range of a programme to TROVE last year and since then TROVE have programmed a new event/exhibition every month. For this April however TROVE return to the buildings roots and presents Show of Science.
Pseudo-science, the make believe, the hand made and discovery are themes running through the four artists in this exhibition. a.a.s. have created a new piece of film and installation for the show dealing with themes of the scientific experiment, whether real or unreal is up to you. The same is visualised in Victoria Jenkins’ beautiful black and white photographic series Lapis Philosophorum of constructed experiments. The works of Lee Stowers and Luke Williams, though also constructed objects, are real, Luke’s camera and Lee’s music boxes are beautiful in their antique appearances. All pieces hint at the historic, at first glance there is nothing suspicious or out of the ordinary, though with closer inspection there is something odd about the works. The double take allows this Show of Science to move from a series of simple objects of science to pieces that make you question its use, its reliability as official face and of the make believe.
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and throughout the Spring
On display in the windows to the right of
The Old Science Museum
144 Newhall Street
Birmingham
B3 1R2
Poet Laureate of Birmingham, Adrian Johnson, for TROVE’s March 2010 show has written a short poem for the windows of The Old Science Museum in the Jewellery Quarter.
This site has local historical significance, as its name suggest it was once the home of The Science and Industry Museum of Birmingham which has since moved to Millennium Point. What’s left of this space is now being used by TROVE, anticipating a new life. With Birmingham’s iconic library’s future looking bleak with plans by the City Council to knock it down before 2015 it is a miracle that the ‘steam room’ part of the museum is still with us thanks to it’s listed status.
With that in mind Adrian offers us a short piece, “a nice, oblique nod to the past history of the space.”
‘Oh, now you can see why’ will be on display along the right hand side of The Old Science Museum throughout the Spring.
A collection of artists from around the UK
One night only: Wednesday 24th February 2010 6-8pm with music till late
The Vaults, Newhall Hill, Birmingham, B1 3JH
TROVE is the first gallery invited by ARC to present a one night only exhibition at The VAULTS in the Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham, UK.
Each month ARC invites regional guest curators to present an exhibition of works to be exhibited at The VAULTS, with TROVE kicking off their 2010 programme.
The Vaults Bazaar brings together a selection of regional and national artists that TROVE invited to take part in this exhibition. Each offering a different proposal of work, each vault will be different from classic painting through film to performance, a truly bizarre mix.
Artists include:
Jane Ball, Graham Chorlton, Coco Deville, Caitlin Griffiths, Daniel Lehan, Brigid McLeer, Milk,Two Sugars, Paul Newman, Elizabeth Short and Steve Varndell
]]>PREVIEW Friday 15th January 2010 6-9pm
Open by appointment until Sunday 31st January 2010
Please contact Charlie at [email protected] for further details/to make an appointment
For the forthcoming exhibition at TROVE this January 2010, curator Charlie Levine and artist Hayley Lock have invited friends and acquaintances from the social network facebook to partake in a Christmas card/collage exchange. All works posted through the physical and therefore traditional routes are to be traditionally displayed together in plan chests at TROVE. The exhibition will be an amalgamation of works responding to the idea of ‘Post’.
Artists include:
Darren Banks, Liz Bradshaw, Martyn Cross, Vicky Cull, Annabel Dover, Tracy Eastham, Rebecca Foster, Anna Francis, Anneka French, Jo Gane, Helen Grundy, Lulu Horsfield, David Kefford, Hayley Lock, Renauld Loda, MAMA, David Miller, Malcolm Moseley, Justine Moss, Alex Pearl, John Rixon, Sarah Sparkes, Emily Speed, Ana Benlloch and Stuart Tait, Cathy Wade, Edward Wakefield, Lucy Wilson, Jennifer Zoellner
]]>Friday 18th December 2009 4-8pm
Saturday 19th December 2009 4-8pm
The Old Science Museum
144 Newhall Street
Birmingham
B3 1R2
African ebony inlaid with mother of pearl, coral, abalone and tortoiseshell
TROVE presents The Sickly Trickle, a solo exhibition of works from Bristol based artist Zoe Williams. The Sickly Trickle presents a sculptural environment, acting as punctuation to The Rootstein Hopkins Award, which culminates in a solo show at Spike Island Art Space, Bristol, in May 2010.
Building an internalised and often fragmented dialogue between objects and materials, Williams fetishizes her dismembered installations, paintings and sculptures, whilst toying with and engineering a delicate balance between the sacred and the profane. Using a wide range of references from George Bataille’s transgressive texts to Art Deco furniture and Fairy Tale imagery; Williams juxtaposes a mixture of materials and techniques traditionally associated with the ‘High Arts and Crafts’, including porcelain, gold leaf and Inlay with modern materials, such as silicone rubber and Styrofoam.
Williams is interested in what happens when objects and materials are abstracted from their original contexts and reconfigured to form a myriad of associations and ambiguities. Drawing parallels with the rich material tapestries of isolated objects, which are presented to us in Fairy Tales and Myths. In these tales items are listed and recited like spells; precious jewels, toadstools, golden girders and lumps of coal are offered to us like glinting talisman. These items in turn begin to take on new transmutable modes of being, as if they exist in a state of dislocation where all is transient. It is this instability, which Williams seeks to harness and evoke through her practice.
The Sickly Trickle sees Williams’ fanciful style alter the dusty Old Science museum in Birmingham into to a subtly irreverent landscape. Visitors are invited to explore a space where black waxen forms solidify between the floor tiles and traces of gold leaf fleck the walls.
Friday 13th Preview 6-8pm
Saturday 14th 2-6pm
The Old Science Museum
144 Newhall Street
Birmingham
B3 1R2
Critically commenting on the traditional British landscape and our continuing search for an authentic and historical representation of it, Coventry based photographer Jo Gane questions the mythologies and values placed upon specific historical sites across Britain. Adopting the traditional wet plate collodion process for her work, the artist goes in search of relics and objects found within the customary British landscape, specifically sighting out those that hold some evidence of historic authenticity.
All at once archaeological and ironic, Finds presents what Gane uncovers on her ‘digs’ such as instructions on how to make a ‘genuine’ ancient manuscript at Stonehenge. These findings disrupt the approved historic dialogue at the sites, questioning the system of relations and shifting the hierarchy of the objects found and then photographed in this classic process of image capturing.
Don’t miss the opportunity to watch Gane create new plates in The Old Science Museum on Thursday 12th November, 2-6pm. With TROVE currently residing in a heritage site, Gane is effectively adding to her collection through the utilisation of materials she finds within the space. This archival process will ensure that both Finds and the history of The Old Science Museum are forever recorded for posterity.
The official Preview will be held on Friday 13th, 6-8pm with the exhibition continuing on Saturday 14th, 2-6pm.
]]>Sunday 4th October 2009 2-6pm
The Old Science Museum
144 Newhall Street
Birmingham
B3 1R2
In his first UK show, Sydney based artist Sam Smith is exhibiting his latest work Into The Void for its northern hemisphere premier. Having exhibited extensively throughout Australia as well as Japan, China, Thailand, Brazil, Ireland, Mexico, Spain and New Zealand, Smith’s work utilises the mechanics of cinematic production and special effects technologies to create parallel universes in which the ‘rational behaviour of matter is displaced by a realm of digital possibility.’
This exhibition is a culmination of great second cities. Smith, from Australia’s second city, has chosen Birmingham, England’s, to exhibit his new work, Into The Void (2009), a work that combines montage, multiple exposure and digital compositing to build a tangent narrative. Smith searches New York, America’s second city, for works of international Klein blue and a location that mirrors the site for Yves Klein’s Le Saut dans le Vide (The Leap into the Void, 1960). The artist’s journey culminates in a time- based recreation of Klein’s famous jump.
Be the first to view Smith’s work in this exclusive 4 hour premier event which is not to be missed.
Image courtesy the artist and GRANTPIRRIE, Sydney.
Into The Void was commissioned by Next Wave for Next Wave Time Lapse at Federation Square, Melbourne.
September 13, 2009, 12pm – 4pm
The Rea Garden
Floodgate Street
Birmingham
B5 5ST
Have you ever felt that there’s something missing in your life?
The Universal Family of Cosmic Xenogenesis presented an exciting array of stalls and activities where you could learn more about their revolutionary way of life. You were invited to clean out your mind and fish for new thoughts; decorate cakes, T-shirts, balloons and your face with positive symbols; get in touch with your power animal in the Robot Petting Zoo; and of course sample the copious free Kool-Aid.
There were also games like Psychology Mr. Wolf and The Fear Train where you could open up your consciousness, compete for special access to the behind-the-scenes activities of the group, and join them for a shining future in The Other Place.
This event was presented in association with a.a.s. art group and reflected their ongoing interest in transformation and influence. Because the language and techniques of persuasion are all around us it can be difficult to notice them, but if you keep both eyes open and your wits about you, you can choose whether you want to go along with The Family’s ideas or find your own path to freedom.
Open to all ages, but some elements are PG rated.
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