We are delighted to be working with Birmingham and West Bromwich-based photography specialists GRAIN Projects and Multistory to commission and present two public realm photographic exhibitions. Internationally renowned artist Julian Germain is creating Generations, a large-scale project, based on the aesthetic of the family portrait that will be shown at outdoor locations in Birmingham and Sandwell.
People, Place and Sport by Jaskirt Boora, from Bearwood, explores the role of gender and ethnicity in sport, through a series of portraits, landscapes and recorded conversations, with community exhibitions in eight locations including Wednesbury Leisure Centre and the Moseley Road Baths, ahead of a major open-air exhibition in Sandwell Valley Country Park in the Summer.
From sports centres to arts centres. In Midlands Arts Centre’s (MAC) main gallery, John Akomfrah’s seminal work 'The Unfinished Conversation’ is a moving portrait of the life and work of cultural theorist Stuart Hall – and this will be the first time the work is seen in Birmingham. By the Summer, MAC exhibitions will include Empire through the Lens, looking at the former British Empire and its impacts on people today, and their events will include Greg Homann’s In Our Skin - a verbatim theatre project that documents the experiences of gay men living in Birmingham and Johannesburg.
2022 also marks the 25th birthday of Fierce, one of the UK’s most daring contemporary arts festivals. In celebration we’re delighted to be able to support a long-held ambition of theirs to bring the extraordinary large-scale public realm project, Key to the City, to Birmingham and Solihull at the end of May. Key to the City was one of the earliest projects to capture our imagination – we were thinking about how to change perceptions of the city, how to animate forgotten and underutilised spaces – and asking questions about citizenship, heritage and identity.
The last two weeks of May marks the beginning of FLOW Children’s Biennial with Create Your Own Art Centre, a large-scale, child-built, installation in the magnificent Warley Woods, Smethwick created in collaboration with Woodland Tribe and Children’s Theatre Company Cloud Cuckoo Land. Children and their adults are invited to come and build their own arts centre with Woodland Tribe! The 90-minute sessions will encourage children to become artists and engineers in developing their structures; whether it’s adding ladders to climb, bridges to cross or stages to perform on.
