Category: ARTS (2022)

Words Reece Greenfield / Photos Mo Bukhari

On Friday 1 July, as part of Digbeth First Friday, I attended an exhibition celebrating radical left-wing print art which was set to kickstart the week leading up to Supersonic Festival. The exhibit included such legends as Gee Vaucher, along with both Brummie and out-of-town radical contributors such as La Linterna, Foka Wolf, Lucy McLauchlan, Black Lodge Press, and Dog Section Press.

As I walk into Centrala, I am met with a projector and experimental music emanating from the DJ deck and PA at the far side of the room, which provides a great introduction for what I’m about to see. The night is themed around a mixture of anger and radicality balanced with good cheer, great talent, and comradery.

Upon ascending the staircase, I am greeted by a stall selling prints and distributing free stickers as well as some friendly comrades who take great delight in talking me through the art they have on sale. As I turn around, I see prints of many of them all over Centrala. The walls of the room are covered, the repetition of poignant slogans framed by colour and deliberate imagery adding to their impact.

There’s the cooperatively owned Dog Section Press and La Linterna’s ‘Already Against The Next War’ as well as, ‘Strike! Steal! Trespass!’ and ‘The System Cannot Be Reformed!’ by Black Lodge Press.

Over on the right-hand side of the room stands Foka Wolf’s Foamex Boris Johnson, clad in full armed police get up complete with decorative party hat.

What a fitting façade of a façade.

I am struck immediately by the way the artists utilise the medium of print and advertising. They perfectly appropriate the rhetorical requirements of the medium of political print; powerful in their brevity and creative not despite but by virtue of their limitations. Each piece oozes with radical emancipatory notions regarding war, property, and disillusionment with our own brand of liberal democratic capitalism.

After a good nose at the displays, I grab a beer and have a chat with Black Lodge Press’ CJ. I ask about their influences and CJ replies: “Gee Vaucher (who is also part of the exhibition tonight) her stuff, particularly in the 80s with the band Crass, got me into anarchist politics and of course anarchist art.

“Art is provocation and [this] is firmly rooted in anarchist politics. I went to the G20 protests in London, and I had this banner and it was just a huge black banner with white duct tape with ‘We are fucking angry!’

“The total non-subtle approach doesn’t really say anything about policy, but it’s a statement. Using phrases like that it hits in a different way; you instantly have a reaction.”

And as for their use of colour?

“Well, I use a riso-press up in Leeds called Footprint and it’s so colour limited you can only do like three at most and it restricts you in a really good way. There is direct thought over what colour you use.”

I can’t help at this moment but to think of the censorship via the Haye’s code of early 20^th century American television. Any direct profanity or licentious or suggestive nudity was banned. It is precisely through adapting to these restrictions that some of the most creative cinema was conceived.

It is in print media’s limits and its replicability that we see its political value. These artists do not profess to have the answers, rather they provoke the spectator into a search for them. The sense of universality, experimentation and a shared anger at socio and political injustice gets me in just the right mood for Supersonic Fest which is happening this weekend (8–10 July 2022).

For tickets and more information on the Supersonic Festival visit: www.supersonicfestival.com.
For more from Centrala go to their website: www.centrala-space.org.uk

For more from the contributors see the below:
Black Lodge Press –  www.queercircle.org/activations/black-lodge-press
Dog Section Press –  www.dogsection.org
Lucy McLauchlan – www.lucy.beat13.co.uk/shop
Foka Wolf – @fokawolf
La Linterna – @lalinternacali

For more information on Digbeth First Friday visit www.digbethfirstfriday.com (or @digbethfirstfri on Instagram)

Writer Emily Doyle / Photographer Jessica Whitty

In mid-June, Digbeth Art Space proudly unveiled In Flux, a solo exhibition from local artist Imogen Morris. Months in the making, the works push the boundaries of portraiture and the perception of thread in fine art. Boards are studded with nails, and then threads strung between them to map out faces.

“My main obsession has always been with the material thread and working in thread,” explains Morris. “Portraiture initially was just a means of creating form with thread. However, over the years I haven’t swayed from portraiture. I get a proper buzz from seeing an eye come together and being able to depict the characteristics or emotions of someone. The bigger the piece the more I can play with, so I want to continue working in large scale.”

Large scale pieces dominate the gallery, spilling off of huge canvases and creeping onto the ceiling or intersecting the space with fragile, polygonal forms. Long time followers of Morris’ work will be interested to see the artist spread out not only into three dimensions, but also into a broader palette of sugary pastels.

“I can’t remember the exact point I decided to experiment with colour and what it was that inspired me to go down that route. I think a lot of my influences come into my head subconsciously – I don’t realise I’m influenced by someone until after I create the work.”

“I have been working on the solo exhibition since January, and so in terms of a time it must’ve been then. This was also around the time that I saw Betsy Bradley’s exhibition at the Ikon and started getting into Sophie Tea’s work via Instagram so I can definitely put down my influences of working in colour to their work.”

The subjects of Morris’ portraits are of friends and of strangers, but they’re all of residents of the West Midlands. Personalities bubble though the woven forms, making the crowded private view feel even more busy. Wine Freedom keeps the drinks flowing and Selextorhood’s Dee’Cleo keeps the vibe going well into the evening.

“We had more people than expected,” reflects Morris, “and it was a really good relaxed vibe. I wanted to have proper chats with more people there as I appreciated every single person that came to the event, but annoyingly couldn’t get round to everyone. But aside from that it was a great night.”

In Flux runs until 11 July at Digbeth Art Space and is open daily 8am – 5pm, so catch it while you can. Meanwhile, Imogen Morris is off to complete a residency with DegreeArt at the Bankside Hotel in Southbank this summer.

For more on Imogen Morris visit: https://www.imogenembroideryart.com/

For more from Digbeth Art Space go to: https://www.digbethartspace.com/

Writer Emily Doyle / Photographer Jessica Whitty 

“It’s a weird thing, isn’t it,” says Chamberlain when I ask him how he arrived here from his classical guitar background. “If you’re an artist using charcoal or gouache or oil paints… musicians rarely think about the material that they work with. I just started getting interested that way.”

If you head down to the gallery space at The Hive JQ this month, you might not be sure if you’ve wandered into an art show or a science exhibit. Musician, composer and teacher Nick Chamberlain is debuting his ‘SoundMuse’ project, seeking out connections between sound, visual art, and science.

Cymatics, the study of visualising sound waves, is a running thread throughout the space, with harmonographs and chladni plates breaking up walls and walls of complex curves and shapes. At the centre of the gallery is a rolling video installation, projecting a series of pieces by Chamberlain all of which respond to the sounds of the natural world. ‘Flowerbee’ is a standout, a piece of music for piano and cello is visualised by a pair of Eidophones – drum-like membranes covered in lycopodium powder which shifts into geometric forms as the music plays.

The exhibition feels as if you’re walking through someone’s learning process, picking over sketches and experiments. Large posters explain the inspiration behind the pieces in a way that really invites the audience into what could be an intimidating subject matter.

“It was always trying to bring people in,” explains Chamberlain when we meet him for a coffee. “Like, isn’t this incredible? I don’t think people are amazed enough. That we’re travelling round the sun at 67000 mph and that two different vibrations can create these incredible, complex patterns.”

Chamberlain is also keen to cite his sources for the SoundMuse project. “It was Chladni who was the original guy who went to the Royal Institute to demonstrate this phenomenon, then it was Margaret Watts Hughes, then Hans Jenny then  Lauterwasser and then – I mean, Björk’s done a thing with it, did you see that? She did a big performance – and of course she’s got the money to do huge things – but some of it was just little dishes of water, she just projected it on a big screen.”

“There’s nothing [in the show] that’s particularly new – although I haven’t seen the bubbles, perhaps they have been done.” he wonders. One wall of the exhibition is covered with a series of “Bubble-sound Images”, photographs taken of soap bubbles vibrating at different frequencies where geometric shapes seem to emerge.

“I really enjoyed that aspect of it. It’s quite interesting to see the forms – there are a few facts I need to check up on – but I’m pretty sure it’s oscillating forms rather than shapes.”

And there is a deeper thing, it’s getting a handle on the way the world works, the way – I don’t wanna sound like a new age hippy, though there’s nothing wrong with that – to really try and get an understanding in the language and format that I can understand the world.”

Chamberlain’s passion for learning is clear. Above all else, ‘SoundMuse’ feels committed to leading audiences by the hand through the world of cymatics in a way that’s thought-provoking and accessible.

Check out the SoundMuse project here: www.soundmuse.co.uk/about

For more from The Hive go to: www.rmlt.org.uk/the-hive-jq