'ISIS destroys the art of civilisations wherever its reach extends, most notably at Palmyra. Brexit threatens to cut off EU arts funding without alternative national sources existing, as demonstrated by the threat from austerity cuts to the wonderful New Art Gallery Walsall. This may leave the Art world, despite its avant-garde image, ever more reliant on the largesse of capitalism and consumerism. Then, in the US those who will come to power in 2017, are those who have consistently sought to censor and neuter the liberal Arts.'
The Ikon Gallery, in partnership with Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and The New Art Gallery Walsall, aim to establish a new and ambitious international collection of contemporary art for Birmingham and the West Midlands region, using the theme ‘Metropolis: reflections on the modern city’.
Metropolis, which is currently on show at the Gas Hall in Birmingham, presents visions of life in modern cities around the world. With approximately 50 works in various media including digital projection, painting, sculpture, photographic installation and video art, it considers themes such as architecture, movement and consumerism, as well as the marginalised people and places of the metropolis.
Metropolis is the largest public exhibition of this nationally significant collection which includes work by 25 major artists from India, China, Europe and the USA such as Miao Xiaochun, Zhang Enli and Grazia Toderi. ARTicle 14 by internationally renowned West African artist Romuald Hazoumè is on display as is Mohamed Bourouissa’s powerful and significant Périphérique series – translated from the French as both ‘peripheral’ and ‘ring road’ – which offers a cast of young, mostly male, characters, each scene reflecting a carefully staged moment of physical or emotional tension set in the bleak housing estates that encircle Paris. In addition, German artist, Christiane Baumgartner has been commissioned to make new work, specifically about the urban landscape of Birmingham.
As Emma Crichton-Miller has written in Prospects,"There is a strong emphasis on photography and film, perhaps because these forms are particularly adapted to the fleeting, elusive life of cities, where significant events can erupt in moments and innumerable human interactions take place daily against a backdrop of mute architecture." This is particularly so with Baumgartner’s diptych Ladywood inspired by reflections of a railway bridge onto the canal and Nicolas Provost's hypnotically beautiful Storytellerwhich scans and merges views of Las Vegas.
There is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to art exhibitions in the West Midlands currently:
Metropolis: Reflections on the modern city is a major showcase of international contemporary artwork jointly collected by Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and the New Art Gallery, Walsall and developed in partnership with Ikon Gallery, as part of the £1 million Art Fund International initiative. Now shown together for the first time, these works represent an ambitious and nationally-significant new collection for Birmingham, Walsall and the West Midlands. Visions of the modern global city by some of the world's most exciting artists, Metropolis brings together stunning work by 25 contemporary artists of the highest international standing to Birmingham and includes digital projection, painting, sculpture, photography and mixed media installation.
Caught in the Crossfire: Artistic Responses to Conflict, Peace and Reconcilliation. This exhibition at the Herbert Art Gallery takes us on a
challenging journey from the home front to the frontline and back again, as
seen through the eyes of artists, soldiers and people affected by conflict.Visitors travel through divided
lands, debate the role of protest art, explore the aesthetics of violence and
machinery of war, and reflect upon the aftermath of war where hope emerges and
lives are rebuilt. A section of the exhibition focuses on the work of
kennardphillipps made in response to the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Jacob Epstein and Damien Hirst: Birth, Death and Religion.Though Jacob Epstein died in 1959 – six years before Damien Hirst was born – they both deal with the universal themes of life, birth, death and religion which have been the subject matter of artists for many centuries. The work they both produce around these interrelated concerns highlights the way that artistic practices have changed throughout the 20th century along with our social attitudes towards them.
Bellini, Botticelli, Titian… 500 years of Italian Art. This spectacular exhibition at Compton Verney comprises forty of the City of Glasgow’s greatest Italian paintings – the finest and most comprehensive civic collection inthe UK, and mostly unseen outside Glasgow. The works are of the highest quality and richness and chronicle a remarkable time span from 1400 - 1900, demonstrating the gradual move from religious to secular subjects. This outstanding exhibition includes landscapes, portraits and devotional works from the Renaissance. It will be followed by Flight and the Artistic Imagination - an exhibition exploring the instinctive human desire to fly from the classical era to the modern day. Starting with the imaginations of Leonardo da Vinci and Francisco Goya and ending with space travel, satellite images and everyday air travel, it is an exciting exploration of creative responses to flight.
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