Popped round to The Neighbors for some tea and cake

New Birmingham curatorial duo The Neighborhood invited local arts organisations and enthusiasts to a introductory bake off. Here is TROVEs journey...

Monday we baked!

Tuesday morning we made a second lot of icing due to splitting buttercream made the night before for the snowball look.

Tuesday evening we travelled to Moor Street, drank lots of tea courtesy of the The Neighborhood while the judges (Loaf, Soul Food Project and Frost and Snow) tasted all the cakes.

Then we got to try them all too!

David eating some of our cake - he is amazed at how amazing it was!

munch munch - everyone liked our Snowball Rainbow cake

The winners of judges choice were More Canals Than Venice for a yummy choc and beetroot cake, as was Kino10 for yummy blueberry cakes and.......TROVE!!! Below is our judges choice award

We also won the Grand-Champ award too!

We left pleased and very full of some delicious cake

This cake was bought to you from the mind of Une Londonienne

Important Artifacts at ARC

This was potentially (and sadly if true) the final ARC event ever. If it is though, they went out with a bang. Important Artifacts curated by Anneka French was a show of 6 artists whose work examines collections, the final show being something of a vaulted cabinet of curiosities - which was totally up my street! The artists were Matt Andrew, Jane Morrow, Tim Robottom, Molly Rooke, Joanne Masding and Tutte Nehall and I thought the whole show was great with a brilliant narrative that was also bought to life with two short lectures by Jane.

Here are some pics from the preview and see ARCs blog for more details about the show HERE

Matt Andrew

Tutte Newall

Joanne Masding

Molly Rooke

Tim Robottom

Jane Morrow

Glorious Rubble - Michael Collins and Dave Ruffles

Michael Collins' photographs in TROVE for Glorious Rubble:

Dave Ruffles projection at TROVE:

A couple of pictures from the projection from Dave Ruffle's time at The Museum of Science and Industry from 2000, just before the move of the installations to Millennium Point:

Upon his return to site in 2006:

Michael and Dave's pictures appear courtesy of Pete James on loan from Birmingham City Council's photographic archives.

Ed & Stuart at Glorious Rubble

Stuart Mugridge and Edward Wakefiled's tour of the site:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TROVE!

TROVE and Museum of Lost Heritage (MoLH) are celebrating!

TROVE is one year old in The Old Science Museum and MoLH are ten years old.

To celebrate they have invited three original artists to collaborate with three young artists to celebrate the site of the former science museum and Elkington silver.

Ravi Deepres and Deborah Mingham
Alistair Grant and Caitlin Griffiths
Stuart Mugridge and Edward Wakefield.

Plus photo works by Michael Collins and Dave Ruffles, with thanks to Birmingham City Council

GLORIOUS RUBBLE

Preview: Friday 19th November 6-9pm
with performances throughout the evening

Open: 20th, 27th Nov & 3rd Dec 12-3pm
email info@TROVE.org.uk for further information

TROVE, Newhall Square, 144 Newhall Street, Birmingham, B3 1RZ

www.TROVE.org.uk

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

Aedas Presents: Hannah Ainsworth

Tomorrow is the launch of new art space/monthly art programme that have curated at Aedas' Birmingham office. Aedas is one of the largest global architect firms who invited me earlier this year to come up with a programme and we launch with Hannah Ainsworth tomorrow. Below is the blurb plus some images from the install yesterday.

AEDAS PRESENTS: HANNAH AINSWORTH

Preview Show 5 pm Thursday 18 November 2010
Colmore Plaza, Birmingham

The first event in a series of exciting exhibitions promoting students and emerging artists; Aedas Presents the work of Hannah Ainsworth in association with Rider Levett Bucknall.

For Aedas, Ainsworth has assembled some of the most important works, focusing on matters relating to light, movement and surface. Duration is explored through work that is in a state of decomposition alongside a process that could be eternal. Perceptual experience measured through time is tantamount to the reading of Ainsworth's work and these works in particular.

Aedas Presents welcome you to join us at this exclusive invitation only preview show from 5 pm - 7 pm on Thursday 18 November. If you cannot make this date, Ainsworth's work will be displayed in Colmore Plaza until 26 November. Please contact aedaspresents@aedas.com to arrange a visit.

Wang at TROVE

Two of the most powerful and aggressive films I have seen in a long time, Wang Qingsong's 123456 Cuts and Ironman at TROVE. I have always had a bit of trouble with film works but every so often something comes along that secures my faith in the medium and these couple of films did just that. Was an honour having them at TROVE, thanks to Caitlin and Hereford Photography Festival for bringing them to Brum.

Wang Qingsong at TROVE

This Friday night 12th November 6-9pm TROVE in association with Hereford Photography Festival will be showing two short films by Chinese artists Wang Qingsong.

It will also be open Saturday 13th November 6-9pm for anyone who can't make the Friday night launch.

The blurb goes like this:

TROVE presents:

Wang Qingsong

Presented as part of the twentieth annual Hereford Photography Festival

Preview: 12^th November 2010 6-8pm

Open: 13^th November 2010 6-8pm

TROVE Newhall Square, 144 Newhall Street, Birmingham, B3 1RZ

www.TROVE.org.uk info@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 27^th November. Hereford Photography Festival runs until 27^th November at venues across Herefordshire and the West Midlands.

Art Chartrons - Bordeaux

Last week I went to Bordeaux to see Art Chartrons and support five Birmingham artists who had the main show in the beautiful Halle des Chartrons.

Graham Chorlton, Myfanwy Johns, Joss Burke, Tom Ranahan and Peter Grego

(review coming soon)

And here are some snaps from my walk abouts, my studio visits and some pics from the festival.