If A Picture Paints A Weekend Away...

Rather than rushing back to Leicester after the Friday night private view of the ‘If a Picture Paints…’ exhibition, I made a weekend of it in Birmingham.  It allowed me to revisit the gallery on the Saturday and reflect further on the work and the exhibition experience as a whole.  It also provided an opportunity to celebrate my close friend Susie's birthday in a different city, and to explore some of the photo opportunities I suspected were lurking in the Digbeth area near the gallery.  The luxury of a big bed and leisurely hotel breakfasts were an attraction too.

Work By: (L-R), Shaun Morris, Andrew Smith, Chris Cowdrill & Andrew Smith

Two Of My Paintings With Work By: (L-R), Andrew Smith, Shaun Morris
& Andrew Smith

Still Life Paintings By Shaun Morris

Work By: (L-R), Andrew Smith, Shaun Morris & Andrew Smith

Friday was all about the buzz of the exhibition as an event, but Saturday demonstrated it can still be difficult to coax people into a gallery under normal conditions, however diligently you publicise it.  If only a trickle of people found their way in that day, I still think it was right to opt for a weekend opening and can’t fault the collective effort to raise awareness of the show.  The Works gallery is a good space and suited the exhibition well but, being on the third floor of an old industrial building, must struggle for passing trade.  I guess the lure of Brum’s extensive retail honey pot nearby was always going to provide severe competition too.

Ceramic Piece By Craig Underhill, (Foreground), With Work By: (L-R),
Myself, Andrew Smith & Chris Cowdrill

Ceramic Work By Craig Underhill

Nonetheless, it was good to spend more time with the work, to chat to Shaun and Andrew again and get to know Chris a little better.  I appreciated seeing how the work appeared with some daylight illumination too.  Andrew’s paintings, which had seemed quite muted the previous evening, started to sing next to the large gallery window as surprising amounts of colour seeped out from their accumulations of visual incident.   I was drawn to make comparisons with my own paintings’ more overt, on-the-surface garishness.

Paintings By Andrew Smith

My Paintings 'Home 1' (L) And 'Broken 1' (R)

My Painting 'Shut 1'

I like what Indigo Octagon are trying to do as a collective and am convinced that artists gathering together to provide their own support mechanisms and shared energy is a canny strategy in these days of increasing financial and cultural poverty.  I chatted with Chris about the potential for different projects under the same banner to involve varying combinations or degrees of involvement from core members whilst drawing in outside collaborators as appropriate.  It works well enough for musicians, (Massive Attack being an obvious established model), so why not artists?  I was encouraged to meet a group for whom the main priority appears to be the work, with everything else seemingly just about maximizing the chances of it reaching an engaged audience.  In a hollow, P.R. driven culture, where every dream is retailed back to us, the value of encountering reasonably like-minded people is incalculable.

Paintings By Shaun Morris

Earlier, I had wended my way slowly to Pershore Street via the seriously dilapidated industrial back streets of Digbeth.  The streets I traversed are dominated by massive brooding railway arches which, as Andrew pointed out, lend them a slightly Gothic, or even De Chirico-esque, quality.   During my short walk I encountered numerous good examples of urban text, decaying surfaces and general entropy.  I’m sure I only scratched the surface(s) and intend to return for more photo-perambulations very soon.

Surfaces And Texts, Digbeth, Birmingham

The day concluded with a meal and drinks with my friends and a chance to marvel at the apparent 'last days of the Roman Empire' unfolding on Broad Street.  A real find for me was ‘The Yardbird’, tucked in next to the municipal library.  Somewhere between a bar and a club, this intimate venue revealed itself to have a very happening vibe with lounge décor, an open minded crowd and excellent Jazz/Funk/Soul/Hip-hop sounds.  Full marks go to the proprietors for pitching the P.A volume perfectly too.  It’s good to know my arthritic knees still permit occasional dancing even if my Sunday morning head doesn’t like me drinking!