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| The Rotunda, Birmingham City Centre |
As usual, the little extra
free time afforded by last week’s Half Term school holiday evaporated before my
eyes. However, as well as progressing
with some painting, I did manage a trip to Birmingham for a gallery visit. In the event, it proved very rewarding.
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| Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery |
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| Fiona Rae, 'Dark Star', 2000, Oil. Acrylic & Glitter On Canvas |
I spent several hours in
Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, mostly in the current exhibition, ‘Metropolis’: Reflections On The Modern City’, but also dipping into the permanent collection too. I hadn’t visited the Birmingham municipal
collection for some years and had few memories of it, so was particularly pleased
to find a room of contemporary work with several paintings that captured my
attention. Amongst them was Fiona Rae’s ‘Dark Star’. I’ve discussed my enthusiasm for Rae’s painting before and was pleased to come across this one with its kitsch
glittery motifs and flavour of techno-orientalism. The sprayed elements seem to radiate out of
the deep coloured grounds of many of her canvases from this period as if
glowing on screens.
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| Jason Martin, 'F1', Acrylic On Stainless Steel, 1997 |
Jason Martin’s ‘Serengetti’ also captivated me. Painted in 2001, it’s typical of the combed,
textured panels with which he made his name.
I often enjoy this kind of post-Ryman ‘painting-about-the-nature-of-painting’,
even if it does constitute a solipsistic dead end. I hadn’t seen anything by Martin up close
before and enjoyed the shimmering spatial ambiguities created by its corrugated
surface and metallic pigment. Perhaps
you could dismiss Martin’s painting as the mere fetishisation of materials
within seductive objects but I found more than just that in this one. I can’t reproduce it at present but you can
see it here.
The ‘Metropolis’ show itself was a real treat that introduced me to several
new (to me), artists. I’ll deal with it another
time to avoid an over-long post now.
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| Birmingham Wholesale Market |
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| Birmingham City Centre |
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| Digbeth, Birmingham |
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| Birmingham Wholesale Market |
Needless to say, I had the
camera with me and collected a number of images during the day. My original plan to further explore the
Digbeth area was somewhat curtailed but I found plenty of visual stimulus in
the very centre of town instead. I’ve
included a handful of shots from the day here, including a couple of goodies
for the Health & Safety & Road Markings album and a lovely, exuberantly
tagged industrial shutter like those that influenced my ‘Closed’ and ‘Shut’
paintings last year.
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| Digbeth, Birmingham |
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