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Exhibition 2015 Cover: An Ode to Christian Joy (2014) Emily Sparkes Paroxetine (2014) Lisa Marie Williams Sertraline (2014) Lisa Marie Williams A Message to You Rudy (detail) (2014) Michael Carr 06 07 newartwestmidlands.org tpwestmidlands.org.uk New Art West Midlands Turning Point West Midlands The New Art West Midlands TPWM is pleased to support TPWM is hosted by Birmingham exhibition, now in its third year, New Art West Midlands as a vital School of Art, Birmingham City is a Turning Point West Midlands platform for graduate artists University along with its sister initiative which launched in 2013. from the region’s universities at project New Art WM which Turning Point West Midlands a crucial stage in their career is developing the market for (TPWM), a network for the visual development. The exhibition contemporary art in the West arts and part of the national continues to be an opportunity Midlands. TPWM and New Contemporary Visual Arts for the region to celebrate high Art WM are supported by Arts Network (CVAN), was established calibre art schools and the Council England. in 2010 to strengthen the visual wealth of creative talent that arts in the West Midlands. exists among its visual artists. Professor John Butler, Chair, TPWM does this by working with Turning Point West Midlands partners to develop and support projects of lasting significance Wendy Law, Director, for the region and its artists. Turning Point West Midlands 09 newartwestmidlands.org Preface Birmingham Museum and Art Our three selectors were Amna Rachel Bradley is Project Gallery has for the third time Malik (art historian and Senior Organiser of New Art West taken the lead in developing Lecturer, The Slade School Midlands 2015 the multi-sited exhibition New of Art, UCL), John Newling Art West Midlands 2015. The (artist and formerly Professor partnership of venues continues of Installation Sculpture, to evolve and this year The Nottingham Trent University) and Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Bedwyr Williams (artist). The Coventry is participating in selectors have written essays addition to The Barber Institute of for this publication that are Fine Arts and Wolverhampton Art responsive to the exhibition’s Gallery. Now an annual event in selection process, the creation the region’s visual arts calendar, of a sense of place and race the exhibitions showcase some and representation in higher art of the best work produced by education. graduates of the West Midlands’ five University art schools: Birmingham City, Coventry, Staffordshire, Wolverhampton and Worcester. Sting in the Tail (detail) (2013) Kathleen Fabre Untitled (2014) Jessica Holt 10 Mappiness in Birmingham John Newling “Thoughts of fringes being symbols area is the crux of the nation and yet, resources associated with capital of exclusion saddened many with the exception of electioneering cities. Instead it has resources based hairdressers” politics, it has become an on industry and the enlightenment. indeterminate region, hidden in It is constantly looking forward and On Tuesday 15th of July I arrived plain sight. In its cartography it its history informs its attitudes rather at New Street station destined for benefits from avoiding the binary than ossifying them. Soho House Margaret Street. I was to meet up of the geopolitical borders north in Handsworth can claim to be the with a group of people and, with and south. This may be why it has home of the English Enlightenment them, spend two days selecting been the incubator of so many artists and yet, despite having been born artists for New Art West Midlands across all creative endeavours. only a couple of streets away, 2015. I only discovered this recently. Birmingham is unlike many post- Birmingham doesn’t stop being Birmingham is important to me; it is industrial cities in that it has a thirst curious, but it doesn’t concentrate where I am from. My art education for the new and the innovative. It is so much on its past that that hobbles was bookended in the West a place that seems reluctant to dwell its future. Midlands. I began as a Foundation on the past as it constantly moves student in Birmingham and returned itself forward; even when that is “More sameness means less to Wolverhampton University to towards a future not easily defined. distinction” take my M.Phil. In the late ’70s, I Birmingham always feels like it is returned to live a few streets away ready to take a chance and it is this Wealth and capital are viewed from from where I had been born in sense of risk and uncertainty that a different perspective in the West Handsworth. engages me. Midlands. It is the home of social experiments such as Bournville Birmingham, and the West The culture of the West Midlands as well as the heavy industries Midlands, are important in a more is nourished by a very particular of armaments and chain making. general sense. Geographically, the ecology. It doesn’t have the capital Value is more than just money. The Spirit Collection (2014) Jade Simpson 11 Value is imagination and creativity; live in an oddly controlling state, we “Common lives were glimpsed it is a sideways glance from the seek meaning in new or perplexing through the rip in the shroud of periphery. It is important to value ideas. We conjure a kind of divine global economics” the resources that nourish ecology cartography for ourselves: a weird if the various elements are to thrive kind of mappiness. We create a The Margaret Street building is a and prosper. Risk is part of the cartography that can never really be fine one: a Victorian bank foyer ecology that nourishes the West drawn but somehow brings depth meets the irrepressible spirit of art Midlands. Resources are not just and pleasure to many. students. The very walls of the things; resources are also attitudes place have the patina of decades of and processes. Art, for me, feels like a geological arts production. To be there seeing layer of our soil. In the ecology of so many examples of artists’ work “Choice is good for those that can values it persists as a kind of truth was a privilege that weighed heavily choose” whilst many other soils have washed on me. I really appreciated the away. Art advocates a world seen coffee. When you arrive at a place you strange, a sideways glance that see it through first impressions: asks questions of everything. Art We saw works that were full of a kind of guiding cartography. can construct a map of bewildering questions. This seems to be an New Street station is a mess of complexity that has an island of ingredient of art’s geology: layer confusing signs and directions positive uncertainties as its only upon layer of questions that compact that echo the mesmeric lines of landmass. In an archipelago of a soil. They are questions that Spaghetti Junction. Perhaps this thought, reason and emotion, refute the need to identify a specific disorientation is good for those art is the island that encourages problem. At times, when these wanting to experience art in the city. investigation. Art is first hand in its questions become over abundant it It is the irrational and disorientating dialogue with the world. It is truly feels like the soil is de-laminating, views of young artists that I have local. falling apart and producing less come to see. Perhaps, because we successful works. 12 13 “Geologists were perplexed by building bridges outwards but the not concerned solely with moving of reason, it seems to me that we introducing worth over symbolic brave, to take risks and to try to find the recent outbreaks of mind map truth is that essentially they are money about but much more to do still have a need to find meaning value. new ways of generating, producing avalanches” clubs where membership is strictly with new strategies for production. in our lives. Art does try to re- and disseminating their work. defined. The gap between members This applies especially to the way map everything and is involved in I saw many works that were Mind maps are very useful in and others has exponentially that art has been produced and shifting meaning. And meaning, in concerned with shifting our views John Newling is an artist and guiding and quelling the storms of increased over the last decades. For enjoyed in the West Midlands. I this instance, does not necessarily of meaning, which insisted on a former Professor of Installation uncertainty manifest in the processes artists it is not a question of ‘mind grew up with the art of the city. adhere to a symbolic order that is language of uncertainty and risk. Sculpture, Nottingham Trent of making art but, in the hands of an the gap’ but rather a sense of what Like so many I regularly visited tacitly agreed through our culture. Each presentation gave us an island University artist they connect and connect and the gap may be and how to bridge it. the great municipal building that Art does unglue things. The map of value and the feeling that art is connect. The cartography is infinite houses the Birmingham Museum is, if it is anything, a constantly needed. There was a truth given and makes the positing of a thing as “The global shortage of post-it and Art Gallery. But in a typically mutable set of borders where new by the generosity of these artists. art very tricky. notes was traced to the dams on the Birmingham manner, one of the regions can emerge. Art may be a geology hidden in our rivers of audit trails” incarnations of the Ikon Gallery was soils but it will always be needed “Storm clouds gathered as people not in a museum but in the newly Meaning and purpose, worth and as a vital element in our ecology of sensed that participation didn’t In Margaret Street I was looking for built Bull Ring shopping centre: value, move around each other values.
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