These are a bit delayed, but here are some photographs taken by Jen Ridding of the Barber Institute of Fine Arts who invited me to give a lunchtime lecture back in February this year. The lecture was called ‘The Who, What and Where of Contemporary Art’ and featured as part of the events programme for New Art West Midlands 2014. Thank you to all the people who came and contributed to such an amazing turn out.
In addition to considering some of the ‘big names’ in the art world past and present such as Grayson Perry, Laure Prouvost, Bruce Nauman, Andy Warhol, Martin Creed, Chiharu Shiota, Piero Manzoni and Meschac Gaba, my lecture also discussed artists from the New Art West Midlands exhibition itself and others working in the region. These included Glen Stoker, Anna Smith, Wendy-Ann Titmus, Amelia Greville, Lucy Hutchinson and Gregory Dunn.
As well as looking at artists’ practices directly, the lecture also explored different curatorial strategies and exhibition spaces within the West Midlands as part of the ‘contemporary’ sensibility. These included places like Grand Union, A3 Project Space and Eastside Projects in Birmingham, Movement in Worcester and Airspace Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent, in addition to site-specific and pop-up spaces such as The Festival of Imagination which took place in Selfridges in Birmingham earlier this year.
I hope to be able to do more of these in the future, so watch this space. Please do get in contact if you’d like me to speak at any forthcoming events.
With thanks to Jen Ridding for the photographs.
Anneka French 