When: 26th November 2011 – 25th February 2012 (closed 18 Dec – 4 Jan). Open Thursday 12 – 6.30pm, Friday to Saturday 12 – 5pm
Where: Eastside Projects, 86 Heath Mill Lane, Birmingham, B9 4AR, UK
£: Free
What is it?
Curated with artist Sophie von Hellerman, Painting Show is an exhibition as an act of painting. Questioning and utilising the function of painting as an essential element of forming a space for art, a grouping of exquisite moments of ‘painting’ are brought together, supported by a customized architecture for painting, newly installed to a square and triangular grid.
Hellermann has painted a sequence of wall panels as a backdrop depicting a brief history of civilization; Tamuna Sirbiladze and Nicolas Party make wall paintings across the large main walls of the gallery. Glasgow based Party is using the complete range of 200 colours of ‘Montana Gold’ spray paint, and Vienna based Sirbiladze continues her gestural, delicate, wall paintings recently seen in Franz West’s kitchen para-pavilion in the Venice Biennale.
The gallery is full with painting, from the amateur work of the footballer George Best and ‘bad painting’ of Paul Thek through to the sophistication of Ashley Bickerton’s post-neo-geo works and Zheng Guogu’s computer influenced Chinese calligraphy. Within this ‘kaleidoscopic kitchen’ lie cartoon characters, monochrome figures, bears, S-Tar Children, paper golums, rainbows, smiling women, knives, computer controlled pig-brains, signs about walls, signatures, love hearts, dirty materials, cardboard worlds, drips, blood and gold.
Painting Show is part of a series of group productions examining modes of display and the construction of a public sphere — the gallery. The series started with ‘This is the Gallery and the Gallery is Many Things’ in 2008, followed by ‘Sculpture Show’ and ‘Abstract Cabinet Show’ in 2009, ‘Curtain Show’ and ‘Book Show’ in 2010, and ‘Narrative Show’ in 2011. Each project invites new curatorial and artistic voices to effect change upon the existing conditions of Eastside Projects and aims to impact on artist practice further afield.
More info: www.eastsideprojects.org