Digbeth Day! Part III. Let’s have some art.

Over by Grand Union we spotted the Ikon Slowboat, it’s a great scheme I’m unfortunately just too old for! 16-19 year olds get a space on this boat to work and exhibit as they float down the canals, pretty idyllic and I’m rather jealous!

After Grand Union, we went over to Trove which now inhabit the old Curzon Street Station: a beautiful old building facing Millennium Point. I’ve lusted after that building for years, I can’t stand to see such amazing buildings wasted and this one is perfect as a gallery space.

The interior of this building is an art work in its own right: deserted ticket offices, station clocks, a mummified cat (more on that later)…all sorts of strange curiosities lurk within it.

One of my favourite pieces was Wayne Chisnall’s mahogany assemblage: The City. This mysterious object fitted in with the surroundings perfectly, each box or clockface contains some sort of weird and wonderful object – sinister but delicate. It’s a nostalgic piece and, although quite dark as a whole, there are moments of hope and humour within it. Definitely one of my recent favourites.

Chisnall’s piece sort of reminds me of just the phrase ‘morbid fascination’: it’s eerie and unfriendly looking, yet as a viewer you’re drawn in until you’re nose to nose with some sort of nightmarish creature.

One other nightmarish creature you could easily walk past is a permanent resident of Curzon Street Station: Lucky, the cat. The dead, mummified cat found under the floorboards! According to moggy’s little plaque, in the past it was ‘customary to entomb live cats within the floor of buildings for superstitious reasons’, not that I can find any evidence of this myth online. That’s certainly something I will be researching tonight as the perfect procrastination to avoid my dissertation…yaaaawn…mooching about Digbeth is far more fun, oh and it’s Saturday tomorrow: FLEA MARKET!

Digbeth Day! Part II.

Next stop: The Bead Shop.

I refrained from shopping for myself any more but bought an obscene amount of beads to make prezzies for two friends of mine – retail therapy is fine if it’s for other people!

I made a little necklace, and a charm bracelet for my travelling buddy with every bead representing a little travelling story. This shop is amazing, some of their beads are almost exactly the same as the pendants that hang off some of those £28 Urban Outfitters necklaces but are a fraction of the price. Digbeth is not only arty and fun, but also perfect for a bargain hunter!

There’s also a great screenprinting place called Get a Grip, Sam and Kay who run it use beautiful old screenprinting machines to print up Tshirts, bags, cards, whichever piece you fancy with whatever design you bring them! They’re also really really friendly. Friendliness is like gold dust in a city as big as this.

 

Beautiful workshop!

We then restored our energy with a doorstop of a sandwich at Yumm before beginning our march around Digbeth to investigate the exhibitions from Trove, Eastside Projects and many more of Birmingham’s artist collectives which were open on this rainy October weekend as part of The Event.

Smoked salmon, cream cheese and rocket! MMM!

Digbeth Day! Part I.

My housemates and I sometimes need a little bit of perking up in this big grey city and our grand day out in Digbeth most definitely restored our faith in Birmingham and its budding arts scene. 

First things first: shopping! We were so eager for our ‘grand day out’ that we may have turned up before the shops even opened at 10am – eager beavers! So after a reviving Starbucks we went to see what musty second-hand – ehem vintage, I mean – bits and pieces Digbeth had to offer. 

Cow provided me with a beret, Urban Village had a beautiful sheepskin jacket for only a tenner and the Flea Market in The Custard Factory was full of snazzy neon trackies and other vintaaage pieces we weren’t quite brave enough for – but SO cheap! The great thing about Digbeth is that it’s actually vintage that’s still affordable, none of that £70-for-a-1960s-bag-that-Twiggy-may-have-touched-but-smells-like-urine malarkey!

Look at my hat! Only £7!

Ahh the Custard Factory, once our weekendly haunt, where people wore sunglasses inside and it’s £3 for a bottle of water (think you can guess what I’m getting at…), sadly it’s now no longer a venue for nights our so we can’t risk our lives dancing at the edge of a filthy swimming pool or climb up on stage with Chase and Status. Travesty!

Now it’s just a cute little abandoned shopping centre filled with cafes, shops and offices and with ‘arts’ splashed all over it – it’s gone so upmarket they’ve even put a fountain in the swimming pool, ravers would cry. 

Toin Adams‘ amazing metal works jump out at you as you wander through this glass maze; they’re completely unexpected but perfect in the clinical white spaces, adding something organic which is so refreshing in this otherwise concrete jungle. The Custard Factory isn’t pretty, it’s messy and weird and cracking and crumbling, but once you’re inside, you forget that there’s a dual carriageway buzzing with traffic right around the corner. Of course it’s no city park haven but it’s refreshing to be in a part of Birmingham where the shop keepers say hello and aren’t part of a massive chain, and people turn up in colours other than grey and black on shiny motorbikes, and there’s just bits of art made by freelancers and students floating about everywhere. It’s as if there really is a quiet little community of artists and creatives here in Birmingham and Digbeth is certainly the hub.

 

 

Venice Biennale ILLUMInations…5 weeks left! Go go go!

Anyone whose read my blog in the past few months will know I spent June darting across mainland Europe with my friend/duplicate Scarlet. We had an amazing time seeing stunning scenery, countless exhibitions, eating amazing food, meeting weird and wonderful people and just getting a bit of ‘cultchhaah’ really! I’d urge anyone whose even got the slightest desire to go to just book your ticket ASAP! It wasn’t like any other holiday I’ve ever been on – physically we became complete messes within about three days and my feet will probably never recover, and despite the amount of strange places we ended up in (a bear pit, a one carriage train chugging through the Czech forests, a hostel which just resembled the set of Hostel – OK that was all in the Czech republic, post on that coming soon) I don’t think I’ve ever spent a month of my life so happy! How brilliant is it to wake up every day and say “so what new and amazing place we’ve never seen before shall we go to today?”.

Honestly, with that little green Interrail ticket the world is your oyster (well Europe at least!).

Anyway, reminiscing aside, one of the places we visited was Venice and my God, did it live up to its name!? I’d never been before and, well, WOW.

We were very lucky to visit whilst the Venice Biennale was on and I’m so glad we did. It’s on until the 27th of November so now’s the time to catch it before it disappears for another four years! We stayed in a wonderful 1* hotel called Albergo Doni Hotel which only cost £70 between us per night – ridiculously cheap for Venice at all, especially as it’s right next to Piazza San Marco (St Mark’s Square to us Brits). The only drawback is that the bathroom is shared between a couple of rooms like most hostels, but it’s clean, very comfortable, brekkie is included and the decor is out of this world! Such a great find that I will most certainly be boarding with Mr Doni again. So that’s your accomodation booked…now onto the show!

Venice is the kind of place you just want to walk through for days and days and days and days…need I go on? The streets are a maze of dead ends, market squares and stunning views of the river (should not have written this post on a gloomy Birmingham day, incredibly depressing!). Anyway, the Biennale allows you to see the streets of Venice and bump into some incredible little exhibitions from artists and galleries across the globe: double whammy!

All of the exhibitions are free except for the Arsenale and The Giardini, two huge gallery-style areas containing the biggest names. We were on a serious budget and reserved it for clams and wine in Venice so we didn’t venture into either of these two, but I don’t feel as if we missed out as we didn’t even get through the fifty or so little gems dotted around the city itself.

So hop on a cheap November flight, call up Albergo, grab your Biennale map and jet off for a bit of wintry warmth!

….Not jealous at all!

However, if like me you’re stuck at uni or work and actually can’t escape, here’s a little taste of Venice in the form of a delicious drink. It’s cold outside, time to get the booze coat on!

The Venetian Spritz

• 1 part white wine
• 1 part Aperol, Campari (my personal preference) or San Bitter
• 1 part sparkling water
• Ice
• Olive
• A slice of orange or lemon

Throw it all together into a large wine glass and MMM done!

 

The Chapmans at the Museum of Childhood: Night frights come to life.

Since seeing the Chapman brothers’ exhibitions at White Cube earlier on in the summer, and more recently a particular piece at Frieze this year, my interest in this strange pair has grown and grown so I headed off to the Museum of Childhood with a couple of friends (and not just to try on Victorian maid’s outfits and be thrown off a rocking horse – under 12s only my arse!).

My Giant Colouring Book is on until mid-January and although it’s only a little exhibition of around 20 prints, it’s still most definitely worth a look. The prints are displayed at a slightly disturbingly child-friendly level for such grotesque images and are mostly born out of innocent colouring book pages, meant for quaint images of Bo Peep and her sheep: not exactly the Chapman’s forte.

It’s a refreshing and simple insight into the imaginations of two artists whose work is usually large-scale, expensive and pretty commercial really. The pair fascinate me but also drive me mad with their work; aesthetically I love their beautifully gruesome style, stunning but disgusting, but conceptually it all seems too ‘built to shock’ for me. A bit contrived. But contrived this exhibition is not, so have a look and just don’t jump on any rocking horses while you’re at it- not even the big one, apparently it’s not for grown-ups hrmph.

…and although the rocking horses may not be adult-friendly, they can’t stop you from dressing up!

I can goddamn well fit into children’s clothing if I want to!

Need a little pick me up…?

Just spotted these little wonders on Etsy and I think I may just have to treat myself…or hint until someone treats me! The perfect thing to make you smile when the little things in life get you down and it makes a lovely gift to remind friends that you’re always there for them, I’ve got a few that need cheering up at the moment so I might just send some little surprises their way. Snail mail is underrated.

The Instant Comfort Pocket Box by Kims Little Monsters

 

 

 

Museum of Broken Relationships, Covent Garden

This travelling exhibition from Zagreb is the perfect antidote to all that ‘how to get the perfect guy’, ‘catch him and keep him’, ‘be single and happy’ etc etc etc awful soul-destroying rubbish that appears in every women’s mag…

Trinkets and treasures ranging from Legolas action figures to love letters and wedding dresses fill Covent Garden’s Tristan Bate’s Theatre and 38 Earlham Street until 4th September 4 and tickets are only £3.50 for a week – so if you can’t handle hundreds of break ups in one go, you can spend an entire week indulging in other people’s pain! Just kidding, it’s actually a beautiful collection of artifacts and personal anecdotes written by those who have loved and lost. There’s a touch of bitterness here and there but mostly the stories with the pieces reflect on the mundane, everyday little things with which we remember special people and special times.

Just one last thing: perhaps not brilliant to see if you’ve just broken up with someone (close call for us two…).

BudaBudaBudapesshht!

Budapest has got to be Berlin’s younger brother: as exciting but just a little smaller! It’s quirky, seriously cool, chilled out and vaaary cultural – oh and beautiful too!

We only had three days there and as it was our last three days, we partied a little too hard therefore missing out on quite a few expeditions. I suppose we’ll just have to go back, what a shame!

One thing to beware of in Budapest is Hungarian wine. Just don’t do it. Vomiting in one of the famous spring water bathhouses is not something to be recommended, trust me.

An excursion we did manage to fit in between eating far too much Hummus  and drinking far too much wine was a visit to Budapest’s contemporary art museum to see an exhibition curiously titled Eating The Beard by Michael Borremans, and I’m so glad we made it. Borremans paints bizarre and often sinister portraits and scenes which derive from equally strange narratives. The wonderful thing about his work is that the pieces are beautifully painted in addition to having quite a strong and very interesting concept. His colour palette and compositions make reference to Hungary’s former oppressive regime as his characters are closely cropped into coldly lit scenes; and he dresses his subjects in simple timeless clothing so the viewer’s understanding of the piece isn’t limited to a particular era or place. The gallery presented Borremans paintings without text pieces on the walls so we were left to find our own story behind each image.

I think the reason both Scarlet and I liked this exhibition is that it proves that simple painting and portraiture can be contemporary and can contend with installation, sculpture and video which seem to feature in galleries moreso than painting these days (cue ‘In my dayyy…’ rant). Sometimes it feels like there isn’t space for a bit of decent painting these days, especially not in art school where we’re constantly asked ‘but how is it contemporary…?’ and I think that’s pretty sad, so go ahead Borremans! You show ‘em!

 

A beach in Berlin!? Oh yes…

Back to June and my month-long Eurotrip…

We were blessed with brilliant sunshine every single day in Berlin and after four days of intense history, art and sightseeing we thought we deserved a little beach break so we headed an hour west of central Berlin to little Wannsee. Wannsee boasts long white beaches and shallow fresh waters – which had been nicely warmed by the afternoon sun by the time we arrived.

And how cute are the handy fold-up seats!? Definitely getting my hands on one of those for the post-uni house.

We also found ‘city beaches’ dotted across each of the cities we visited, but the best of them were in Berlin as they faced the Spree. We stopped for a lunchtime cocktail at one next to the East Side Gallery – sitting on deckchairs with sand between our toes with our backs to the Berlin wall and looking down at the river, nice but strange! Wish we’d remembered our bikinis as there was a pool too!

Who needs love when you’ve got the Wick’s grafitti!?

Walking past these three pieces of street art in succession spurred on a moment of girl power and love for life! Very cute.