Five prominent international contemporary artists focus on the city of Birmingham in this group exhibition entitled Birmingham at Ikon Gallery, 18 July to 2 September 2001.
Francis Alÿs (Belgium)/Rafael Ortega (Mexico), Pierre Huyghe (France), Beat Streuli (Switzerland) and Gillian Wearing (UK) will combine their various responses to this fascinating city, which is constantly re-inventing itself.
Francis Alÿs has lived and worked in Mexico City since 1987. His practice is based on walks around the city, fortuitous encounters, and unexpected turns of events and chance. He uses painting, photography, video, drawing and animation as a way to represent his urban interventions. Alÿs will collaborate with Mexican film-maker Rafael Ortega to make a video work inspired by the city.
Pierre Huyghe's Concrete Requiem was performed in Birmingham, 2000, as an unprecedented partnership between Ikon Gallery and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. Based on sounds which the artist recorded around the former central market area, this 10-part orchestral composition was produced in collaboration with the composer, James Bentley. Huyghe will use this music as the basis for a video installation for the exhibition. This highly acclaimed artist will also be representing France in the Venice Biennial, 2001.
Beat Streuli's photography involves unselfconscious, spontaneous images of people on the street. Their gestures and facial expressions communicate much about a particular time and place, their relationships with each other as well as the environment they occupy. For Birmingham, Streuli will photograph Birmingham's youth community. His images will be on display both in the gallery and offsite, on billboards at the base of the Rotunda in central Birmingham.
Gillian Wearing won the Turner Prize in 1997. She was born and raised in Birmingham and for the first time she takes her home town directly as her subject. Wearing will produce a video focusing on Birmingham's nightlife on Broad Street. Featuring scenes in bars, crowds around nightclub entrances, glimpses of a frenetic mating game, characteristically the work conveys a sense of unease in the context of familiar circumstances.
Ikon Gallery Oozells Square, Brindleyplace, Birmingham B1 2HS Open: Tuesday to Sunday 11am to 6pm Closed Mondays (except bank holidays)
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