(I was wearing clothes which I had found discarded in the street! This includes the amazing 1970s Levi's denim jacket, which is now in my permanent collection of clothes.)
After the talk, we had the reception downstairs in the gallery.
The event was catered by by The Real Junk Food Project Brum who supplied a fantastic vegan buffet and we had music by, James Abel, George West and Peter Bell -students at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire - who played found and discarded musical scores:
Peeking out of that bag, on top, is the score I found during my litter picking trip round the Quarter with the JQ Bid Clean Team.
The exhibition moves next to Chatham in about two weeks' time. We've still not released any photographs of the work other than what can be seen in the general images and will be doing this after the show is finished in early April.
The knife-crime pilot project "In The Cut" moved into the final phase this week with the young people visiting the School of Jewellery for a workshop session and getting to use flames to solder and seeing things like the laser-welder and other bits of exciting equipment.
The knife material has proved to be somewhat intractable and I have had to use a local business in the Jewellery Quarter, the amazing RF Bevan to cut them by wire erosion.
The finished work will be presented next week.
Off to the Birmingham Conservatoire again, this time to hear the amazing Sean Shibe play an eccentric and thrilling programme of early music and ultra-modern music, ranging from Scottish early music by James Oswald through Steve Reich's "Electric Counterpoint" to the ear-shredding LAD by Julia Wolfe. Fantastic!
Off to Sheffield with friend and colleague, Anna Lorenz, for the Re:Mains exhibition by Rachael Colley at SIA Gallery in Sheffield. This is a fascinating show and one which is distantly related to my own "A Waste Land" in that it deals with a lot of food waste. It also deals with the performance of eating and food and the implements for that performance, appropriate given Sheffield's history of cutlers and cutlery.
Rachael also catered the event with food waste, as I had done for mine, hers coming from Food Works in Sheffield, an impressive display:
There is something disturbing about being able to so easily cater events for 50+ people using only waste food from the catering and supermarket industries.
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| Anna Lorenz (left) talking to Rachael Colley. |
Off to the town centre and New Art from Birmingham, an exhibition in Medicine cafe/gallery as an outpost of the IKON Gallery. My next-door neighbour, Leah Carless is exhibiting as part of the show.
I was disappointed to see that her work had been moved from the centre of the gallery to the edge, much lessening the impact. Overall, a very strong show and worth a visit before it closes on the 24th March.
For all that I go to endless experimental, contemporary and often complex music events, one of the constants in my musical life has been Henry Purcell. I can't even say what it is about his music that I love but there is a certain turn of minor-key musical phrase which he has which raises goosebumps. After New Art Birmingham, I went to hear Ex Cathedra perform his fragmentary "The Indian Queen".
The concert began with an unusual selection of Baroque music collected by conductor and musical director Jeffrey Skidmore from Bolivia and Mexico which were rather excellent and interesting, especially the little bits of history he gave, explaining why, for example, one of the pieces was in Angolan!
Needless to say, The Indian Queen did not disappoint!
