Oakham School’s Director of Art and Design, Elinor Brass, speaks on the recent Critical and Contextual Studies to Birmingham.
We set off from School taking a minibus to the Midlands Art Centre. The MAC is an arts complex with a mission to make art an important part of people’s lives. It has exhibitions of contemporary art, a theatre, cinema, it hosts special events and has a programme of workshops and classes. We were lucky enough to have a talk from Deborah Kermode, chief executive and artistic director at the MAC. She gave an inspiring talk about the organisation as well as her own experiences working in the arts and some excellent tips about how to get a job in an arts organisation. There were a few different exhibitions to look at and we were given an insight into the planning, research and curation of the shows. We were even lucky enough to get a glimpse of a new show being installed, which gave the students an understanding of the technical side of putting on an exhibition. The MAC has lots of art throughout the centre and Deborah explained how she had commissioned some of these pieces and the difference it made to the people visiting.
After the MAC we headed into the city to visit the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery to see ‘Victorian Radicals: From the Pre-Raphaelites to the Arts and Crafts Movement.’ As well as this we had a brilliant talk from Toby Watley who leads on Birmingham Museums’ exhibitions, curatorial, collections management and acquisitions, conservation and research programmes. He gave us a behind the scenes tour of the gallery to show us how the whole space is being redeveloped. He shared about the challenges of rehanging the whole gallery, especially at a time of very limited funding. The gallery is rethinking what work is on show and how it is shown because it needs to think about the demographic of a culturally diverse city and how to connect with people.
Finally, we will walked to the Ikon Gallery which a gallery that shows contemporary art. There we had a guided tour around the current exhibition: ‘Start the Press!’ This exhibition has an antique, flatbed printing press at its centre, using it for workshops and to produce prints, filling the gallery walls as artwork is made in real time. It also includes a display of printmaking featuring artworks by David Hockney, Yinka Shonibare and Catherine Yass. We were lucky enough to see an artist in residence using the press and had chance to ask questions. We were also lucky enough to have a talk with the assistant curator about how the Ikon go about putting together exhibition.
This was such a rich research trip for the students who are starting to design their own fictional exhibitions. They have to think about everything from the overarching theme of the show, to the artworks they would select. They need to think about the public programme, venue, publicity and learning resources. By visiting three contrasting venues, the students have an insight into how differently art can be presented and how that might appeal to different audiences.
