Ikonic artworks in Birmingham

Now, the city’s Ikon Gallery is opening a four day celebration of Birmingham’s artistic output, entitled Autumn Almanac.

The gallery spaces will be showcasing the city’s artists, filmmakers and musicians. showing only works created in the city, as well as hosting some music festivals and organisations in a programme of live performances.

One of the highlights is set to be the display of the gallery’s posters from the last few years, which were designed by James Langdon. The posters will be on show in the second floor galleries, and were all selected by Ikon’s Director, Jonathan Watkins. The posters were created to showcase exhitbions by artists including from  Julian Opie, Richard Billingham, Marcel Dzama and Kitagawa Utamaro.

Oliver Beer’s Pay and Display work forms part of his series entitled The Resonance Project, which saw the artists use the human voice to stimulate buildings to respond as giant architectural instruments. Beer used the sonic frequencies of a car park to composed a six-part score for the singers to ‘harmonise with its Brutalist structure’, a video projection of which will be shown in gallery.

Another artist putting Birmingham firmly art the centre of his work is Stephen Earl Rogers, whose series of paintings What to do in an Emergency aims to reflect on the local cultural landscape to inform the viewer on what best to do in tricky situations.

Drawing inspiration from a 1980s Reader’s Digest self-help, family manual, Rogers invited independent artists and producers from Birmingham to appear in his paintings, such as Pip McKnight, who helpfully guides us through ‘Abdominal thrust on a conscious adult’.

Autumn Almanac runs from 17 – 20 November at Ikon Gallery, 1 Oozells Square, Brindleyplace, Birmingham B1