If you’re looking for a day out in the second city, a quick Google search will immediately suggest a trip to one of Birmingham’s brilliant and bustling art exhibitions. Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery is certainly one of the city’s most impressive galleries, but keen-eyed art enthusiasts will have spotted that it is once again closed to the public, after briefly re-opening during the Commonwealth Games.
While the main gallery is undergoing some important maintenance work, why not turn your eye to one of the other brilliant art spaces in the city? We’ve compiled a list of some of the best art exhibitions taking place in Birmingham over the coming months, and there’s plenty to sink your paintbrush into.
The Barber Institute – Mastering The Market: Dutch and Flemish Paintings from Woburn Abbey
Our first recommendation is the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, situated in Edgbaston on the University of Birmingham campus. Delightfully, it’s free to enter, which is incredible considering its impressive collection. It is also a decent size, with four gallery rooms.
The Barber Institute contains paintings from Botticelli and Bellini to Manet, Van Gogh and Rossetti. The collection spans seven centuries, and you could certainly spend hours gazing in awe at some of the most impressive pieces that the gallery has to offer. The Barber Institute also hosts statues, drawings, prints, coins, and decorative art.
The lead exhibit is ‘Mastering the Market: Dutch and Flemish Paintings from Woburn Abbey’. The collection is ‘one of the largest and most significant groups of Old Master paintings from the important collection of the Dukes of Bedford to be exhibited in a public gallery since the 1950s’ and is featuring at the Barber until 24th September.
The featured exhibit changes every few months, and the gallery runs numerous creative sessions, so if you’ve visited the Barber Institute before, it is worth making a return trip.
Ikon Gallery – Passionate Pilgrim and Kleidungsaffe (Clothes Ape)
Another classic gallery is the internationally acclaimed Ikon Gallery, nestled into Brindley Place. The Ikon Gallery hosts a collection of contemporary art, from short films to paintings, live art to sculptures. The exhibits change often, and the joy of the Ikon Gallery is that you truly never know what you’re getting yourself into.
Previous exhibits include James T. Hong’s The Duck of God (2010), which was originally created as an educational video for schoolchildren in the Netherlands. The film imagines Baruch Spinoza, the 17th-century philosopher, as a mechanical duck, who is snubbed by other birds on the canals of Amsterdam. Betsy Bradley’s Chasing Rainbows (2021) joined the screenings, exploring painting as a life force that traces ‘the dance between thought and action’, using voile and organza as painting supports for her whimsical creations.
The current art performances are by Melati Suryodarmo, one of Indonesia’s most important living artists. In the main gallery, through live performances from the Suryodarmo herself, and “delegated works” performed by associated artists and activists, the exhibition celebrates her career-long dedication to pushing the boundaries of her own practice. Suryodarmo’s performances are ‘feats of endurance that interrogate notions of time, labour and identity’.
Upstairs, Kleidungsaffe (Clothes Ape) sees a grand tree formed from donated garments, and during live performances each week, performers climb and cling to the trunk of the tree. The feature is incredible and is absolutely worth checking out this summer if you find yourself in the city centre.
Eastside Projects – God-Pocket and Sonic Signals
Eastside Projects is a smaller venue in Digbeth, which stages various exhibitions throughout the year. Currently running are ‘Sonic Signals’ by Abbas Zahedi and Chandos Primary School, and ‘GOD-POCKET’, an exhibition curated by Jaz Morrison and featuring Neoliberalizard, Tesha Murrain, Trixiebella Suen and Yusuf Dongo.
‘Sonic Signals’ in the main gallery opens a ‘portal’ between the exhibition and the primary school, through which a potentially infinite loop of audio can be transmitted. Messages made by children will play openly for everyone to hear, in a randomised order, to create a collage of sound.
Just down the corridor in the second gallery, ‘GOD-POCKET’ is a collaborative “Afrospeculative ‘firmament’ situated between time and space”, and a “crossroads between the seen past and the unseen future; a pocket universe”. The pieces in the collection are musings on identity, with focuses on displacement and belonging in Black British discourse. The exhibitions will feature in Digbeth’s First Friday this July and are also open to the public until the 15th of July.
The RSBA – Back to Nature: Landscapes from the RSBA Collection, 1800 to Present
The RSBA (Royal Birmingham Society of Arts) has an exhibition space in St. Paul’s Square, with as permanent collection of nearly a thousand pieces of art in a variety of mediums, from paintings and prints to ceramics, sculptures and jewellery. The majority of the collection comes from artists who have been members and associates of the society, and the works therefore hold a great significance in the history of the RSBA and Birmingham’s arts scene. Featured artists include Aubrey Beardsley, Joseph Southall, and William Gear.
The RSBA shop also hosts a selection of contemporary crafts for your perusal. The current featured artists are Mary Williams, Ed Isaacs and Charles Weston, whose exhibitions are open to the public until the 23rd of July. A new exhibition, drawn from the RSBA collection, opens on the 27th of July, and is titled ‘Back to Nature: Landscapes from the RSBA Collection, 1800-present’. The gallery is open Tuesday-Saturday every week, 10:30 – 17:00, and the summer exhibitions are worth checking out.
The Midlands Arts Centre (MAC) – Watershed
Opening on the 29th of July at the Midlands Arts Centre (MAC) is a brand-new exhibition, titled ‘Watershed’, produced in partnership with Elan Links, Wales. The exhibition is an exploration of the relationship between Birmingham and Elan Valley, two communities intrinsically linked by water. Elan Valley has been the source of Birmingham’s water for nearly 120 years, after unsafe water supplies in the second city spread disease and prompted an Act of Parliament. The man-made lakes created on the land by damming the Elan and Claerwen rivers forced over one hundred occupants of the Welsh village to move. Six resident artists of the MAC responded to these controversial changes to the Welsh landscape, the connections between the two areas, and the role that people play in nature’s balance. The exhibition includes photography, oil paintings, sound compositions and video essays, from Zillah Bowes, Daniel Crawshaw, Antony Lyons, Kate Green, Isa Suarez, and Rowena Harris.
With a variety of artists and mediums, the exhibition is sure to provide something for everyone, and plays a part in the MAC’s programme on sustainability to mark the 150th anniversary of Cannon Hill Park.
“The exhibition is a unique opportunity to present artworks in Birmingham that interrogate and respond to tensions surrounding the city’s water supply and the Welsh sacrifice of land. […] A model of Elan Valley remains in the park from 1962 – the same year MAC opened to the public. We hope the exhibition opens up conversations surrounding land, ownership, nature, and legacy.”
Roma Piotrowska, MAC Curator
The exhibition is paired with a free ‘Poetry Maps’ workshop for young poets aged 12-17, run by artist Lee Mackenzie. Young writers are encouraged to write poetry and share their experiences, and parents and guardians are welcome to attend. The workshop is taking place on Saturday 16th July, and tickets are available to book here. The wider exhibition is running until Sunday 5th November, open daily from 9 am until late in the Community & Terrace galleries. Entry to the exhibition is free, so the MAC is definitely one to add to your summer to-do list!
With this fantastic series of exhibitions across the city this summer, there is plenty to satisfy your artistic curiosity. Birmingham has a thriving and varied arts landscape. A range of commercial galleries can be found across the city, and there are also many short-term pop-up exhibitions to catch while they’re here. Digbeth’s ‘First Fridays’ are a great place to start, wherein the area’s art and culture scene comes to life with live performances and exhibitions across a range of genres and mediums. Independent galleries and organisations, such as Stryx and Vivid Projects run a series of events and exhibitions throughout the year, and the displays at the galleries we’ve listed above change seasonally.
If you’ve caught the artsy bug from these exhibitions, Birmingham caters to that too, with ubiquitous creative workshops run by talented artists – many of which take place in the venues above! There is something for every budding beginner, seasoned creative or fine art connoisseur in the second city.
