Found on YouTube, a nice film from Platform 01 that took place in the Custard Factory Gallery in March:

PLATFORM 01 was a multi-media collection of work by predominantly local artists, and featured contributions from painters, photographers, sculptors, printmakers and digital media artists, some of whom have been featured in Elle Deco, presented work internationally, worked with Supergrass and The Young Knives, exhibited at the Tate, and won numerous awards. The diversity of techniques alongside the potential audience resulted in a wide spectrum of artists, art, and collectors representative of Birminghams rapidly expanding art scene.

Shows off the space rather nicely too. If you want to book it call Jonathan on 0121 244 7775. (Shameless plug over…)

Lucienne Cole’s Here + Now + The Future closes this year’s Ikon residency in Eastside on October 31st. As with last year’s Halloween party they’re making a big deal of it with “performance, film, music, dancing and marshmallows” and a strictly black and white dress code.

Providing a welcoming environment for ‘kooks’, Ikon Eastside hosts a closing party to The Eternal Now: Warhol and Film ‘63 – ‘68 by artist Lucienne Cole & friends, including Steve Woods and film-maker Chris Keenan. Paying an affectionate homage to ‘The Exploding Plastic Inevitable’ and The Velvet Underground and Nico, “the most influential and unpopular band in history.”

But fear not, arts fans. They’ll be back in Digbeth in the Spring.

More details on their events page.

A video by Melinda Schwakhofer featuring music by Hang Playing Hedge Monkeys.

via Digbeth is Good.

Jibbering’s Shambala Art Exhibition launches tomorrow night at the Wild Building on Floodgate St, from 7-11pm and then continues until Friday 17th October.

Over thirty street artists have been brought together to help raise money for two small grass roots charities based in Africa. The boards that the artists painted during the Shambala Festival 2008 will be exhibited, along with donated pieces that will be sold through closed bids to the highest bidder.

All profits (with no administration charges) will go to Banunule School For Orphans, Kampala, Uganda and Malawi Education Project, Malawi.

The exhibition has already been shown in London @ Cordy House, Curtain Road, Shoreditch, 18th - 21st September. The launch night on Thursday 17th September saw over 500 people through the doors. With buyers knowing that the exhibition was on for three days in London and then open in Birmingham for 7 days, we saw several large bids on the opening night.

Full details here.

In brief, it’s an exhibition featuring artists based at the Custard Factory running from 23rd to 30th October. Which is a fantastic idea. Even better, they’re hoping to do it regularly. Full press release follows…

So you’ve taken your money out of your bank account and you’ve put it safely in the shoe box under the bed.

While thousands of worried investors are wondering just how to protect their future investments a group of local artists may have an alternative solution.

Investing in art is fun, interesting and, although doesn’t promise high returns, can be highly lucrative should an artist become more well known. Add to this the pleasure one can get from enjoying your purchased artwork on a daily basis and it starts to seem like a great idea, furthermore, you can always sell the artwork later for at least what you paid for it!

So where does one go, in Birmingham, to become the next Saatchi and Saatchi art collector? The answer would be at the heart of one of the largest accumulations of arts and media people in Europe, the Custard Factory, Digbeth.

Organisers of a new exhibition want to highlight the the vast amount of talent there by forming a recognisable group of artists and regularly displaying works that can be bought by any budding patron of the arts.

Artist and organiser Richard C. Pullen says, ‘The Custard Factory is part of the S.P.A.C.E. Foundation which is the ‘Society for the Promotion of Artistic and Creative Enterprise,’ hence the title of the exhibition ‘Lost in S.p.a.c.e.’ It’s prime purpose is to reveal all those artists working here to the outside world. There are so many good artists here that they can sometimes feel lost and, hopefully, these exhibitions will be a way to overcome that.’

Fellow organiser and artist Bryn Tranter added, ‘We hope to create a growing force of creative talent that we can, eventually, take on the road and be accessed by everyone. This exhibition is just the starting point of our vision.’

The first exhibition will be held in the Custard Factory Gallery and runs from Thursday 23rd until Thursday 30th of October and features work from painters, furniture makers, jewellery designers and milliners amongst others. Entry is free and there is a cafe and specialist shops on the site.

Items of interest found around the Internets, but first a photo:

Taken by Mark Edwards at the Bang Bang night in Rooty’s in March.

• The Snowball Begins - Capsule’s Home Of Metal project is kicking off nicely. Expect to see a lot of this over the next couple of years.
• Scary Decisions - Nicky Getgood looks at the myraid of thing to do in Digbeth over Halloween at the various art galleries and venues, one of which is Bill Drummond at Eastside Projects on the 31st.
• Amanda Palmer roundup - Big Cat Kenny and Chris Hathaway give their verdicts on the performance and the venue. via DiG
• TAK are working with the Birmingham Musuem and Art Gallery - “BM&AG houses the largest collection of Pre-Raphaelite art works in the UK. The online resource will enable for the first time the general public to see the entire collection of over 3000 works. Alongside this we will develop tools for the creation and sharing of user generated essays, teaching resources and lightboxes.”
• City charity Envision Birmingham lose out on cash - Birmingham Mail report on CF tenants Envision’s involvement in the National Lottery Awards which exposed their work to 3.5 million viewers.

Photographer Steve Gerrard has revamped his website with a fully integrated blog. Looking good!

News reaches me today that the Custard Factory theatre is going to be renamed The VAAD Theatre, taking the same name as the gallery on the other side of the lake, as part of a move to get some proper co-ordinated programming of events in there. Which is good, but what the hell does VAAD mean anyway?

Wikipedia tells us that a vaad is “a Hebrew term for a council of rabbis” but a little bird tells me the name is taken from 60’s gay slang. Strangely it didn’t come up in any searches but Hugh Young’s Lexicon of Polari has “varda” which other Polari guides also spell “vada” and which means to see or look. That makes sense for a gallery and theatre. Except we’re spelling it “vaad”. I guess the rest of the world is wrong then.

Footage of Embrace performing on the Custard Factory lake stage in 2004 surfaced on YouTube the other week. It’s pretty shaky but what the hell.