Final chance to see influential art exhibition
For art lovers in Birmingham, this weekend marks their final opportunity to see works by the likes of Julian Opie, Rachel Maclean and William Blake.
I Want! I Want! Art and Technology, which opened at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery in May, closes on Sunday.
The exhibition explores work from the Arts Council Collection by artists influenced by technology as it has developed and evolved over the last 20 years. Each of the 27 artists’ approach to their practice is different, presenting varying views of the world and culture around us.
The show presents contemporary artists’ use of technology in the production (using various media including computer animation, videos, computer graphics, audio, photography, gaming technology), presentation and engagement of their work (films, moving image, sculptures, paintings, interactive games, drawings).
The artworks themselves tackle a range of themes including human relationships, surveillance and the habits of modern society.
The works featured in the exhibition have been principally selected from the Arts Council Collection, as part of the Collection’s National Partnership Programme. The four partners include the Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne; Birmingham Museums Trust; The Walker Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool and Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
Over the next two years the galleries will deliver a year-round programme of exhibitions and events enabling even more people to see and enjoy works from the Collection.
The pieces on display in I Want! I Want! date from the mid-1990s to the present day and include significant contemporary artists, such as Rachel Maclean, Julian Opie, Ed Atkins and Daria Martin. The exhibition also includes works from Birmingham Museum, Fitzwilliam Museum, artists and private collectors.
Works in the exhibition include:
• Rachel Maclean’s Feed Me (2015) – a surreal, colourful, hyper-modern 60-minute film, where Maclean plays all the characters, which takes a satirical look at the preoccupations of contemporary society.
• A computer animation by Julian Opie, This is Fiona (2000) of his peer, British artist Fiona Rae, incorporating the simple, black outlines and the solid planes of colour that have become a trademark of Opie’s approach.
• Portrait of C.L. (third version) (2006) a playful oversized sculpture of a pineapple by Toby Ziegler is made using computer aided design to create the 3-D forms of interlocking planes of plywood.
Ryan Gander, the artist curator of Night in the Museum, the first in the series of Arts Council Collection National Partner exhibitions at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, will be represented in the gallery by the audio work The First Grand National (2003), alongside Brian Griffiths, a competitor in the Birmingham’s Big Art Project, with Untitled (1998), a representation of a hi-tech control panel made from everyday domestic materials.
The exhibition’s title is inspired by the etching I Want! I Want! by the artist William Blake, depicting a man aspiring to travel to the moon over two hundred years ago. It is a visionary work of imagination and ambition that is shared by the artists in the show that celebrates what they find compelling – turning an idea into reality.
Rachel Maclean – Feed Me
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