News
Gavin Wade - Eastside Projects
8 Mar 2008
Gavin Wade is an artist-curator, Director of Eastside Projects and Research Fellow in Curating at Birmingham City University. He is currently setting up the artist led public gallery, Eastside Projects, which is due to open in Birmingham on May 2nd this year. He lives and works in Birmingham.
Richard Woods, Super-Tudor Fold 2007, altered buildings, Kings Norton, Birmingham
Curated by Rob Hewitt & Gavin Wade. Image courtesy of Gavin Wade.
Eastside Projects sounds a very exciting space. What propelled you to embark on this idea?
A whole set of irresistable parameters. First, there is the surge in cultural activity, belief and questioning in the city. Second, was the positive partnership and commitment between Arts Council England West Midlands and Birmingham City University to solve the long running absence of a major artist run space in Birmingham. Third, I felt compelled to step in and spend more time and energy for leading projects in the City. Fourth, was that after avoiding running a gallery space for a decade I had a whole host of ideas that I thought could work in a continuous space and fifth, a strong group of artists and other practitioners to work with to achieve something ambitious and unique.
What is the ethos of this new space?
Eastside Projects is firstly an artist run space that is aiming to function as an artwork on many different levels. My aim is for an evolving gallery that highlights ideas of process and cumulative activities of artists, architects, designers, curators and writers. The space will be a public gallery through the proposition of experimentation, collaboration and a constant questioning of existing conditions. Myself and the other directors (Celine Condorelli, Simon & Tom Bloor, Ruth Claxton and James Langdon) wish to provide a valuable interface for creative practitioners in the City and region, as well as extend the draw for national and international visitors to the City in search of high-end cultural ideas. Hence we will work both with an associates programme of artists in the City and with some of the biggest names in the international artworld.
Heather & Ivan Morison, Pleasure Island 2007 (interior detail), Venice Biennale,
(adapted version of this is now the office for Eastside Projects), Courtesy of Gavin Wade
What exhibitions have you got lined up for the Spring and Summer?
We open with an evolving group exhibition, to set the agenda, called This is the Gallery and the Gallery is Many Things. It includes the construction of the space alongside and with artists including Heather & Ivan Morison, Liam Gillick, Laureana Toledo, Lawrence Weiner, Spartacus Chetwynd & Marte Eknaes, Matthew Harrison, Mark Titchner, Kelly Large, Marc Bijl, Joseph Hallam, Chen Shaoxiong, and Mithu Sen. Works will be added to the space over a 10 week period with 6 openings to mark the progression. Some elements of this show will then remain in the space for different lengths of time. There are many different speeds of artwork available to a gallery.
The second show, in July, is two solo shows by Berlin based Henrik Schrat and London based Shezad Dawood. Schrat will be collaborating with 10 other artists to produce 10 One Day Comics over the period of the show and Dawood will present his new major film Feature which is an experimental contemporary Western featuring other artists and Pakistan signpainters’ backdrops. Both shows will develop the architecture of the space with cutouts and Western saloon style forms. After that it’s a solo show for Simon & Tom Bloor to show their home town what they’re made of!
View details of exhibition launch (PDF document 148KB)
How will this new venture sympathise with other visual arts activity that exists in Birmingham?
Eastside Projects really adds a new element to the City’s arts activity and will be especially looking to combine with the other artist run initiatives in the region. We already have plans to link up with Ikon Gallery and Vivid, and with festivals like New Generation Arts and Supersonic we hope to form other partnerships.
It feels like Birmingham is becoming a real hub for visual arts. What inspires you about the city?
I moved back to Birmingham from London in 2004 after a 13 year gap and I already felt at that time that the City was waking up to the potential on offer and available to exploit it in a second City. I’m inspired by the potential to build something new very quickly here. This is likely to only exist right now as the infrastructure is already growing so fast. We must act in clear and beneficial ways now to open up the cultural opportunities and we need to do it right. There is a sense of responsibility on those who are championing the arts in the City at the moment. From another point of view I’m inspired by the urban form of the City, probably in a partly nostalgic way as much of what I admire is being wiped away by town planning. I think it is vital to maintain some elements of the 60s and 70s Birmingham aesthetic language and embed that within all the new development that is currently in progress. The brutalist concrete syntax of my childhood is becoming an endangered species in the City and so I admire artists like Simon & Tom Bloor who make use of these forms within their works and in many ways keep them alive.
Which gallery spaces should not be missed when visiting Birmingham?
I would encourage a visit to Dudley Zoo to experience the architecture of Berthold Lubetkin. The site is one of the best examples of an experimental modernist architecture. It is quite stunning. Lubetkin designed the entire concrete zoo in 1938 with his young artist collective Tecton. It’s not in great shape but well worth a visit. Then go and experience the exterior and interior of Selfridges. After that get yourself to Colony, Crowd6, International Project Space, Ikon Eastside, Vivid, and Eastside Projects of course.
For more information, email Gavin Wade: gavin@supportstructure.org
Eastside Projects
86 Heath Mill Lane
Birmingham
B9 4AR
