48Sheet 2012 Catalogue

The billboard is dead. Long live the billboard.

48sheet.com

L i ve

Wi re

Raqs Media Collective

Me

Tr y

MadeIn CompanyPhotographed by Leah Carless

Photographed by Helen Ogbourn

From the 2 – 29 April 2012 up to 100 10ft x 20ft 48Sheet billboards will be utilised as platforms for creative expression by 29 artists to transform the city of Birmingham into an urban gallery. Regional, National and International artists including MadeIn Company (Shanghai) and Raqs Media Collective (Delhi) will create large scale work to exhibit within public space, in response to the projects overarching theme of ‘cultural curiosity’.

Steve Rosenthal

48Sheet aims to create a large-scale artistic intervention for

people to discover within their everyday commute or journey

across the city and parts of the region.

Artists have responded and challenged the repetitive rhythm

of a traditional advertising campaign to create a network

of unique and distinctive responses that will raise levels of

consciousness and arouse curiosity.

Advertising free clusters of billboards have been selected

and mapped to create several routes to encourage people to

navigate, explore, discover and rediscover their city from

a different perspective.

With special thanks to 48Sheet Advisory Board members

for supporting the commissioning, selection and curatorial

process of the project:

Professor Chris O’Neil

Executive Dean of Birmingham Institute of Art and Design

Jonathan Watkins

Director Ikon

Professor Jiehong Jiang

Director of Centre for Chinese Visual Arts (BIAD)

Glenn Howells

Director Glenn Howells Architects,

Nigel Edmondson

City Design Manager Birmingham City Council

Beverley Nielsen

Director Idea Birmingham

Sophia Tarr

Art Producer & Consultant

Claire Farrell, Director of EC-Arts

Preface.

Birmingham, the manufacturing centre of the United

Kingdom has always valued and always will value the arts.

Birmingham knows that its centralisation to manufacturing

is best led by a community that understands the relationship

between sometimes crude industrial process and the

beautiful and refined. Birmingham is the original design

city. Despite the perception that manufacturing has all but

disappeared in the UK, nothing could be further from the

truth. Birmingham continues to define the high value and

desirable because it is a city that has always invested in

arts that are beautiful, sublime, challenging and cordial.

For a city to be successful there needs to be a proper

and balanced blend of innovation, skills, connectivity and

environmental quality. Birmingham has this blend and so

continues to develop and attract the talented and ambitious

from across the world.

The CBSO, Jaguar Landrover, Glenn Howells Architects and

the Ikon are world defining organisations who are committed

to Birmingham and the region because they know the

city enriches them, their people and their work.

So, turning Birmingham itself into a major urban art gallery

through the vision of EC Arts is further evidence that we care

about our environment and we want to feed and challenge

our creativity.

48Sheet is a remarkably ambitious project and it sits

comfortably within the context of this remarkably

ambitious city.

Prof Chris O’Neil, Executive Dean of Birmingham Insitute of Art and Design

The original design city.

Mary MazziottiPhotographic interpretation by Martin Pickard, for Birmingham Viewpoint competition.

Tom TebbyPhotographed by Nicole Scribble

Tom Tebby

Raqs Media CollectivePhotographed by Helen Ogbourn

Ben LongPhotographed by Leah Carless

Matt WatkinsLive installation 2 April 2012

Photographed by Leah Carless

MadeIn CompanyShanghai

Raqs Media CollectiveDelhi

Mary MazziottiPittsburgh

Ben LongLondon

Hin t

Taken

48SheetProgramme 2012

All events will take place at 48Sheet project space, The Mailbox, Birmingham B1 1XL

Artist talk: Stephen Brandes2 – 2.40pm Thursday 19 April

Workshop: Screen Printing with Jim O’Raw12 – 5pm Saturday 21 April

Papergirl night 7.30– 11pm Tuesday 24 April

Workshop: Rip of Brum with Steve Parsons1.30 – 5pm Wednesday 25 April

Workshop: Shanty towns with Faith Pearson2 – 5pm Friday 27 April

Event: Collage party with Elizabeth Rowe12pm – 5pm Saturday 28 April

Papergirl distribution day 12pm onwards Saturday 28 April

For more information please visit48sheet.com

Ian Richards London

Tom Tebby Birmingham

Candice Smith Birmingham

Maurice DohertyBerlin

Steve Rosenthal London

Stephen Brandes Cork

Elizabeth Rowe Birmingham

Redhawk LogisticaBirmingham

Shail Belani Mumbai

Lucy McLauchlanBirmingham

Matt Watkins Birmingham

Lawrence Roper Birmingham

Dan BurwoodBirmingham

Glenn Anderson Birmingham

Harry Blackett & Robin Kirkham Birmingham

Steve Parsons Birmingham

Isn’t the plumage beautiful?

Just say the first thing that pops into your mind

Gerard Hanson Oxford

Baptist CoehloMumbai

Tidal Grace Vancouver

48sheet.com

Helen Sweeting Birmingham

Faith PearsonBirmingham

Mark Murphy & Craig EarpBirmingham

Jim O’RawBirmingham

Dream like purple old building,very modern for its time has taken over

the smell of chocolate in my gardenall through the night andwe don't want to lose it

Elizabeth RoweMadeIn CompanyPhotographed by Leah Carless

Ben LongPhotographed by Tim Cornbill

http://www.birminghamviewpoint.com/48sheet

Birmingham Viewpoint competition.

Shail Bela

Photographed by Patrick Dandy

Ben Long

Photographed by Tim Cornbill

Mary Mazziotti

Photographed by Martin Pickard

Raqs Media Collective

Photographed by Helen Ogbourn

Helen Sweeting

Photographed by Edward Moss

Tom Tebby

Photographed by Nicole Scribble

Ben Long

Photographed by Claire Hartley

Helen Sweeting

Photographed by Dave Harte

Mary Mazziotti

Photographed by Leah Carless

http://48sheet.com/map/cycle-routes

Cycle routes & map.

Above map and routes created by Eliot Daves

48Sheet ‘pop up’ project space intended for artists to talk, respond, create and collaborate. The Mailbox, Birmingham B1 1XL

Project space.

Lee Crutchley

Tidal Grace

11 artists, 11 OHP’s, acetate & marker pens. March 2012

Draw off.

Isn’t the plumage beautiful?

Just say the first thing that pops into your mind

Harry Blackett & Robin Kirkham

Birmingham is a city of two-million. It’s a place where

local and regional artists sit alongside large corporate

advertising – and they’re vying for your attention! It’s a city

of artistic enterprise and social tradition held together by a

pedestrianized commercial centre. The philosophy backing up

48Sheet – a wide reaching public art project – involves artistic

intervention and staging walking and cycle routes around the

city. The point being to render a minds-eye collage of the city.

This type of civic-minded activity recalls the fertile nomadic

practices of the fluxus city happenings of the 70’s. Back then,

artists unearthed poetic statements by carving up decaying

buildings, and stumbled on joyous moments by getting the

public to join in with their musically-rhythmic performances.

This type of happening pioneered re-engagement both for

artist and the public with what was already there in their cities.

This year, 48Sheet emulates a fluxus-happening, this time

on the streets of Birmingham. The invitation is for the public

and they’re being asked to ‘encounter art in a public space’.

It’s an opportunity to reengage with the poetry and joy of the

city. The project combines flamboyant gestures of art with the

human-ized activities of walking and looking.

Walking provides scope to reengage with parts of the city once

forgotten and looking becomes an act of critical engagement.

Putting art in an advertising space may make us once again

critical of the advertising billboard space; but also don’t forget

to look at the urban landscape around these sites. By using

art in this way 48Sheet encourages advertisers to see us as

more than just puppet-consumer-spectators with a buck in

our back pocket.

We have feelings and desires beyond that. And walking and

looking brings us closer to exploring those feelings. The

project offers a way for us to alter our beliefs about how we

want to engage in our city. Jane Warnick of the campaigning

organisation Building Futures says that the best projects

get people ‘to smile, stop and ponder, to generate memory.

To develop a reaction. Or simply see anew a place that has

dropped out of our view’. Walking, or better still, wondering

around and looking are purposeful activities that help us to

do this.

Walking and looking

Text by Paul Wright. 48Sheet writer-in-residence. April 2012

In between, around and about.A quick insight into what happens when walking and looking are made political acts;

some ways that visual art helps reframeour perceptions of Birmingham’s industrial landscape.

There won’t be any rousing done by rebel advertising slogans.

And you’ll notice that the paternalistic messages that usually

flourish, where advertising billboards colonise the streets, have

been pasted over. This means you won’t be told how to feel

or how good to look. You’ll simply be able to observe at close

range the fidelity of fine detail in the art works. And observed

from across the street you’ll get a feeling of the colour, form,

content. In all there are 100 advertising hoardings for your

public-sighted enjoyment. It amounts to art spanning 30,000

sq ft, or a third of one floor in Birmingham’s Selfridges retail

space.

There’s a beautiful vagueness to it all. This is its strength.

Art-clusters at locations throughout the cities boundary have

been chosen as a way to separate and organise the work for

your enjoyment. This way you’ll encounter wildly creative

work which doesn’t have to compete against the backdrop of

advertising messages.

48Sheet aims to create a unique outdoor gallery. The project is

simply looking at ways in which to move beyond established

visual boundaries to question anything and everything urban

ranging from the vilification/ of graffiti and colonies of new

retail/ living spaces that pop-up. Greater interest will be

to ensure enjoyment of exploring the city boundary. The

billboards require you to move your head to at least 30 degree

tilt upwards. In the specific cuts and remixes of artworks

there’s glitchy beat chimes; noisy sound clashscapes; testing

repetitive rhythms; evocative shapes and form, discordant

elements; aural textures; sobering meditations; tricksy puns;

otherworldly psycho-social skits; poetic drawings; and

botanical fantasies.

A pop-up gallery

48Sheet (2012) is a public art project celebrating art, people

and the city. The project aims to brings colour, discovery and

participation.

Birmingham is a poster-city known for its diverse culture and

natural city-beat rhythms. This city’s boundary is a place

where people and place are seen to be gradually changing.

Buoyant words like frequency, blend and erosion give a

positive spin to conversations.

One objective driving the 48Sheet project is to provoke

discussion between city users about how the visual landscape

shapes our collective habits, customs and experience. On this

occasion they have ensured artists are provided with public

platforms for creative expression.

Progression.

The city is a place in flux, and urban scientists Park and

Burgess identified it as a space governed my many of the

same forces of Darwinian evolution. Quite colourfully they

said ‘the city is rooted in the habits and customs of the people

who inhabit it.’ One objective driving the 48Sheet project is

to broker discussion about how the visual landscape shapes

our collective habits and customs. On this occasion they have

ensured artists get a free hand. The outcome is that for four

weeks in April 2012 the commercially-charged landscape gets

re-faced. The outcome is a visual art project with an assertive

viewpoint that questions the type of society we live in today.

Alter-modern city-user

MadeIn Company (Shanghai) and Raqs Media Collective

(Delhi) were commissioned to produce 45 new works

for 48Sheet billboards. Co-curators, also of the Fourth

Guangzhou Triennial were Jonathan Watkins, Director of Ikon

Gallery and Professor Jiehong Jiang, Director of Centre for

Chinese Visual Arts, Birmingham Institute of Art & Design.

48Sheet project is featured within the Guangzhou Triennial

as an international off-site exhibition by connecting the work

produced by MadeIn for the Unseen exhibited across fifteen

400 square foot 96Sheet billboards as part of 48Sheet.

Guangzhou Triennial, is hosted within the Guangdong

Museum of Art established in 2002 by Dr Luo Yiping and has

become one of the most influential contemporary

art events in Asia.

As an exciting extension of this Guangzhou Triennial and

cultural exchange between the East and the West,

co-curators Jonathan Watkins and Professor Jiehong Jiang

invited the internationally acclaimed artist groups, MadeIn

Company (Shanghai) and Raqs Media Collective (Delhi),

to produce new work for 45 billboards across the city of

Birmingham.

Professor Jiehong Jiang , Director of Centre for Chinese Visual Arts, Birmingham Institute of Art & Design

International Cultural exchange.

MadeIn Company

48Sheet support Kate Grundy bringing the Papergirl concept

to Birmingham. Papergirl is a global project that aims to

open the art world into the urban streets of everyday life.

It is an intervention seeking to surprise people and to heartily

upturn the notable predictability of day to day life.

Papergirl night

7.30 – 11pm Tuesday 24 April

48Sheet project space, The Mailbox, Birmingham B1 1XL

Papergirl distribution day

12pm onwards Saturday 28 April

http://papergirlbirmingham.tumblr.com

Papergirl.

Glenn HowellsGlenn Howells Architects

Jonathan Watkins Ikon Gallery

Professor Chris O’Neil Birmingham Institute of Art & Design

Professor Jiehong JiangBirmingham Institute of Art & Design

Nigel EdmondsonBirmingham City Council

Beverley NielsenIdea Birmingham

Sophia TarrFreelance Artistic Consultant

Claire FarrellEC-Arts

Marketing Birmingham

The Mailbox

EC-Arts gratefully acknowledges thefollowing sponsors of 48Sheet:

Arts Council EnglandJCDecauxNEC Graph-fix

48Sheet Advisory Board & Project Partners:

“48Sheet is marvelously subversive acrossthe entire city. It challenges our tolerance toincreasing levels of advertising by swappingit for art. Throughout April Birmingham’spedestrians, cyclists, drivers and passengerswill be treated to an unexpected range of ideas and images from around the world.”

Glenn Howells of Glenn Howells Architects

Writer: Paul Wright

Paul Wright is editor of www.urban-language-arts.org

His studio Out-Of-Phrase is based in Brussels.

Writer: Jon Perks

Programming : Jacob Masters at Gabba

gabba.net

Design: Ian Richards at Heavy Object

heavyobject.tumblr.com

Cycle routes: Eliot Davies

Map: Andy Robinson at Boregis

from OpenStreetMap data with stylesheet inspired by

Stamen Design’s ‘Toner’.

Illustration / Vinyl: John Eddy

Photography: Leah Carless

Web editor: Cat Dickie

Cultural map research: Dan Cooper

Pop up space artists:

Matt Watkins, Rob Hewitt, Ian Richards, Tom Tebby,

Faith Pearson, Steve Rosenthal, Steve Parsons,

Glenn Anderson, Lee Crutchley, C George, Tidal Grace.

Interns / Emerging artists:

Leah Carless, James Gill and Dan Cooper for creating installations in

response to 48Sheet pop up space.

Benjamin Stanley Trilby for much need technical

expertise and hi-tech equipment on loan!

Pete Sloan, Birmingham Loves Photographers and Craig Bush for

filming, photographing, contributing and setting

up Birmingham Viewpoint competition.

Gary wood aka Mr Radar for filming and creating.

Contributors:

Design: heavyobject

To members of the public for embracing, participating,

and enjoying the project.

48Sheet artists for creating some incredible work that

has transformed the city into a gallery.

A huge thank you to project sponsors;

The Arts Council England, JCDecaux, NEC Graph-Fix.

48Sheet Advisory Board and project partners for

supporting EC Arts throughout the entire process.

Dr Luo Yiping, Director Guangdong Museum of Art

and the Fourth Guangzhou Triennial.

48Sheet’s incredible Project Manager, Clare McLaughlin

and the very hard working creative Sarah Nokes.

Birmingham Institute of Art & Design interns – brilliant.

Theodora Pangou, Leah Carless, Cat Dickie, James Gill.

Organisations & participation:

Graham Hardy Headmaster Calthorpe School, Access to Music,

Alderman Bowen, CommUnity, The Drum, Bournville.

So many organizations and individuals have helped to make this

project happen on countless levels, it could not have happened

without their support so thank you one and all:

Claire Rigby (thank you…!) Emma Thompson, Hannah Dunn,

Simon Farrell, Si Hensley and the team, Martin Nokes,

Emma Cummings, Matthew Farrell, David Farrell, Tim Felton,

Dan & Sean Tighe, Michelle Aucott, Suzy Denbigh, Angela Maxwell,

Sophia Tarr, Matt Watkins, Natalie Slayman-Broom, Laura Dreyor,

Greame Howell, Ben Searle, Mel Evans, The Bullring

(Louise Hamer-Brown), Graham Hardy, Alma.Aganovic,

Alex Rusch, Jo Wheatley, Tim Newbold, Paul Patterson,

Marie Rattigan, Ian Francis.

A special thank you to South Birmingham College Mike Hopkins for

being so kind to sponsor all the printed postcards, maps and this

booklet, and to Dawn Cockcroft and Derek Osborne for making it

happen on a very tight deadline.

Bitters and Twisted Matt Scriven and Julian Rose-Gibbs,

Carl Clinton Contractors, Paul & team from Snatchpac.

And extra special thanks to Ian Richards for so much support and

contributing so many consistently brilliant ideas to the project.

Thanks:

2 – 29 April 2012 Birmingham

Produced by

48Sheet 2012 Catalogue

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