grand union

2015–16

CONTENTS

5 Introduction

6 Summary of Achievements, Highlights and Future Plans

10 Exhibition Programme and Residency Programme 2015-16

15 Studios

16 Biographies

17 Further Information

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Introduction to Grand Union

Grand Union is a gallery and studios, based in Digbeth, Birmingham’s cultural quarter.

We started life in 2009, initiated by a group of artists and arts practitioners wishing to create high quality studios and an ambitious and innovative gallery programme for contemporary art. Grand Union celebrates its 5th birthday in April 2015.

Grand Union aims to create an experimental and active site for the production of new work. We do this in two ways: through a public programme of commissions for exhibitions, events and publications; and through the provision of a small number of purpose-built studios, which currently house some of the most established artists in the city.

Uniquely, we run an Associate Curator scheme, giving emerging curators the opportunity to test ideas and produce Grand Union’s main exhibition programme in collaboration with the Gallery Director.

Grand Union has been an intrinsic catalyst in the recent development of the artistic scene in Birmingham, having co-authored Birmingham Art Map and initiated Digbeth First Fridays (a monthly micro-festival) with Eastside Projects and Friction Arts.

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Summary of Achievements, Highlights and Future Plans

Over the past five years, Grand Union has:

• Worked with 208 artists• Commissioned 262 new artworks• Hosted 29 exhibitions and 46 events, 12 of which were off-site. • Welcomed 10,000 visitors through our doors• Mentored 8 Associate Curators

The gallery hosts around 5 exhibitions a year, but has also been used to shoot music videos, as a book shop, for dinner events, fashion photoshoots, and as a base for Kayak trips along the Grand Union canal.

Highlights

• In 2010 we purpose-built our eight studios, working with Digbeth-based arts fabricator Queen and Crawford. They are beautiful, unique and very practical, now housing some of the best artists in the city.

• We introduced our Residency Programme at the end of 2014, giving us the opportunity to invite international artists to be part of the artistic community here, and produce new commissions that relate to the local area.

• Our exhibitions have been reviewed and featured in UK and

international art publications such as Kaleidoscope, Frieze and Art Monthly. Notably, our exhibition of work by Bob Parks was named as one of Morgan Quaintance’s Frieze picks of 2013.

• Grand Union raises 100% of its income, and is supported primarily by Arts Council England. We have secured a grant of £122,800 from ACE which will secure our future for the next two years.

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Digbeth First FridayThe monthly micro-festival was initiated in May 2014 by Friction Arts, Eastside Projects and Grand Union. In less than a year Digbeth First Friday has been adopted by almost all of the arts organisations in Digbeth and we now welcome around 200 extra visitors each month through the doors at Grand Union.

Birmingham Art MapProduced in collaboration with Ruth Claxton, the Birmingham Art Map is a quarterly paper map and website highlighting visual arts activities in the city.

Book ClubA collaborative critical reading group run in association with Eastside Projects’ associate programme ESP, this is a great opportunity to get to know new audience members in more depth and discuss topics that correlate with the gallery programme.

• Our Associate Curator position is supported by Esmée Fairbairn, giving us an extra member of staff to deliver the programme and offering an opportunity for mentorship and development of a curator at the beginning of their career.

• Grand Union Director Cheryl Jones and Ruth Claxton, Associate Director at Eastside Projects, will be actively supporting a-n magazine’s Paying Artist Campaign in Birmingham, alongside artists from Cardiff, Bristol, Glasgow and Liverpool in the lead up to the general election. They will organise a high profile event in April 2015.

• bb• Cheryl Jones has introduced numerous initiatives in Birmingham

including:

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Plans for the future

Exhibition ProgrammeWe will continue to present five exhibitions per year, working with an ambitious cohort of artists from the UK and internationally.

Residency ProgrammeOver two years we will invite artists and curators to be in residence at Grand Union. Their focus will be to document the impact of Grand Union, artists and individuals in the regeneration of Digbeth.

Profiling grassroots activity in BirminghamWe intend to embed grassroots arts activity in the fabric of the area, galvanising the local community and our neighbours hoping that it will be seen as a necessity to Digbeth, rather than a tool to regenerate. Furthermore, we aspire to profile grassroots and international contemporary art to Birmingham audiences, embedding activities like Digbeth First Friday into the cultural life of the city.

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Exhibition and Events Diary 2015–16

EXHIBITIONMat Jenner: Dreams Time Free21 February – 3 April 2015

Artist Mat Jenner’s practice is grounded in collage, collection, distribution and display. Dreams Time Free will include new works alongside his on-going project Foam, consisting of a mass collection of commissioned one-off 12” vinyl records by 115 contemporary artists.

PARTYGrand Union 5th BirthdayFriday 3 April 2015, 7pm – lateTo celebrate Grand Union’s 5th birthday, we will host a party, kicking off with a one-off performances by artist in residence Phil Hession, artist Benedict Drew, followed by DJs and dancing.

SCREENINGJennet Thomas: Unspeakable Freedom Screening and Debate9 April, 7–9pm

With the General Election looming, join us for this special screening of Jennet Thomas’ The Unspeakable Freedom Device, an experimental narrative film haunted by the image of Margaret Thatcher as an after-burn on our cultural memory.

EXHIBITIONAideen Doran: Im Bau (public research lab)18 April – 14 June 2015 We are delighted to host Aideen Doran at Grand Union this spring, where she will lead an investigative research project interrogating the idea of the city as a space for artistic, economic and ideological production. She responds specifically to the shifting fabric of the city of Birmingham,

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critiquing its contemporary urban culture of regeneration through research into the archival traces of the city’s urban past, and its past visions of the future city.

EXHIBITIONCollaboration with Focal Point Gallery, Southend-On-Sea3 July – 16 August 2015

Solo exhibition of an artist who will be commissioned to make a new piece of work over a three-week residency period in Focal Point Gallery, culminating in a public presentation. The artist will be showing their work simultaneously at Grand Union.

EXHIBITIONEmma Hart: Spread5 September – 31 October 2015 Emma Hart will produce a new proliferation of work for Spread, populating the gallery walls with ceramic sculptures coughing up pictures. They have “bad taste” in their mouths, spitting out feelings of paranoia, snobbery and too much information. This exhibition is made in collaboration with Art Exchange, Essex.

RESIDENCY & EXHIBITIONSOMA exchange (UK and Mexico City)November - December 2015

SOMA is an artist led organisation which was founded in Mexico City in November 2009. It is a unique organisation dedicated to cultural exchange through their residency programme, and offers a dedicated arts educational programme (akin to an alternative art school).

We welcome an artist from SOMA for a period in residence at Grand Union to develop work for public presentation in the gallery from November-December 2015. We will also send an artist from the West Midlands out to Mexico to join the SOMA programme in Autumn 2015.

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EXHIBITIONLaura Oldfield FordJanuary – February 2016

Laura will spend one month in residence at Grand Union in 2015, to undertake research in relation to the development of Digbeth, and Birmingham at large.

This will culminate in this solo exhibition of her work in 2016.

EXHIBITIONCross continent Vlogging May – June 2016 This is an ambitious international exhibition and live public programme featuring live art, sound, performance and moving image exploring the trans-global and migratory behaviour of online video blogging (vlogs). The thirty-six artists selected will comprise of four to six artists from each of the six creative continents, Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, Oceania and South America.

Artist In Residence Programme 2015-16

Laura Oldfield FordApril – May 2015 Laura is concerned with issues surrounding contested space, landscape, architecture and memory. Her work traverses drawing, painting, writing and photography and draws upon her experiences as a political activist and involvement in subcultural scenes, particularly protest movements.

Laura’s walks through cities, and the documentation of them, have become chronicles, not just of a physical landscape but also of the memories embedded in them.

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Digbeth is such an area, with the HS2 master plan radiating across 350 acres from Fazeley Street, it is set to radically alter the area forever.

Laura’s residency will inform new work for an exhibition at Grand Union in 2016.

Mitra Saboury July – August 2015

Saboury uses her body as a sensual and sentient tool to explore architecture and the built environment. She explores in particular those aspects of place that are usually neglected or overlooked. She will be in residence for a three week period of intense research into the area of Digbeth, exploring the surrounding area, and acting as a personal response to specificities of the area.

This will culminate in a newly commissioned performance to take place in 2016, alongside a solo show of recent films works.

SOMA exchange (UK and Mexico City)November – December 2015 SOMA is an artist led organisation which was founded in Mexico City in November 2009. It is a unique organisation dedicated to cultural exchange through their residency programme, and offers a dedicated arts educational programme (akin to an alternative art school). We welcome an artist from SOMA for a period in residence at Grand Union to develop work for public presentation in the gallery from November-December 2015. We will also send an artist from the West Midlands out to Mexico to join the SOMA programme in Autumn 2015.

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Studios

Grand Union houses eight purpose-built studios providing creative, professional and secure working space for some of the best contemporary artists in the city. Our bespoke studios were designed and built by Queen and Crawford, a design and fabrication workshop previously based in Birmingham. They are unique and modular in their design, meaning that they can be dismantled and relocated to other premises if necessary.

We hold regular open studio events, giving visitors the opportunity to meet our artists and see their current works in progress. These events enable contact between artists and audiences that do not happen anywhere else, promoting dialogue and encouraging sales of work.

Currently we have 9 artists based in Grand Union studios:

BAZSimon and Tom BloorJuneau Projects (Ben Sadler and Phil Duckworth)

David RowanElizabeth RoweMatthew WestbrookStuart Whipps

Previous studio holders include:

Helen BrownMark EssenHarminder Judge

James LangdonDavid Miller

Our studio holders have exhibited their work prolifically throughout the UK including institutions such as Eastside Projects, Ikon, Somerset House, Whitechapel, Site Gallery and Spike Island. Also, they have shown worldwide in places such as Denver, Johannesburg, Amsterdam and Guangzhou.

More recently, a number of their works were acquired by Deutsche Bank for their collection.

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Biographies

Cheryl Jones, Director

Cheryl Jones is Director and one of the founding members of Grand Union and oversees the programme and associate curator scheme. Since 2009 she has successfully gained three large grants for the arts awards from Arts Council England, sponsorship from ISIS Waterside Regeneration and project funding from The Elephant Trust, Office for Contemporary Art Norway, Pro Helvetia and regional Universities. Alongside Grand Union, she produces Birmingham Art Map with Ruth Claxton, and has played a key part in developing initiatives such as Digbeth First Fridays and The Event.

From 2006 to 2013 Jones was Library and Collections Curator at The New Art Gallery Walsall, responsible for making the Art Library accessible to the public for the first time and developing the library and archive collections.She has previously led several independent projects including [insertspace], a nomadic programme which commissioned works for the public realm by artists such as Freee, Blue Firth and Marcus Coates; Space Banana and Self Service.

Kim McAleese, Associate Curator

Kim McAleese is a curator based in Belfast and Birmingham. She was co-director of Catalyst Arts from 2009-2011, and curatorial consultant at the Belfast Festival at Queen’s in 2012. She is co-founder and curator of domestic visual arts space, Satis House, and is part of the curatorial collective Household, who have worked on a number of projects including the Household Festival for Contemporary Art in 2012 and 2013, and is planning a large scale city-wide festival for 2015. They are currently curators in residence of PsSquared, Belfast. She is currently the Associate Curator of Grand Union.

McAleese recently completed a six week curatorial residency at SOMA, Mexico City, and was one of the participants in the first European Independent Curators International Curatorial Intensive in 2013. She was the first recipient of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland Career Enhancement Scheme for Curatorial Practice, and is completing Curatorlab at Konstfack, Stockholm.

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FUrther Information

Editions

We have an exciting range of Limited Edition artworks in our shop, by artists based in our studios and from our exhibition programme.

Typically priced between £50–£150, these unframed, limited edition artworks are created especially for Grand Union and cannot be purchased anywhere else. Sales of editions support Grand Union to continue providing good quality studios and develop new commissions See our website for more details.

If you have further questions or queries, please contact us.

Email: info@grand-union.org.ukWebsite: www.grand-union.org.ukTelephone: 0121 643 9079Twitter: @grandunionltdwww.facebook.com/GrandUnionBirmingham

Grand UnionUnit 19, Minerva Works158 Fazeley StreetBirminghamB5 5RS

Photographs:Cover: Mat Jenner, Dreams Time Free, 2014 (photo Stuart Whipps); Page 2: Artist Book Fair, 2009; Page 4: Phil Hession, artist in residence, 2015 (photo Rebekah Bainbridge); Page 8: Bobbie Gardner & Friends, Many Hands Make light Work, 2014 (photo David Rowan); Page 14: Open Studios, 2013 (photo Patrick Dandy).

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