Birmingham Artists Committee

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The Birmingham Artists Committee was an English artist collective that organised exhibitions of painting and sculpture in Birmingham between 1947 and 1952. [1]

England Country in north-west Europe, part of the United Kingdom

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to the west and Scotland to the north-northwest. The Irish Sea lies west of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south. The country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, and includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight.

An artist collective is an initiative that is the result of a group of artists working together, usually under their own management, towards shared aims. The aims of an artist collective can include almost anything that is relevant to the needs of the artist, this can range from purchasing bulk materials, sharing equipment, space or materials, through to following shared ideologies, aesthetic and political views or even living and working together as an extended family. Sharing of ownership, risk, benefits, and status is implied, as opposed to other, more common business structures with an explicit hierarchy of ownership such as an association or a company.

Painting practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface. The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and airbrushes, can be used. The final work is also called a painting.

The committee was organised by the art critic Robert Melville and artists including Oscar Mellor and Trevor Denning [2] to break the stranglehold of the conservative Royal Birmingham Society of Artists on the exhibition of work by living artists in the city. [3]

Robert Melville was an English art critic and journalist. Along with the artists Conroy Maddox and John Melville, he was a key member of the Birmingham Surrealists in the 1930s and 1940s. An early biographer of Picasso, he later become the art correspondent of the New Statesman and the Architectural Review.

Oscar Mellor was an English surrealist artist and publisher of poetry. An associate of the Birmingham Surrealists in the 1940s, he founded the Fantasy Press in the 1950s, publishing works by poets such as Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis and Thom Gunn.

Trevor Denning British artist

Trevor J. Denning was an English artist, sculptor, writer, and art teacher who was influential in the Birmingham art community.

Its exhibitions were an important post-war outlet for the Birmingham Surrealists, showing the work of Conroy Maddox, John Melville, Emmy Bridgwater and the young Desmond Morris. Other notable artists represented included CoBrA member William Gear and the sculptor Gordon Herickx.

The Birmingham Surrealists were an informal grouping of artists and intellectuals associated with the Surrealist movement in art, based in Birmingham, England from the 1930s to the 1950s.

Conroy Maddox was an English surrealist painter, collagist, writer and lecturer; and a key figure in the Birmingham Surrealist movement.

John Melville artist

John William Melville was a self-taught British Surrealist painter. He is described by Michel Remy in his book Surrealism in Britain as one of the "harbingers of surrealism" in Great Britain.

Although there was no organisational link, The Birmingham Artists Committee was acknowledged as a catalyst by the artists who founded the Ikon Gallery in 1964. [4]

Ikon Gallery Contemporary Art gallery in Birmingham UK

The Ikon Gallery is an English gallery of contemporary art, located in Brindleyplace, Birmingham. It is housed in the Grade II listed, neo-gothic former Oozells Street Board School, designed by John Henry Chamberlain in 1877. The gallery's current director is Jonathan Watkins.

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Silvano Levy British art critic

Silvano Levy is an academic and art critic specialising in surrealism. He has published on Belgian surrealism with studies on René Magritte, E.L.T. Mesens and Paul Nougé. His research on The Surrealist Group in England began with a film on Conroy Maddox and the book Conroy Maddox: Surreal Enigmas (1995), while a wider interest in the movement led to the publication of Surrealism: Surrealist Visuality (1997) and Surrealism (2000). Levy has curated national touring exhibitions of the work of Maddox and Desmond Morris, and has published a monograph on the latter entitled Desmond Morris: 50 Years of Surrealism (1997), which was followed by the enlarged re-edition Desmond Morris: Naked Surrealism (1999). Subsequent books on Morris include Lines of Thought: The Drawings of Desmond Morris (2008) and two volumes of an analytical catalogue raisonné spanning eight decades. Silvano Levy's monograph on Maddox, The Scandalous Eye. The Surrealism of Conroy Maddox, was published by Liverpool University Press in 2003. 2015 saw the publication of Decoding Magritte. Further studies cover Sheila Legge, Toni del Renzio, André Breton, Dina Lenković, Jean-Martin Charcot and Birmingham surrealism. Dr Levy is editor of Surrealist Bulletin and has held academic posts at the University of Liverpool, Newcastle Polytechnic, the University of Bath, the University of Hull and Keele University, where he was promoted to Senior Lecturer in French in 1998 and then to Reader in 2005.

Gordon Herickx (1900–1953) was an English sculptor.

Sylvani Merilion is an English artist and former art teacher. In 1964 she was one of the four founder members of Birmingham's Ikon Gallery.

Angus Skene was a Scottish accountant, art collector and art gallery-owner, notable as the founder of the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham.

David Prentice British artist

David Prentice was an English artist and former art teacher. In 1964 he was one of the four founder members of Birmingham's Ikon Gallery.

The Birmingham Film Society was a film society established in Birmingham, England in 1931 to give local audiences "the opportunity to see films of importance… which they ordinarily find difficult or impossible to see."

Dinah Prentice is a British artist. She paints, and works in textile and in paper collage.

Pamela Scott Wilkie is a British painter and printmaker.

Robert Groves, sometimes known as Bob, was a British artist, and a co-founder of the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, England, whose name he coined, inspired by his interest in icons

Jesse Bruton is a British artist, and a founder of the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham. He gave up painting in 1972, to become a picture conservator.

References

  1. ↑ Stevenson, Diana (2004). "Interview - Trevor Denning". In Watkins, Jonathan; Stevenson, Diana. Some of the best things in life happen accidentally: the beginning of Ikon. Birmingham: Ikon Gallery. p. 113. ISBN   1-904864-02-3.
  2. ↑ Levy, Silvano (2003). "Birmingham Years 1933-1956". The Scandalous Eye: The Surrealism of Conroy Maddox. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. p. 96. ISBN   0-85323-559-7 . Retrieved 2008-03-08.
  3. ↑ Denning, Trevor (2001). "Birmingham Artists Committee". In Sidey, Tessa. Surrealism in Birmingham 1935-1954. Birmingham: Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery. p. 86. ISBN   0-7093-0235-5. Our purpose since the committee's formation in 1947 has been to exhibit the works of what we consider to be the best local artists. If any bias is shown at all it is in favour of those artists whose work is otherwise denied a public showing because of its failure to conform to the somewhat conservative standards of the older established societies here - in brief, the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists and its offshoots.
  4. ↑ Watkins, Jonathan (2004). "Some of the best things in life happen accidentally". In Watkins, Jonathan; Stevenson, Diana. Some of the best things in life happen accidentally: the beginning of Ikon. Birmingham: Ikon Gallery. pp. 36–38. ISBN   1-904864-02-3.


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