PDF June, July 2019

June, July 2019

Research, culture and collaboration

in the Green Heart and beyond

artsandsciencefestival.co.uk

View the full programme and book tickets at artsandsciencefestival.co.uk/festival

Welcome

The University of Birmingham's Arts & Science Festival is a celebration of research, culture and collaboration across campus and beyond. In place of its usual weeklong slot, the festival returns for its seventh edition with a 12-month programme, designed to showcase the University's striking new parkland, the Green Heart.

Running June 2019 ? May 2020, our expanded programme invites contributors to respond to four seasonal themes: Celebration (summer); Change (autumn); Illumination (winter) and Hope (spring). A host of thinkers, doers and makers will engage with these themes, collectively delivering a programme of exhibitions, events, talks, screenings, and workshops taking place both on campus and in the city.

The summer season launches in June 2019 with more than one cause for celebration...

From 08?09 June, join us on campus for the official opening of the Green Heart. Measuring over 12 acres, the Green Heart is a sustainable, natural and environmentally friendly landscape which opens up the centre of the University's historic campus for students, staff and the local community to enjoy. Full of intriguing features and surprises the Green Heart is home to a `Swift Hotel', providing contemporary lodgings for nesting swifts and bats; technology that converts people's footsteps into electrical power; and an incredible planting scheme, ranging from the very rare and resilient to the spectacularly beautiful (look out for the Chinese Handkerchief tree, best known for its striking display of floral bracts).

At the launch weekend we celebrate the Arts & Science Sculpture Commission, a new public sculpture bringing together arts and science in the Green Heart. Visit our outdoor display case to view scale models by our four artist finalists, learn more about the design and vision of each in our Rotunda Gallery exhibition, and then have your say about which sculpture should be realised in full by casting your vote (see p.5 for full details on the commission).

We also present a stimulating programme of academic and artist led events exploring, art, science and the spaces between ? audiences are invited to enjoy Moonlight Symposiums in Stirchley Park (p.17); take a virtual journey and discover hidden audio worlds (pp.12?13); and participate in a museum stores tour with a celestial twist (p.25).

We hope you'll celebrate summer with Arts & Science Festival in the Green Heart. Keep a look out for our autumn programme in a few months' time ? and don't forget, we're here all year!

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welcome

ARtS & Science

SculptuRe commission

About

Arts & Science Festival is delighted to announce a brand new sculpture commission for 2019?20. Art is a vital part of campus life and this exciting commission will continue the University of Birmingham's long history of working with leading artists and architects. The new public sculpture will bring together arts and science in the University's recently expanded campus parkland, the Green Heart.

Following an open call to artists, four finalists have been selected to produce scale models of their ideas, which will be exhibited in an outdoor display case in the Green Heart. The finalists will deliver events as part of the Arts & Science programme, and provide interviews and preparatory works (e.g. sketches, smaller models) to be exhibited in the Rotunda Gallery, Aston Webb.

To celebrate the commission, a programme of sculpture-related public events will take place across campus as part of the festival including artist talks, sculpture tours and creative workshops.

Staff, students, local communities and festival attendees will have an opportunity to vote for which sculpture they would like to see realised in the final season of the festival programme. The winning proposal will be selected by public vote and a panel of creative experts from the arts sector.

The project is generously supported by National Lottery through Arts Council England.

Timeline

June 2019 Scale models revealed at Green Heart Festival Launch

Voting opens

July to October public events

October 2019 Voting closes

November 2019 Winner announced

March 2020 Winning sculpture completed and

installed in the Green Heart

Vote

Find out more about how to place your vote for the winning design on the festival website artsandsciencefestival.co.uk

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Sculpture Commission

Vote for your favourite proposal at artsandsciencefestival.co.uk

in, on, alone, together, always

Describe your practice in five words...

Meet our finalists:

Andrew Gillespie

Meet our finalists:

Hipkiss & Graney

Describe your practice in five words...

Folk tales for our time

About

Andrew Gillespie lives and works in Birmingham.

As a contemporary sculptor, Andrew's work explores surfaces, appropriation and the urban environment. He is interested in the collision of surfaces, structures and materials. He regularly translates familiar imagery and objects through printmaking and casting, exploiting the shift in status and content that occurs with each gesture.

Working as Recent Activity, Andrew curates a programme of exhibitions and events, bringing new artists to Birmingham and activating new audiences.

"I love how art is a catalyst for conversations, a vehicle for

bringing people together to look at the world in a different way."

Sculpture proposal

Working with the University's collections, Andrew will re-make and re-contextualise an "awkward" object ? something that might have been concealed, overlooked or hard to exhibit.

His sculpture will draw attention to the University's extensive pacemaker collection, which includes the first variable pacemaker developed by Leon Abrams and Ray Lightwood at the University of Birmingham.

Andrew's proposal highlights the relationship between artistic and scientific design; the pacemaker is streamlined, simple and abstract in appearance, much like contemporary sculpture. He is also interested in the idea that art can be like the pacemaker, working on demand, activated when needed and a force for keeping us alive.

Sculpture Commission

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About

Hipkiss & Graney are a visual arts duo based in Stirchley, Birmingham.

Their practice explores collectivity, community and counter-movements through a range of artistic outputs including socially engaged workshops, large-scale interactive installations and performance.

Their performative works engage with political and environmental issues, often involving magic realism and fictional organisations.

Sculpture proposal

Hipkiss and Graney are designing a sculpture that projects holographic representations of university lecturers and researchers, amongst others. The design will draw from dystopian and science fiction narratives, with a soundscape to match.

The aim of this project is to create a new, hopeful and empowering narrative about the future of our planet. Through research, collaboration and kindness we can create a better future for everyone.

"We want to work with big ideas about society and the environment and the most natural way we find of approaching these issues is by

building immersive worlds and experiences for the viewer."

Images courtesy Greg Milner Photography

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Sculpture Commission

Curious, community, craft, contemporary, boutique

Describe your practice in five words...

Meet our finalists:

Intervention Architecture

Meet our finalists:

Juneau Projects

Describe your practice in five words...

Nature, technology, people, useful, fun

About

Intervention Architecture Ltd (IA) is an award winning, RIBA chartered architecture and design studio in Birmingham.

The studio has a collaborative and open atmosphere and an ethos that reflects an inherent appreciation for craft and the value of workmanship and materials.

IA ensure community engagement is part of their design and making. They are interested in site responsive works and engaging with users throughout each stage of the design process.

Sculpture proposal

Intervention Architecture proposes The Oculus ? an intimate viewing device for the Green Heart which invites visitors to interact with the sculpture and enjoy the new parkland.

The Oculus will rotate, enabling viewers to experience the growing flora and fauna through a series of apertures.

The sculpture will serve as an area of reflection and a participatory platform from which to track the changing landscape through the seasons.

"Working in architecture we are primarily interested in the behaviour of people, celebrating this by creating enhanced experiential relationships with their spatial environment"

Sculpture Commission

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About

Juneau Projects are Philip Duckworth and Ben Sadler, two artists based in Birmingham. They have worked together for nearly twenty years, developing a practice that looks at the possibilities of artistic production through collaboration and participation.

They enjoy the surprises that come from working with people to develop ideas, designs, objects and experiences. They are interested in the perceived relationships and boundaries between the natural world and human civilisation and how this has altered over time. In tandem with this Juneau Projects are fascinated by the evolution of technology and its role as a lens through which to view the world.

Sculpture proposal

Juneau Projects would like to build a wooden tower, filled with nooks and crannies and decorated with organic imagery inspired by conversations with staff and students at University of Birmingham.

The sculpture's surfaces will be treated to encourage the growth of moss and other bryophytes, evolving and growing over time in response to the surrounding environment.

"Creativity is a fundamental impulse for humankind, and sculpture, in its widest form, is central to this ? tools, instruments, statues, clothes etc. all display people's evolving relationship with materials and space."

Images courtesy Greg Milner Photography

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Sculpture Commission

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