IKON Birmingham

IKON in Birmingham, now moved into the once location of Oozells Street School has been a prime location for two floors of stylist and innovative art. These arts have been displayed here today though different forms of media such as: film, sound, photography, painting, mixed media, installation and sculpture. IKON today hosts a vast amount of talks, seminars and workshops to the younger auidences and does several off-site activities which range in scale, constantly challenging expectations of where art around the area can be seen.

Visiting the gallery with my university group there was two exhibitions on at the time, one by John
 Flaxman and another by Timur Novikov. Knowing little about both the artists I was a little skeptical yet open but on the first floor of the gallery stood John Flaxman's work. Born in 1755, John's vast collection of illustrations capture the eyes of his audience by what I think to be one of the only reasons why I personally like his art is the detail hes put into the one movement of the pencil. His use of line is so precise in it's start and end that the way he draws all his concepts the realism of shadow and perspective is ever so more perfect.

Also some of John's pottery was in the exhibition along with his sketches. I was drawn to the sculptor of the women laying down (left) when I saw it in the gallery as I felt the artist made different style cuts in accord to different textures in the piece. I thought the contrast between the stone wall behind the women and the woman's gown had really been put together in a precise mastery. I only wonder how influential his sketches were in that time period.


Upstairs was the next exhibition
which was Timur Novikov's who has a very "unique" style of working on cuts of fabric sewn on top of bigger cuts of cloths. Growing up in a political time in Russia, Tiumurs work was supposedly influential during the 1980's and the 1990's in which his use of bright fabrics and colour illustrates an important anti-war message.

 As much as I wanted to, I didn't really enjoy Timur's pieces. They just seemed to me that they were a little too...easy you know. I don't mean to sound too big for my boots but If I sat down with some different coloured cloth, a pair of scissors and some glue ones Idea could easily become a reality..
This is some work I have done in my RVJ (shown below) is based on my recent trip to the IKON museum based on sketches and the moment of line.