Digbeth First Fridays – November

Simon Bayliss

For those of you visiting Birmingham for the weekend of our Supersonic launch party we recommend you check out the events taking place as part of Digbeth First Friday, when the area comes alive with exhibitions, late-night openings, special events, culture in unexpected spaces, live music, street food and more.

Centrala Gallery
Minerva Works, 158 Fazeley Street, Birmingham B5 5RS
Opening evening from 5 – 7pm on November 4th as part of Digbeth First Friday.
Saturday November 5th informal Artist and Curator Tour November 5th at 2pm.
www.centrala-space.org.uk

Presenting for the first time in the UK the work of Aleksandra Natalia Koper. Koper is an emerging Polish artist working in Painting,Computer Graphics and Sculpture, a Graduate of the Faculty of Painting of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and The Polish – Japanese Academy of Information Technology. She finds her Practice and Philosophy straddling the European East and Far East. Her large scale banner works will fill Centrala Gallery walls using the techniques and practices of advertising while her imagery subverts the the de-personalization and commercialisation of youth cultures.

Grand Union
Minerva Works, 158 Fazeley Street, Birmingham B5 5RS
grand-union.org.uk/gallery/digbeth-first-friday-film-screenings/

Film programme curated by Mitra Saboury 6–8pm – Free
To close her exhibition Pulling Walls, Mitra Saboury will curate a programme of films to screen amongst the exhibition.
Eastside Projects
86 Heath Mill Lane Birmingham, B9 4AR
https://eastsideprojects.org/

For November’s Digbeth First Friday, Eastside Projects presents ‘VERY DISCO’ an evening of music performances by students from the Birmingham Conservatoire alongside the launch of ‘Frantic Romantic’, an exhibition by artist Simon Bayliss. ‘VERY DISCO’ will turn Eastside Projects’ main space into an echo chamber of the musically bizarre and the sonically surreal, beyond the confines of genre and style. You are invited to the gallery to come unprepared and be uninitiated to this very disco code for one night only, to dance to un-danceable music in the spirit of experimentation, exploration and discovery.

In the Second Gallery/Workshop artist Simon Bayliss presents ‘Frantic Romantic’, an exhibition of recent paintings, ceramic ‘pasties’ and poetry. Since coming out as a landscape painter last year, Simon has been pursuing outdoor painting as a mode of artistic enquiry. His relationship to the Cornish landscape and sea feature strongly in his work, juxtaposed with humorous erotically-charged imagery and text.

Vivid Projects
16 Minerva Works, 158 Fazeley Street Birmingham B5 5RS
http://www.vividprojects.org.uk/programme/reimaging-donald-rodney/

Reimaging Donald Rodney, a programme of exhibition and events exploring digital legacy and identity through the work of Black British artist Donald Rodney (1961 – 1998). This is the first UK exhibition to specifically examine Rodney’s digital practice, and includes an events series to explore the potential of Rodney’s archive as a starting point for exploring cultural, physical and social identity.