mac birmingham calls out for West Midland art
Open Day – Sat 9 Jul 2011, 11am – 6pm
Exhibitions – Wed 3 Aug – Sun 7 Sep 2011

This is your chance to get your work displayed in an exhibition at mac’s first floor gallery. On Saturday 9 July the venue will be transformed into an Antique Road Show style space where you can bring your art and pitch to a panel of anticurators.

The project, devised by Trevor Pitt, titled anticurate will start as an open exhibition and will act as a platform to explore democratic and collective approaches to exhibition curating, as he explains:

“I devised the project to break down some of the barriers that people face when they try to get their artwork seen in a gallery. So, whether you make paintings, sound, sculpture, performance, photography, knitting, video or community projects my message to you is – as long as you define what you’re doing as art then WE WANT YOUR ART!“

Over six weeks the main gallery will host six unquie exhibitions that will be selected from artworks submitted at the Open Day.

Each exhibition will be organised by groups, called anticurators, who have been invited by mac birmingham to curate an exhibition. They include
–       young people from Project Platform and Ikon Youth programme
–       a group of older people from Young at Heart
–       members of the Extra Special People professional development programme at Eastside Projects
–       a selection of mac birmingham staff

During the Open Day you’ll get the chance to influence the anticurators in an attempt to ensure your artwork is chosen for exhibition. All works submitted during the Open Day will be shown in the final exhibition on Thursday 8 to Sunday 11 September but if artists use their time well and deliver a great pitch to the anticurators they may find their artwork taking centre stage in a variety of the anticurate exhibitions throughout August and September.

For those who can’t make it on Sat 9 Jul there will also be an opportunity to submit artwork between 4pm and 8pm on Wed 13 Jul at mac birmingham’s Sales and Information desk.

To create their unique exhibitions the anticurators will be using a flexible exhibition structure and space that has been specially designed by Juneau Projects, and their work will be supported by independent curators Charlie Levine and Trevor Pitt, the exhibition team and mac birmingham.