We all watched enthralled as bakers created an edible Skoda for the car advert and then as Heston Blumenthal created a real life edible house with cake and icing as the bricks and mortar.  Now edible art is available to the general public with the launch of Cake Britain, the world’s first ever entirely edible art exhibition.

The creative geniuses behind The Mad Artists’ Tea Party, sponsorted by Tate & Lyle Sugar, have teamed some of the best bakers with artists who want to focus their creativity into sugar, cake and other yummy sweet things.

Participating artists include David A Smith, George Morton-Clarke, Jason Freeney, Peat Wollaeger (AKA stenSOUL), Stuart Semple and Jon Burgerman while the food artists who are collaborating with them include Prudence Staite, The Jellymongers, Crumbs & Dollies and Lily Vanilli.

Cake Britain focuses on the theme FAIR.  All of the art created for the tea parties will use Fairtrade products and exist only temporarily as visitors can buy a slice of the action to eat at the events.  There’s no sense of waste at these tea parties so you should probably visit as soon as possible before there’s only a few crumbs left.

Can’t make it to Covent Garden?  The Mad Artists’ Tea Party have created a life-size edible cupcake tree that is currently touring cities throughout the UK giving out free cake.

The Future Gallery, Covent Garden
27 – 29 August

Words: Laura Booth

Tate Modern’s amazing Turbine Hall will be taken over this Sunday…by you if you fancy a sketch. Lazy Oaf’s Let’s Face It event is inviting everyone to come along and draw their own self portraits on those epic walls.  A 7m wall will be covered with dozens of colourful pages all dying to be filled with your scribbles.  This is Tate Modern’s biggest live drawing event to date so if you love to draw get your pencils at the ready.

It won’t just be us amateurs though, live drawing from established illustrators Zeroten, Joe Baglow and Ian Stevenson will nestle together.  Despite their unique styles the bold use of shape and colour that each artist adopts is sure to make for an interesting and eccentric collection.

Turbine Hall, Tate Modern
Sunday 8 August, 11am – 5pm

Words: Laura Booth

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Artist Lucy McLauchlan has been busy making Birmingham’s Central Library look surprisingly gorgeous thanks to her beautiful bird paintings on the side of the brutalist structure. The project was implemented and produced by EC-Arts in collaboration with and supported by The Central Library and Birmingham City Council. If only more buildings in city centres took the same approach – we’d be very happy to see a change from grey to great!

When discussing portraiture, people continually refer to seeing into the soul of the person captured, but what if the focus is less on individuals and more on contemporary issues around identity, history, culture and representation? Behind the Mask, one of a series of portraiture exhibitions at The New Art Gallery Walsall this Summer, brings together the work of 10 diverse artists that employ a wide-range of media, from performance to painting.

In her latest photographical series, Cindy Sherman represents the lengths women of wealth and status will go to respond to the media pressure to remain young and beautiful, whilst Glenn Brown’s etchings layer works by Lucien Freud, to challenge the perceptions of well-known imagery.

Faye Claridge (image above) consistently engages with portraiture within her work. This series see Morris men, women and children photographed in their full traditional regalia with elaborate costumes and props, sometimes with their faces covered or blacked-up.

This exhibition also includes the work Self-Portrait as my Uncle Bryan Gregory by Gillian Wearing. The work is drawn from the Album series in which the artist has represented herself as different members of her family including her mother, father, sister and brother as well as herself.

Behind the Mask’s artists distort and disguise to create compelling works of art that challenge traditional stereotypes, and break down the presumptions society has of topics and portraiture itself.

The New Art Gallery Walsall, Gallery Square, Walsall, WS2 8LG
01922 654400
Until 12 September

Challenging and questioning how, as individuals, we talk to people of different faiths and cultures can be a delicate subject at best but artists Sandra Hall and Mitra Memarzia have embraced the topic to bring together a thought-provoking exhibition that offers a chance to open debate and conversation through a journey of cross-cultural exploration through Heard and Not Seen which is officially launched this evening (6pm-8pm Gallery 36 at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery) .

Having worked extensively with communities to inform the design and creation of a powerful, interactive contemporary art installation that includes audio, video and photography Heard and Not Seen culminates in a high-quality, visible and accessible platform fusing installation with dialogue to open debate and share knowledge.

The artists have created a space that is purposefully designed to create an environment that will stimulate discussion and on the 24th July from 12-4pm the artists will present BE SEEN – a Scarf Photography Day (below) that aims to break the taboo around veiling.

Members of the public will be given an opportunity to engage in this artistic forum and express their thoughts, or even fears, on issues around scarves and veiling. Individuals are welcomed to have their portrait taken to be included in the exhibition.

Until 22nd August 2010
Gallery 36, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

Click here to view the embedded video.

The all new BE (Birmingham European) Festival kicked off this week offering an exhilarating mix of live performance, workshops and new experiences all set within the AE Harris space that is the home of Stan’s Cafe.

Over four evenings, four companies each perform a 30-minute show giving audiences the opportunity to see a taster of a newly developed piece. After the first two performances each evening the audience will be invited to dine with the companies to talk and gain further insight in to the work. When all the shows are finished a programme of music and DJ’s will round off each night.

Companies from nine countries will share the stage throughout the festival offering a varied nights entertainment set along the theme of crossing borders.

You’ve got 2 more nights to catch the action…

BE FESTIVAL
AE Harris, 128 Northwood Street, Birmingham B3 1SZ
Until – 3 July 2010

Video by CRAIG BUSH

“Where My Grandfather Drank # 1” 2002

Birmingham born and bred photographer Stephen J Morgan will be exhibiting a series of images inspired by his upbringing in the city and his Irish heritage.

Over the last seven years I have worked in two ways. The first, as in the series’ ‘I Was Born an English Catholic’ I photographed what I knew and where I came from. I took photographs in the Ladywood Social Club in Birmingham, the three bars where my grandfather drank and the two stages he sang on. I didn’t want to just document the club; I wanted to show where he stood and where he sang. Five images were enough, no more, which was a revelation to me. With this work I also looked at my relationship to religion, Irishness and how those two things shaped me and gave me my identity.

“Where My Grandfather Sang # 1” 2002

The images will be exhibited at Wapping Project Bankside, London from 8 July – 14 August.

BASS Festival premieres a startling, and previously banned, collection of propaganda material at the Custard Factory. The posters reflect over two decades of social unrest and street fighting culminating in a controversial exhibition of visuals by graphic designers from around the world. Having toured Africa and Asia as part of a British Council-sponsored show it is finally heading to the UK having been banned previously.

Political poster art has helped mobilise the masses for years. Images like that calling for a Trafalgar Square demonstration against Margaret Thatcher’s poll tax in 1990 led people to rally behind the cause.

The propaganda spans issues as diverse as the countries of origin including the campaigns to free Nelson Mandela from unfair imprisonment in South Africa to the satirical images aiming to undermine race and gender stereotypes.

Taking place for the fifth consecutive year, BASS Festival is the UK’s only month-long celebration of Black music and art.

Protest: Fight the Power: Twenty Years of the Political Poster
3 – 30 June 2010 
10am – 5pm
Zellig, Custard Factory
Free entry
bassfestival.co.uk