Clare Rojas show at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham UK
On Tuesday 2nd February we went along to the Clare Rojas show We They, We They that opened at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham.
This is, to my knowledge the first time Ikon has held such a show, with the UK art establishment being slow to embrace the US artists and aesthetic documented by the Beautiful Losers touring exhibition and film (that Rojas is apart of), and their UK contemporaries. So on the one hand we were excited by the fact that it was happening and on the other slightly annoyed that it had been overlooked for so long! They may have cottoned onto New US Folk Art (as it is being referred to) finally, but they are still unaware that there are artists living and working much closer to home that could be described as part of a New UK Folk Art that share the same urban influences as their US counterparts, and could put on a show (and have done!) every bit as exciting and crowd-pulling as the Rojas show.
Interestingly they also had my 2nd Concrete to Canvas book in the gallery shop, which was nice to see, and features several of Roja's contemporaries and fellow Beautiful Losers. Four of the UK contributors from the two CtoC books were also in attendance that evening, something the gallery wouldn't have been aware of.
Still, it was great to see the work of Rojas in the flesh, and the scale of her work and how she'd utlilised the vaulted ceilings of this former school house was very impressive.
Click 'Continue Reading' below for more photos. I'll post them in two parts as we took quite a few.
The show was split into three rooms. The first room contained just floor to ceiling, large-scale panel paintings as shown in the photos above.
The second room had some more large panels but also contained walls of Shaker-style wooden hanging racks where much smaller works were displayed. This included paintings based on the sheet music of her alter-ego Peggy Honeywell's songs as well as collages made from sewn fabric scraps to form borders to her work. Those also made the connection to the American quilt making tradition as an influence in her work, much more obvious. There were also paintings from her latest children's story book, published in conjunction with Ikon for the show, called Pidgy.
Room 3 and the Peggy Honeywell performance in the next post.
The show runs until 21st March. The official press release and all other info can be found on the Ikon website HERE