Celebrating 125 years of fine art in Birmingham

Sep 8 2010 by Lorne Jackson

Ooh-er! This is a bit naughty. More than a bit, in fact. Positively salacious.

Here I am in a darkened room, watching a red hot girl behave in a red light manner.

At the moment she’s coiling herself round a shiny pole. And, boy, is she limber. For some reason, she isn’t wearing many clothes. A spotlight picks out every pulse of pale flesh.

Adding up the clues, constant reader, you will no doubt have concluded that it’s a pole dancer I happen to be eyeballing. You would be right.

And now look who’s arrived. It’s Joe Punter.Lip-licking, lounge-leering. Whispering in my ear. Making me his confession box. Telling me why he can’t get enough of these strippers.

“Love sex,” he gloats, before adding with a more contemplative nod: “Got a good drive.”

We can be assured that he is talking about sex drive, not the strip of tarmac leading to the garage of a suburban home.

Yup, it’s just your typical night in a strip joint. Greasy flesh. Greaseball clients. Passions prodded and poked in exchange for pound notes.

Only it’s not. I’m actually in one of the most prestigious buildings in Birmingham. One that is famous for its firm grasp of the deeply esoteric, not the dingily erotic.

It’s the School Of Art Building in Margaret Street, which celebrates its 125th anniversary this year.

The pole dancer and her less than prudish client are merely video projections on a wall in one of the building’s galleries. The art installation was created by Jeanette Deen, a Margaret Street student, who filmed a local strip joint as part of a project she’s working on towards her MA in fine art.

The work speaks to me, though that could be because I have a yen for girls and the things they do with their poles.

Which ever way you cut it, the screening is proof that after 125 years in one location, the School of Art remains on top of its game, providing a base for high calibre students with ambition, nerve and a certain streetwise savvy.

These days the school is part of Birmingham City University, and is usually known by the regrettably more prosaic title of the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design.

However, since many of the courses are based in the Margaret Street site, it has retained its sense of self. After more than a century in existence, it proudly remains a square peg in the round hole of the West Midlands.

Courses offered are varied, from an MA in Fine Art to Digital Art in Performance.

For its 125th anniversary, the diversity of work the school has nurtured is being celebrated with a special exhibition, When We Build Let Us Think That We Build Forever.

It will be hosted next to the work of students, including Jeanette Deen’s oeuvre. The exhibition, which opens on Saturday, showcases new and old works from staff and past students, alongside artefacts from the college’s extensive archive and collection.

Major artists connected with the school, including Kaye Donachie and William Gear, have been commissioned to provide new work.

Perhaps the greatest work of art remains the school itself, designed and built by architect JH Chamberlain, who was heavily influenced by the writings of John Ruskin, particularly his treatise, The Stones Of Venice.

The majesty of Margaret Street is apparent from the minute I step inside the school, and I remain in a state of awe while being shown round by Professor John Butler, the head of the School of Art. Prof Butler is in a position of great authority in this revered institution.

But being an artist, his grey hair is long, and there is a mischievous spray of goatee beard sprouting below his bottom lip.

I’d describe him as piratical. Though perhaps a retired pirate, running a Public House in Penzance, who only unsheathes his cutlass on the rare occasion that a rumhead rogue of a guest becomes too rowdy.