Outpost of industrial art

Sep 18 2007 By Terry Grimley, Birmingham Post

Heath Mill Lane is the street where one of Birmingham's most renowned artists, David Cox, was born in 1783.

The industry of his native town during the first half of the 19th century left little impression on Cox's art, which prefers to focus on windy rural heaths, lonely Snowdonian mountains or the seaside.

But step into one disused factory in this Digbeth street today and a completely different story of art and industry unfolds.

This building, awaiting redevelopment as part of the expanding Custard Factory empire, is the second incarnation of Ikon Eastside, the rougher outpost of the city's leading contemporary art gallery in Brindleyplace.

It is currently showing a group of copper sculptures by Damian Ortega, a Mexican artist now based in Berlin who has recently been shortlisted for the Preis der Nationalgalerie für junge Kunst 2007, the German equivalent of the Turner Prize, which is worth e50,000 to the winner.

An exhibition of the shortlisted artists opened at the Hamburger Bahnhof on Friday and runs until November 4.

The sculptures at Ikon Eastside are made from the rolls of copper which until recently were the raw material which was worked in factories like this one in Digbeth. Most copper, coincidentally, is mined in Mexico.

One of the pieces, which Ortega apparently calls "the till receipt" (there are no titles on display in the exhibition) incorporates one of these rolls, which is unwound into a cascade of ribbons. This was made in the gallery, whereas another, a copper-clad cone maybe 12 ft high, posed a structural challenge and was made off-site.

"We invited Damian to Birmingham and he spent a couple of days with me walking around Eastside," explains Ikon's off-site curator Helen Legg. "He's really interested in the local economy and wanted to make something that reflected it.

"All the factories in Floodgate Street that did this sort of thing have moved out since February. It's not that they've been pushed out, it's just that because land values have gone up so much in the area it doesn't make sense for them to be left here."

Ikon may be a newcomer to an area now switching its economy from metal-bashing to creative industries, but it is finding it difficult to put down roots.

Having relinquished its first site on Fazeley Street earlier this year it will have to move out of Heath Mill Lane when this exhibition, the third in this building, closes at the end of October.

Some visitors might feel that the current space would make a perfect permanent gallery if only its walls were given a good scrub and a few coats of white emulsion, and the roof was re-glazed. But apparently artists and curators like it in its raw state, just as the metal-bashers left it.

"We love it here," says Helen. "You should see it when the artists first see it and we say can you make something for this space. They just drool.

"Birmingham has got this great industrial history and it's crazy for us not to have a space like this that reflects it. We'll close this one in October because it gets incredibly cold in the winter, and we'll be saying goodbye to it with a party on Hallowe'en. Then we hope to reopen in a different location next summer."

While you might think that galleries would be an essential ingredient of a new cultural quarter, the economics of providing them are challenging, to say the least.

"We couldn't provide a permanent space like this unless there was some permanent funding." says Helen. "People are being encouraging - the council like what we are doing down here, and the Arts Council like what we've done, but the Arts Council has lost a lot of lottery money.

"So we just have to keep on putting effort into it. In Birmingham there are so many empty factories and it does need more spaces like this, something to give the city a bit of an edge."

She points to Prof Michael Parkinson's council-commissioned study of the city centre, which calls for the future development of Eastside to remain "gritty" as a foil to recent glossier developments such as the Bullring.

As well as the sculptures, Ortega's exhibition includes a short but large-scale video projection in which a number of typewriters crash inexplicably from the sky into a park in Berlin - a wry comment, apparently, on redundant technology.

Formerly a political cartoonist on a national newspaper in Mexico, Ortega is one of a group of artists who have recently put Mexico on the international art map. The trailblazer for this group was the slightly older Gabriel Orozco, whose work has been shown at Tate Modern and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

At the Venice Biennale a few years ago Ortega turned his VW Beetle into an exhibit, suspending it from the ceiling with its component parts dissected in imitation of the "exploded view" familiar from car manuals.

It was another earlier piece, Moby Dick, which prompted Ikon to invite him to Birmingham.

Helen Legg explains: "The piece has a soundtrack by Led Zeppelin, featuring a famous drum solo by John Bonham. We said why don't you come to Birmingham and we'll ask Jason Bonham [John Bonham's son and replacement in the much-publicised reunion concert] to do it? But he said 'I've done that'. It would have been amazing but I'm happy that we made new work with him.

"It seems that this is his moment, and in a way it would have been a bit sad if we were revisiting this project from five years ago."

Damian Ortega is showing at Ikon Eastside, 69-70 Heath Mill Lane, until Oct 20 (Wed-Sun 1pm-5pm; also October 15/16 1pm-5pm; admission free).