City to host major touring art exhibition

Wolverhampton is one of four cities hosting British Art Show 9 which will see the artists exhibiting at Wolverhampton Art Gallery and the University of Wolverhampton School of Art as part of the prestigious national tour.

Presented by Hayward Gallery Touring, the exhibition will run from January 22 to April 10.

Wolverhampton Art Gallery houses "one of the most significant collections of art on The Troubles" outside Northern Ireland.

It also collects works linked to the British Black Arts movement which has its roots in the city as many of its members studied at the Wolverhampton School of Art.

Works on show in BAS9 will include vibrant paintings depicting the cultural experience of Hurvin Anderson, a Birmingham-born artist with Jamaican heritage as well as furniture designed by students at Wolverhampton’s Thomas Telford University Technical College (UTC) at Springfield Campus.

A new audio-visual installation by experimental rapper, producer, writer, visual and performance artist GAIKA draws on his Caribbean heritage, sound system culture and is a shrine to his murdered uncle and other Windrush-generation deportees.

There will also be street performances, dance, rapping, photography, sculpture and visual art on display.

Helen Cammock, who was born in Staffordshire, works across film, photography, print, text and performance and is one of the artists taking part in the exhibition.

In her forthcoming exhibit for BAS9, Changing Room II (2021), Helen will be exploring work made by her Jamaican-born father who was an amateur ceramicist, magistrate and an art teacher in Wolverhampton.

She will re-create ceramic objects that he made in the 1960s, along with a new banner work, to form a multimedia installation that will be presented across both the Wolverhampton Art Gallery and University of Wolverhampton School of Art.

Helen said: “In 2014 I made a film called Changing Room which looked at my relationship with my father and explores the different barriers that people face.

"I shot the entire film in his home after he moved into a care home and I found some moulds in his garage.

"These were ceramic objects which I used as characters in the film while I’m having conversations about a variety of things including race and the family’s aspirations.

“I have made use of the facilities in the School of Art to remake some of those pieces that will sit alongside the video installation.

"BAS9 is a big exhibition and it’s really exciting to be involved and particularly when there’s a sense of coming back to the place I was born, it’s like coming full circle.”

Brian Cass, Senior Curator, Hayward Gallery Touring, said: “We are delighted to be working with Wolverhampton Art Gallery and University of Wolverhampton School of Art on British Art Show 9.

"The collections and histories of these two iconic institutions provides an important context for BAS9.

“We hope the extraordinary range and variety of outstanding work in BAS9 will give everyone who lives and visits Wolverhampton an opportunity to engage with the most exciting contemporary art being produced in the UK today.”