Final Press Release

Tomorrow Belongs To Us

Featuring artists: Matthew Springer, Amy Wallis and Niall Singh

17^th February 2011

Birmingham School of Art,

Margaret Street

Private View and live performances: Thu 17^th Feb 5-8pm

Open all day Thursday for public view.

Matthew Springer, Amy Wallis and Niall Singh are all advocates of anarchism: producing art that expresses themes of politics and war, and anti-government beliefs. Their work will be exhibited in an outdoor space within Birmingham City University.

Fly-posters, paintings, manipulated images and performance pieces are all ways which Springer, Wallis and Singh showcase anarchy.  

Matthew Springer expresses themes of violence, politics and war, and highlights corruption in governments. His paintings question recent events in Egypt, where ‘tear gas’ was used to disperse crowds; depriving civilians of their basic human rights to protest. Springer uses a painterly language and is influenced by Expressionism and by the German movement ‘Sturm und Drang’ (meaning storm and stress).

Amy Wallis produces large images, based around photographs that have been taken through windows, looking through the glass pane onto the outdoors. Wallis uses reflections in the glass, which add another transparent dimension to the image. The cumulative effect of layers begins to abstract the original image, resulting in an almost surreal outcome. Wallis uses grids to divide space, referring again to the idea of window panes.

Live performances by Niall Singh will be happening during the private view, which will feature poetry readings and acoustic music. The performances will embody themes of protest, anti-art and vandalism. One of Singh’s previous performance pieces included the eating of items to highlight consumerism in modern society.

Springer, Wallis and Singh are all Fine Art students studying at Birmingham City University, and have formed a group named the distractionists. They believe in fighting for human rights, and strive to expose corruption in governments.

There are also images of the artists' work down the right handside, but I can't seem to put them on the blog with the text. I've managed to open a screenshot though, so here's what the layout looks like:

Will get them printed tonight, and post them around uni tomorrow.
Kiri Smart