The Birmingham Press

Ikon teams up with Fierce Festival for an alternative Easter

Editor

Ikon will team up with Fierce, Birmingham’s premier live art and performance festival,  this Easter.

Over two weekends, artists from across the globe bring boundary-pushing performances and installations to the city. Ikon is a Fierce partner for three of these.

Australian artist Bennett Miller recreates his playful, satirical and often chaotic Dachshund U.N. outside Ikon Gallery. A scaled model of the United Nations assembly will be populated with 47 dachshunds from across the West Midlands, representing each of the U.N.’s international delegates. Dachshund U.N. is both a large scale architectural installation and a performance work questioning the utopian aspirations of the Commission on Human Rights.

Spaghetti Junction is revealed through a bewilderingly new visual and sonic perspective in Track, a moveable participatory installation by Graeme Miller. Participants are positioned face-up and camera-style onto their individual ‘grip’ (trolly) then moved on a slow, smooth journey along a 100 metre length of track. Invited to gaze upwards, they undergo a solitary, immersive experience as the system of roads, railways, canals, rivers and pipelines make their own intersections around them. Track takes place in the dramatic underbelly of the city’s Gravelly Hill Interchange. Opened in 1972 and known popularly as Spaghetti Junction, the structure plaits together five different levels of road on 559 columns up to 80 feet high and has  become intrinsically associated with Birmingham.

Artist Hamish Fulton leads an alterative pilgrimage on Easter Sunday, where visitors can take a city-centre walk as part of Re-Tracing the City, a programme of walking-based public artwork.

Fierce Festival 2012 takes place from 29 March to 8 April in venues across Birmingham. It has established an international reputation for risk-taking, excellence and innovation, and is now widely recognised as one of the UK’s most important contemporary arts festivals.

For more details on Fierce Festival, visit www.wearefierce.org

Ikon Gallery

Ikon at Fierce Festival: Listings
Hamish Fulton in Conversation
Saturday 7 April, 6.30–7.30pm – FREE
Join Hamish Fulton and Jonathan Watkins, Ikon Director, as they discuss a variety of topics relating to the artist’s work including different categories of walks, the Tibet  issue and the influence of mountaineering. Places are free but should be reserved by calling Ikon on 0121 248 0708.

Group Walk with Hamish Fulton
Sunday 8 April, 2.30–4.30pm – FREE
Hamish Fulton leads a city-centre walk. Places are free but booking is essential by calling Ikon on 0121 248 0708. Organised in collaboration with Fierce Festival as part of Re-Tracing the City, a programme of walking-based public artwork.

Graeme Miller
Track
Saturday 31 March and Sunday 1 April, 11am–5pm – FREE
Ikon Off-site Project Beneath Spaghetti Junction
In collaboration with Fierce Festival, Ikon presents Track, a moveable participatory installation by Graeme Miller that turns the landscape 90° and sets it in motion.

No need to book,  just drop in. Open to all ages, children should be accompanied by an adult at all times.

For more information on this project or concerns about mobility and access visit www.wearefierce.org

Track is an Artsadmin project, co-produced by Entre Cour et Jardins and originally commissioned by home live art and Wandsworth Council Arts Team for The Shimmy.

Bennett Miller 
Dachshund U.N.
Saturday 31 March, 1pm – FREE
Duration: 45 minutes
Outside Ikon, Oozells Square
A scale replica of the former U.N. office in Geneva, Switzerland, will be erected outside Ikon and play host to a unique meeting of the U.N.’s Commission on Human Rights, at which all 47 of the international delegates are live dachshunds, or ‘sausage dogs’.

Presented by Fierce Festival in collaboration with Ikon.

Ikon is open Tuesday – Sunday and Bank Holiday Mondays, 11am – 6pm.   Admission is free.

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