Archived Projects
Critical Practise Research Group
Twenty eight international artists and architects whose work and practice offer alternatives to, or critiques of, traditional ways of social art engagement by locating itself in the overlapping borders between art, architecture and design, have been invited to produce new site specific work in response to Bournville.
The mechanisms of social order are interrogated and evaluated via an array of methodologies. These question; function and non-function, survival and chance, private and public, new and traditional, work and leisure, industrial and organic, and invention and restoration. Individual projects work hand in hand with the wider community.
Bournville, Birmingham, England. 4th August - 18th September 1999
Curated by: Nigel Prince and Gavin Wade.
Book: In the Midst of Things Published by August, London, 2000. ISBN 1 902854 11 X.
"… what was perhaps the most intriguing example of site-specific project I've seen in Britain. 'In the Midst of Things' didn't simply use its site as a foil for artworks. The site and artworks interpreted and enriched each other on equal terms, whether marking parallels or differences between the post-modern present and the Victorian past."
Alex Farquharson, Frieze: Nov-Dec 1999 issue 46, pp98.
Contact: nigel.prince@bcu.ac.uk
Research: BIADResearch@bcu.ac.uk
BIAD, Birmingham City University, Gosta Green, Birmingham B4 7DX