7 artists will be making interventions in the 7 K6 telephone boxes in Birmingham City Centre:
Victoria Square
Ann Walker
Phone Home
Ann Walker’s work explores the ambiguous space in-between and the possibilities of edges and borders. She uses processes such as pinhole photography, because it is expressive of the imperceptible passage of time, making visible that which is invisible to the ordinary eye.
She will be transforming the telephone box into a pinhole camera. Alongside creating ‘body photographs’ inside this changed space Ann will also be inviting people to enter inside the camera where they can experience the world in a different way.
Rebecca Gamble
Forum Kiosk
Rebecca Gamble uses conversation as a starting point and creates events that operate in both physical and virtual spaces.
For the event she will create a two and a half hour performance with 6 performers acting as operators for the forum kiosk. An invitation will be made public for anyone to call the forum kiosk to pose a question, spark a debate, respond to a comment, have a conversation with an operator.
The performance will consist of messages and photographs displayed in the glass of the phone box, this will grow throughout the 2.5 hours.
Eden Place
Gene-George Earle
Untitled
Gene-George is interested in chance and coincidence. He leaves elements of his work open to be finished through the unwitting co-operation of strangers.
For two and a half hours the phone box door will be propped open with whatever is lying around. This subtle gesture communicate idea of the telephone box as a more ‘sculptural’ object which is intended to contain itself. Alongside this action, Gene-George will ring the telephone box up every thirty minutes and hang up if someone picks it up.
Julia O’ Connell
Calling Cards
Julia likes to stitch.
Whether by hand or machine, the core process of her work is stitching. Using physical layering or secretion of text onto or under a fabric’s surface, she gives a voice to seemingly unimportant moments.
Julia will place a series of machine and hand stitched ad cards within the telephone box. There will be repeated designs but each one will have a unique marker. It is anticipated that the cards will be removed. The cards will have a freephone number that relates to the information on the cards.
Alistair Levy
Fleet
Alastair Levy experiments with office stationery, hardware products and domestic items to make interventions that skew the experience of the familiar and the mundane.
Fleet is a propositional piece of work which uses the motif of the paper aeroplane as a means of intervening in a public place. This action will involve installing a large number of planes onto two surfaces of the phone box, giving the appearance of a sudden surge or attack of some kind. This is not intended as an overtly political statement but more an experiment in everyday materials and forms.
Hinge
Telephone Box Artworks
Hinge, aka exhibition curator, Anne Forgan. will be exploring the making of the exhibition as an exercise in multi-noded communication.
Temple Row
Rachael Elwell – ArtYarn
Yarnbomb
ArtYarn is a fibre arts collaboration between Rachael Elwell and Sarah Hardacre. ArtYarn is dedicated to the act of ‘tagging’ an urban environment using knitting and crochet with yarns and found fibres. Also known as ‘yarn bombing’, traditional handicraft techniques and contemporary social interventions are brought together as visually expressive art forms in urban spaces.
Artyarn have previously exhibited as part of the UK:DIY project, The Urban Splash New Islington Folk Festival 2008, Independents Liverpool Biennial 2008 and are currently artists in residence at the Contact Theatre, Manchester. Their work has been featured in national press and knitting publications and will be published in September 2009 in the forthcoming book ‘Yarn Bombing: The Art of Knitting Graffiti’
For 2.5 Hours of Oxygen, Rachael Elwell will warm up the telephone with a knitted cosy which will be wrapped around the middle of the phone box.
Two and a Half Hours of Oxygen 