New Art West Midlands 2018 exhibition – artists announced

Larissa Shaw, Flesh Party, 2017

Twenty-eight artists have been selected for the exhibition, New Art West Midlands 2018 which will take place at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry and Airspace Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent from February to May 2018.

The artists are recent graduates from the West Midlands region’s six leading art schools at BA, MA and PhD levels. The full list of artists can be read here.

The three selectors of the 2018 edition were Patricia Fleming (Director, Patricia Fleming Projects, Glasgow), Sinead McCarthy (Curator, Liverpool Biennial) and Ingrid Pollard (artist and photographer, London).

The exhibition will include painting, sculpture, digital and sound installations, assemblage, photography, prints and film and video works that reference wide ranging contemporary themes from artificial intelligence, fake news, gender inequality and surveillance to timelessness, interruptions, displacement and glitches, to how our lives are now lived through the screen.

Rachel Bradley, Project Organiser of the annual exhibition said:

‘The selection panel members are very impressed year on year at the diversity and quality of the artists’ work they are able to choose and showcase in the New Art West Midlands exhibitions. The project has now seen 176 artists pass through this early career professional development experience which has made an invaluable contribution to the development of the West Midlands’ visual arts scene over the past six years. It also gives audiences an opportunity to see new work by a new generation of artists.’

New Art West Midlands Exhibition 2018 is led by Birmingham Museums Trust with support from participating host venues. It is funded by Arts Council England alongside Birmingham City University, Coventry University, Hereford College of Arts, Staffordshire University, University of Wolverhampton and University of Worcester.