City Living in the Metropolis

Birmingham founded KINO 10, a peripatetic moving exhibition project showcasing the best in short films from around the world, is bringing a selection of short films to Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery (BMAG) this Saturday.

The showing is a penultimate consideration of metropolis that compliments the exhibition of the same name, http://www.bmag.org.uk/news?id=265, held at BMAG, Memory of the Future - Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. 

Join us for a filmic journey through various cities around the world in this selection of short films. The programme includes Rob Carter’s spellbindingly wonderful collage animation which takes an open field as a blank canvas and with the aid of thousands of cut-outs, it turns into a thriving metropolis. There’ll also be some gems from the archive.

Where: THE GAS HALL, BIRMINGHAM MUSEUM & ART GALLERY, B3 3DH

When: SAT 22 JUNE, 2PM

How much: £5

http://www.kino10.com/2013/06/kino-10-city-living/

The Metropolis: Reflections on the modern city exhibition shows artwork jointly collected by the BMAG and the New Art Gallery, Walsall.  The artwork shown for the first time together includes international perspectives on the city such as Mohamed Bourouissa's examination of marginalised urban inhabitants to locally inspired work with a fascinating video of people walking down the Pallasades Shopping Centre ramp onto New Street revealing a city in motion both physically but in it's social fabric.   

Throughout the exhibition, the city we believe we know has been twisted, manipulated, and rehashed.  The 25 artists from across the globe show a perspective that is encased in complexity, uncertainty, and alienation, yet effectively and honestly celebrates ‘the modern city.’http://www.photomonitor.co.uk/2013/04/metropolis-reflections-on-the-modern-city-3/

The exhibition finishes on Sunday and if you've not had chance to see it I would highly recommend it.  As a city dweller and a somewhat regular visitor to London it offers a chance to look at the metropolis, to understand and think on the city as a participant, visitor and onlooker.  It offers a chance to consider what part we play in it's existence and where it is going and where it has come from.  The new Birmingham History Galleries, Memory of the Future - Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, provide a great contrast to the exhibition documenting the history of Birmingham and the physical, social and ideas that shape a city and idea.  Space and a city is imbued with character through it's history and it's peoples and the exhibition should perhaps become one that is revisited regularly by BMAG with updated work that reflects a city that even in it's motto, Forward, says something about change and progress.