I'm back and Test Bed is up and running.  We had a great launch party on Thursday, with over 300 people attending, including many local people who had been involved in the process.  The build for the show was pretty full on.  Due to my experience in building complicated shows, I estimated that I would need two days to complete rigging, if everything ran to plan.  I used the age-old producing formula and doubled this and gave myself four days - which turned out to be exactly right!  As usual, there were problems with suppliers not delivering, or delivering the wrong stuff, we didn't really have the resources or personnel to complete the job and, without the commitment, dedication and sheer hard work by the artists, I don't think it would have happened.  All the artists mucked in, particularly on show day, some of the artists had been resident in the square for the whole week, not only working on their own pieces, but also lending a hand to assist their colleagues in completing their work.

The results were stunning.  The Curio City Shop stood transformed into a beautiful, contemporary art gallery, with incredibly strong work, the space complementing the quality of the work with quality presentation.  Mark and Darryl's offsite pieces funneled attention to the shop, Mark's starkly beautiful images of the men who came to the shop to make a bed with him punctuating the spaces in the gorgeous onld butchers shop.  Pillows hanging from meathooks and photographs next to tiled pictures of food animals, all surrounding a clean, white bed create a tangible atmosphere at the same time tranquil and charged.  On opening night the slab in the window became a nest of feathers for artist Gary Jones, whose sleeping form beneath the lovely photograph was wonderfully framed - he said he'd never been called beautiful so many times in his life.
Darryl's piece directly across the square contrasted nicely.  His little shop contained his homage to pre-post-modern classic Brummie crime drama 'Gangsters'.  A frame by frame re-creation of the title sequence in 3D animation plays on a large LCD screen in the window, with audio provided by 'whispering glass' type speakers fixed to the window.  The animation is followed by a series of filmed 'incidents' involving the artist, dressed as the evil WC Fields-esque 'White Devil' character from the series, in the square and at various locations nearby, familiar to 'Gangsters' fans. The shop's sign was replaced with a replica of the Nirvana restaurant and prints of drawings taken from stills from the series were placed on the walls.

More about Test Bed soon - the show continues at Five Ways shopping centre in Brum, until the 28th, 1pm until 6pm, see you there.