Whipps, Stuart
'A Fragment of Birmingham Central Library' depicts a brick taken from a decorative cladding of a wall in Birmingham's Central Library. The library opened in 1974 and is scheduled to be demolished in 2015. The photograph is part of an, as yet, unsuccessful proposal by the artist to reinstate the wall in the new Library of Birmingham as a counterbalance to the Shakespeare Memorial Room, a room of decorative wood carvings that was built in the nineteenth century and has been taken apart and reinstated on two occasions. It now sits on the roof of the new Library of Birmingham.
These issues of legacy and value of materials are central to Stuart Whipps' practice. 'A Fragment of Birmingham Central Library' comes on the back of a solo exhibition at Ikon gallery in 2012 in which the central work examined the legacy of the library's architect, John Madin, through the discovery of an uncatalogued archive in the basement of the building. In 2013 Whipps made new work in response to John Latham's treatment of the shale bings of West Lothian whilst in residence at Flat Time House. A questioning of the relationship between photographic materials and processes and physical ones is central to these and other works.
Text courtesy of the artist.
- Artwork Details: 25.4 x 20.3cm
- Edition: 2 of 3 + 1 AP
- Material description: Digital Chromogenic Print
- Credit line: © the artist.
- Theme:
- Medium: Photograph
- Accession number: ACC36/2013