Show + Tell Artist Crit

We are excited to partner with Eagle Works Studios on this second edition of Show + Tell!

Show + Tell is an informal group crit for Black Country artists hosted as part of Multistory’s artist development programme BCN (Blast Creative Network). It is a space to meet other artists working in the area, share your practice and receive feedback and support from other artists.

This event is hosted in collaboration between BCN and Eagle Works Studios and coincides with Eagle Works new programme Dwelling, which celebrates 40 years as an artist-led space providing Black Country artists with affordable studio space. Funded by the West Midlands Combined Authority Commonwealth Games Legacy Enhancement Fund, Dwelling launches with a new commission by Black Country artist Marley Starskey Butler, who was previously a BCN artist in residence.

Sarah Byrne and Laura Onions (Eagle Works Studios) will lead the crit along with Marley, and provide critical feedback on your work and suggestions for how to develop it further.

We’d love to see you there. Booking is required.

What to bring:

You might share: your portfolio, a new body of work, something you’ve been working on for a while, or work in progress you’re testing out.

You can share your work through a short 5 minute presentation. This could be a digital presentation (like a powerpoint, or sharing photos of your work), or you could bring in your physical work, if it is easily portable.

There's no wifi available at the venue - we will have a projector and speaker available, feel free to bring along a laptop or send your presentation to us beforehand as a PDF or Powerpoint (Max 5 MB) by emailing Rene at: [email protected].

If you are sending us your presentation, please send it to us no later than 10am on Wednesday 9 October.

Access: The event will take place at Oak House Museum in West Bromwich. The full address is Oak House Museum, Oak Road, West Bromwich, West Midlands, B70 8HJ.

It is a wheelchair and mobility scooter accessible venue. The space is on the first floor and there is an accessible lift to the first floor. There is a wheelchair accessible toilet on the ground floor.

“There is no accessible parking on site but you could arrange to park on site before your visit on a day when we don’t have an event or school holiday activities.” < Taken from Oak House Visit Sandwell page

The venue is usually quiet and the overhead lighting is soft spot lighting. There are quiet outdoor spaces available.

Please email: [email protected] or call/text on: 07562 980384 to let us know of any access requirements ahead of the event.

About Eagle Works Studios

Eagle Works Studios, established in 1984, is a community of Fine Artists working from Victoria House, on the roof of the Mander Centre, Wolverhampton. It is believed to be the longest-running self-funded artist studio group in the UK,

Marley Starskey Butler

Marley’s concurrent practice as a social worker has been in areas across child protection, fostering, adoption, and mental health as a jigsaw piece in promoting wellbeing, social justice, and human rights. The intersections between art, social work, and their familial lived experience of social work creates the foundations and tools for Marley to process and make sense of the world, both outside and inside of themselves. Recent Projects include: Hospital Rooms, commission, Sandwell CAMHS (2023-24); Thirty-Six, solo-exhibition, MAC Birmingham (2023-24); Reflector, group-exhibition, New Art Gallery Walsall (2024-25).

Laura Onions

Laura Onions is a printmaker in the broadest sense, often working in sculptural, painterly and social forms to hold and share spaces to learn. The manoeuvres of printmaking (contact, intimacy, transference) underline these activities in which a focus on making together has emerged as her approach. Engaging with archives is an important method for Laura to connect with place, people and histories, offering a framework to respond and reimagine. Recent projects such as Gathering Press have been nomadic, in connection with people, landscape and narratives of public space in Wolverhampton and the Black Country.

Sarah Byrne

Sarah Byrne is an artist interested in craft’s role in community-building. She celebrates heritage and domestic crafts, particularly yarn-spinning, as a method of shaping informal spaces to explore, work through challenges, and to deepen connections.

After responding to her own experience of loss through developing a habitual reliance on yarn-craft, Sarah began to research the longstanding parallel between craft and grief. Her current work questions the role that domestic acts of care can play within a contemporary art practice, where rituals of making and gifting celebrate friendship, gratitude, and joy.

About BCN

Show + Tell is part of BCN (Blast Creative Network), Multistory's artist development programme that offers artists in Sandwell and the wider Black Country a free annual programme of talks, workshops and social events and is a space for mutual support and knowledge sharing. It was set up to provide artists in the local area with opportunities for critical engagement and collaboration outside of formal arts education. The BCN programme informs, and is informed by, Multistory’s wider arts programme that is co-produced with artists and communities living in Sandwell.

https://multistory.org.uk/

Host or Publisher Multistory