Birmingham Arts Lab
Encyclopedia
The Birmingham Arts Laboratory or Arts Lab was an experimental arts centre
and artist collective
based in Birmingham
, England
from 1968 to 1982 – an "arts and performance space dedicated to radical research into art and creativity". Loosely organised and biased towards the obscure and avant-garde, it was described by The Guardian
in 1997 as "one of the emblematic institutions of the 1960s".
The Arts Lab was originally based in a run-down youth centre run by The Birmingham Settlement on Tower Street in Newtown
on the northern edge of Birmingham City Centre
, and was accessible from the street only via a metal fire escape. It moved to a former brewery on Holt Street in Gosta Green
in 1977, before financial problems and pressure from the arts establishment forced it to amalgamate with Aston University
's arts centre to form the more conventional Triangle Arts Centre in 1982.
The Birmingham Arts Lab had a wide influence across numerous art forms. Figures involved with the Arts Lab, often early in their careers, included cartoonists Hunt Emerson
, Edward Barker
, Kevin O'Neill
, Bryan Talbot
, Steve Bell
and Suzy Varty; playwrights David Edgar
and David Hare
; film director Mike Figgis
; writer and poet Gareth Owen; comedian and performance artist John Dowie
; photographer and journalist Derek Bishton
; the psychedelic group Bachdenkel
; novelist Jim Crace
; singer Ruby Turner
, film maker and photographer Pogus Caesar
and composer and sonic artist Trevor Wishart
.
, who had been promoting avant garde music performances at the centre's outdoor auditorium and had been involved in Mike Leigh
's experiments in improvised theatre, but had become frustrated at what they saw as the bureaucracy and obstructionism of the centre's management. The group resolved to start a breakaway venue to "provide a centre for experimenting in the Arts; be a community of creative people, self-aware and self-supporting; participate creatively in the life of the City; and present work of both its members and visiting groups and individuals"
There followed five months of fund-raising events around the city called Strange Days and featuring bands such as Fleetwood Mac
, Colosseum
and DJ John Peel
(whose fundraising efforts saw him became the Arts Lab's first life member), during which a local charity offered the group the use of a first floor room in its Newtown
Youth Centre as a venue. The Arts Lab opened in January 1969, initially only at weekends.
Terry Grimley, later arts correspondent of the Birmingham Post
, recalled "When I first found my way to the Arts Lab, it did not resemble an arts centre so much as a night club with a rather different ambience to other places in town. Nothing happened except at weekends, and not much happened then either, except that music was played, coloured lights were projected and people ate vegetables and brown rice and drank instant coffee."
from 1971 secured its future and saw it gradually expand: firstly to occupy the whole first floor (with the gymnasium becoming the main theatre and performance space), and eventually to occupy the entire building.
The Arts Lab was initially run along the lines of a club for members and guests. Although it never had a drinks licence (due to constant friction with the local licensing authorities) it had a coffee bar, beneath which was a void between the floors in which several members intermittently lived. Jim Crace
later recalled that "it was no surprise to discover a badly-smelling playwright or drink-wrecked mime artist emerging between your legs from a priest hole below the floorboards".
The Arts Lab started with no formal organisation, but with Peter Stark as unofficial administrator. Stark left in 1970 and was replaced by Simon Chapman, who left in 1972 to become the Director of the Ikon Gallery
and was replaced by Ted Little. Little was to be artistic director through to 1982, apart from a two year spell as head of the Institute of Contemporary Arts
in London
, during which he transformed it "from a club for the self-absorbed of Kensington to a roaring popular venue" and paved the way for its important role in the early years of British punk
.
, with a bookshop, studios and exhibition spaces. Shortage of funds meant that not all of the planned facilities were finished, however, and the new more orderly surroundings were felt by some to have compromised the Arts Lab's uniquely liberating culture.
The first signs of problems became apparent in 1980 when two members of the music staff were made redundant and Ted Little left to pursue freelance work. The Arts Lab's programme began to focus increasingly on film to the exclusion of other media. In 1982 West Midlands Arts sponsored a move to combine the Arts Lab with Aston University's own Centre for the Arts as a venue focussing primarily on cinema and photography, and in 1983 the Arts Lab's premises reopened as a new Arts Centre called the Triangle Media and Arts Centre. Funding for this was removed in 1987, however, and the cinema finally closed in 1994.
groups such as the People Show
, Pip Simmons Theatre Group
and John Bull Puncture Repair Kit - together with performances by the Arts Lab's own theatre company Zoo.
A regular Theatre Workshop was established from 1973, and the following years saw a series of plays written specifically for the Arts Lab including John Dowie
's Stillsmith, Gareth Owen's Confession of Jon-Jak Crusoe and his rock operetta Rupert, Bruce Lacey and Jill Bruce
's Stella Superstar and Her Amazing Intergalactic Adventures and most notably David Edgar
's Summer Sports, later revived as Blood Sports and still widely performed.
Between 1972 and 1976 the Performance Group - based at the Arts Lab but touring internationally - produced a range of shows that combined dance, film, text, poetry, electronics and ambient music; declaring "Total Theatre, Mixed or Multimedia, Compound Theatre are all terms we use in this connection", and from 1976 the Writers' Theatre Company provided an outlet for the professional production of work by young local writers. The Arts Lab was also notable as a comedy
venue, with Stewart Lee
crediting Victoria Wood
and John Dowie
's work at the Arts Lab as being one of the earliest roots of the later alternative comedy
movement.
by Haskell Wexler
, which had never before seen in the UK – and it continued after the programmes in most other media went into decline from 1980 onwards. The reputation of the Arts Lab's Tower Street venue as "the world's most uncomfortable cinema, the silence only broken by the accompaniment of some thrasher on the piano and the timpani of scurrying rats" was partly explained by the fact that the seating had been bought second-hand from a local cinema. In addition to its regular programme the Arts Lab held an annual Film Festival from 1972, focussing on particular themes including film makers such as Kenneth Anger
, Josef von Sternberg
or F. W. Murnau, or 1976's focus on Polish Cinema
. Jones left the Arts Lab in 1978 to join the Cambridge Film Theatre.
, electronic music
, amplification effects
and liquid light shows
, in regular collaboration with artists such as Cornelius Cardew
, David Panton, Trevor Wishart
and various ensembles associated with the University of Birmingham
, often touring through Europe and North America. Notable premieres included Wishart's Menagerie and Audio Movies.
The Arts Lab also developed a reputation as a centre of improvised rock
, running from the psychedelia of Bachdenkel
in the late 1960s, through the Arts Lab's own Amphioxus jazz-rock ensemble of the mid-seventies, to later collaborative performances at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery
.
between 1981 and 1985, and an exhibition by Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery
in 1998.
In 1970 the Arts Lab obtained an offset
litho
press on loan from a local cash and carry operation (in return for printing the company's price list for free) and in 1972 bought a second hand press of its own. Initially intended to print flyers and price lists on a commercial basis, the take-over of the printing operation by Hunt Emerson
in 1974 saw the Arts Lab move into comic art, producing a series of publications under its own Ar:Zak imprint. Starting with Emerson's own Large Cow Comix – which also featured work by Kevin O'Neill
and Bryan Talbot
– and eventually branching out such varied publications as Steve Bell
's Big Foot; David Edgar
's anti-Nazi Committed Comix and Suzy Varty's Heroine (the first British women's comic), Ar:Zak was to become an important part of the history of underground British comics, a position reinforced when the Arts Lab held KAK – the first Konvention of Alternative Komix in 1976. In 1984 Pogus Caesar
's first exhibition of photographs "Instamatic Views of New York" was displayed at The Triangle. During the early 1980s Caesar also extensively documented the people and events that happened at The Triangle, these images are held in the OOM Gallery Archive.
Arts centre
An art centre or arts center is distinct from an art gallery or art museum. An arts centre is a functional community centre with a specific remit to encourage arts practice and to provide facilities such as theatre space, gallery space, venues for musical performance, workshop areas, educational...
and artist collective
Artist collective
An artist collective is an initiative that is the result of a group of artists working together, usually under their own management, towards shared aims...
based in Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
from 1968 to 1982 – an "arts and performance space dedicated to radical research into art and creativity". Loosely organised and biased towards the obscure and avant-garde, it was described by The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
in 1997 as "one of the emblematic institutions of the 1960s".
The Arts Lab was originally based in a run-down youth centre run by The Birmingham Settlement on Tower Street in Newtown
Newtown, Birmingham
Newtown is an inner city area of Birmingham, England, to the north of the city centre. It is located in the Aston council ward, in the council constituency of Ladywood. The housing in the area is made up of a number of tower blocks, maisonettes and terraced houses.Newtown is centred around the busy...
on the northern edge of Birmingham City Centre
Birmingham City Centre
Birmingham city centre is the business, retail and leisure hub of Birmingham, England. Following the removal of the Inner Ring Road, the city centre is newly defined as being the area within the Middle Ring Road. Birmingham city centre is undergoing massive redevelopment with the Big City Plan...
, and was accessible from the street only via a metal fire escape. It moved to a former brewery on Holt Street in Gosta Green
Gosta Green
Gosta Green is an area in the city of Birmingham, England. It lies at the edge of the city centre, about three-quarters of a mile to the north-east of Birmingham New Street station via Corporation St or the High St....
in 1977, before financial problems and pressure from the arts establishment forced it to amalgamate with Aston University
Aston University
Aston University is a "plate glass" campus university situated at Gosta Green, in the city centre of Birmingham, England.Established in 1895 as the Birmingham Municipal Technical School, Aston was granted its Royal Charter as Aston University on 22 April 1966...
's arts centre to form the more conventional Triangle Arts Centre in 1982.
The Birmingham Arts Lab had a wide influence across numerous art forms. Figures involved with the Arts Lab, often early in their careers, included cartoonists Hunt Emerson
Hunt Emerson
Hunt Emerson is a cartoonist living and working in Birmingham, England. He was closely involved with the Birmingham Arts Lab of the mid-to-late 1970s, and with the British underground comics scene of the 1970s and 1980s...
, Edward Barker
Edward Barker (cartoonist)
John Edward Barker was an English cartoonist, best known for his work in International Times and The Observer in the late 1960s and early 1970s, including the comic strip "The Largactilites" . He was described as "the wittiest and most idiosyncratic cartoonist to emerge from the British...
, Kevin O'Neill
Kevin O'Neill (comics)
Kevin O'Neill is an English comic book illustrator best known as the co-creator of Nemesis the Warlock, Marshal Law , and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen .-Early career:...
, Bryan Talbot
Bryan Talbot
Bryan Talbot is a British comic book artist and writer, born in Wigan, Lancashire, in 1952. He is best known as the creator of The Adventures of Luther Arkwright and its sequel Heart of Empire.-Career:...
, Steve Bell
Steve Bell (cartoonist)
Steve Bell is an English political cartoonist, whose work appears in The Guardian and other publications. He is known for his left-wing views and distinctive caricatures.-Early life:...
and Suzy Varty; playwrights David Edgar
David Edgar (playwright)
David Edgar is a British playwright and author who has had more than sixty of his plays published and performed on stage, radio and television around the world, making him one of the most prolific dramatists of the post-1960s generation in Great Britain.He was resident playwright at the Birmingham...
and David Hare
David Hare (dramatist)
Sir David Hare is an English playwright and theatre and film director.-Early life:Hare was born in St Leonards-on-Sea, Hastings, East Sussex, the son of Agnes and Clifford Hare, a sailor. He was educated at Lancing, an independent school in West Sussex, and at Jesus College, Cambridge...
; film director Mike Figgis
Mike Figgis
Michael "Mike" Figgis is an English film director, writer, and composer.-Personal life:Figgis was born in Carlisle, England and grew up in Africa. Figgis for several years had a relationship with the actress Saffron Burrows and cast her in several films...
; writer and poet Gareth Owen; comedian and performance artist John Dowie
John Dowie (humourist)
John Dowie is a British comedian, musician, and writer. He began performing stand-up comedy in 1969.-Career:Dowie was among the inaugural acts on Tony Wilson's Factory Records label. In 1978 he contributed three comedic songs to the first Factory music release, A Factory Sample, along with Joy...
; photographer and journalist Derek Bishton
Derek Bishton
Derek Bishton is an English journalist and photographer. After periods working as a journalist on the Newcastle Evening Chronicle and the Birmingham Post, and as a publicist for the Birmingham Arts Lab, he founded the photographic magazine Ten.8 in 1979, which was published in Handsworth until 1992...
; the psychedelic group Bachdenkel
Bachdenkel
Bachdenkel were an English rock group which came to life in and around the King's Heath area of Birmingham in the late 1960s, evolving out of a combo called "U No Who"....
; novelist Jim Crace
Jim Crace
James "Jim" Crace is a contemporary English writer. The winner of numerous awards, Crace also has a large popular following. He currently lives in the Moseley area of Birmingham with his wife...
; singer Ruby Turner
Ruby Turner
Ruby Turner is a British R&B and soul singer, songwriter and actress. In 1967, she relocated with her family to Handsworth, Birmingham, England when she was nine years old...
, film maker and photographer Pogus Caesar
Pogus Caesar
Pogus Caesar is a British artist, television producer and director. He was born in St Kitts, West Indies, and grew up in Birmingham, England.-History:...
and composer and sonic artist Trevor Wishart
Trevor Wishart
Trevor Wishart is an English composer, based in York. Wishart has contributed to composing with digital audio media, both fixed and interactive...
.
Origins
The genesis of the Birmingham Arts Laboratory can be traced to a meeting on September 8, 1968 of five figures (Mark Williams, Fred Smith, Dave Cassidy, Tony Jones and Bob Sheldon) from the Midlands Arts CentreMac (Birmingham)
mac is a non-profit arts centre situated in Cannon Hill Park, Edgbaston, Birmingham, England. It was established in 1962 and is registered as an educational charity which host plays, concerts and films shows; and holds art exhibitions, music classes, and workshops for all ages.The centre re-opened...
, who had been promoting avant garde music performances at the centre's outdoor auditorium and had been involved in Mike Leigh
Mike Leigh
Michael "Mike" Leigh, OBE is a British writer and director of film and theatre. He studied theatre at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and studied further at the Camberwell School of Art and the Central School of Art and Design. He began as a theatre director and playwright in the mid 1960s...
's experiments in improvised theatre, but had become frustrated at what they saw as the bureaucracy and obstructionism of the centre's management. The group resolved to start a breakaway venue to "provide a centre for experimenting in the Arts; be a community of creative people, self-aware and self-supporting; participate creatively in the life of the City; and present work of both its members and visiting groups and individuals"
There followed five months of fund-raising events around the city called Strange Days and featuring bands such as Fleetwood Mac
Fleetwood Mac
Fleetwood Mac are a British–American rock band formed in 1967 in London.The only original member present in the band is its eponymous drummer, Mick Fleetwood...
, Colosseum
Colosseum (band)
Colosseum is a pioneering British progressive jazz-rock band, mixing progressive rock and jazz-based improvisation.-History 1968 - 1971:The band was formed in September 1968 by drummer Jon Hiseman, tenor sax player Dick Heckstall-Smith and bass player Tony Reeves, who had previously worked together...
and DJ John Peel
John Peel
John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, OBE , known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey, radio presenter, record producer and journalist. He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004...
(whose fundraising efforts saw him became the Arts Lab's first life member), during which a local charity offered the group the use of a first floor room in its Newtown
Newtown, Birmingham
Newtown is an inner city area of Birmingham, England, to the north of the city centre. It is located in the Aston council ward, in the council constituency of Ladywood. The housing in the area is made up of a number of tower blocks, maisonettes and terraced houses.Newtown is centred around the busy...
Youth Centre as a venue. The Arts Lab opened in January 1969, initially only at weekends.
Terry Grimley, later arts correspondent of the Birmingham Post
Birmingham Post
The Birmingham Post newspaper was originally published under the name Daily Post in Birmingham, England, in 1857 by John Frederick Feeney. It was the largest selling broadsheet in the West Midlands, though it faced little if any competition in this category. It changed to tabloid size in 2008...
, recalled "When I first found my way to the Arts Lab, it did not resemble an arts centre so much as a night club with a rather different ambience to other places in town. Nothing happened except at weekends, and not much happened then either, except that music was played, coloured lights were projected and people ate vegetables and brown rice and drank instant coffee."
Tower Street
The Arts Lab was open full time from April 1969. Initially occupying only a single room, it quickly established cinema and theatre programmes and in its first year held two experimental arts festivals - Cybervironment Plus' (organised by Simon Chapman)' and Gathering Number One' (organised by Pete Stark)'. Funding from the Arts CouncilArts Council of Great Britain
The Arts Council of Great Britain was a non-departmental public body dedicated to the promotion of the fine arts in Great Britain. The Arts Council of Great Britain was divided in 1994 to form the Arts Council of England , the Scottish Arts Council, and the Arts Council of Wales...
from 1971 secured its future and saw it gradually expand: firstly to occupy the whole first floor (with the gymnasium becoming the main theatre and performance space), and eventually to occupy the entire building.
The Arts Lab was initially run along the lines of a club for members and guests. Although it never had a drinks licence (due to constant friction with the local licensing authorities) it had a coffee bar, beneath which was a void between the floors in which several members intermittently lived. Jim Crace
Jim Crace
James "Jim" Crace is a contemporary English writer. The winner of numerous awards, Crace also has a large popular following. He currently lives in the Moseley area of Birmingham with his wife...
later recalled that "it was no surprise to discover a badly-smelling playwright or drink-wrecked mime artist emerging between your legs from a priest hole below the floorboards".
The Arts Lab started with no formal organisation, but with Peter Stark as unofficial administrator. Stark left in 1970 and was replaced by Simon Chapman, who left in 1972 to become the Director of the Ikon Gallery
Ikon Gallery
The Ikon Gallery is an English gallery of contemporary art, located in Brindleyplace, Birmingham. It is housed in the Grade II listed, neo-gothic former Oozells Street Board School, designed by John Henry Chamberlain in 1877. The gallery's current director is Jonathan Watkins.Ikon was set up to...
and was replaced by Ted Little. Little was to be artistic director through to 1982, apart from a two year spell as head of the Institute of Contemporary Arts
Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Institute of Contemporary Arts is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. It is located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch...
in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, during which he transformed it "from a club for the self-absorbed of Kensington to a roaring popular venue" and paved the way for its important role in the early years of British punk
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
.
Holt Street
The Arts Lab's earlier chaotic, co-operative organisation was increasingly challenged by funders from 1975 onwards, with a formal Board of Management being established in 1976. August 1977 saw the Arts Lab move completely from Tower Street to new, much larger premises in a former brewery on the campus of Aston UniversityAston University
Aston University is a "plate glass" campus university situated at Gosta Green, in the city centre of Birmingham, England.Established in 1895 as the Birmingham Municipal Technical School, Aston was granted its Royal Charter as Aston University on 22 April 1966...
, with a bookshop, studios and exhibition spaces. Shortage of funds meant that not all of the planned facilities were finished, however, and the new more orderly surroundings were felt by some to have compromised the Arts Lab's uniquely liberating culture.
The first signs of problems became apparent in 1980 when two members of the music staff were made redundant and Ted Little left to pursue freelance work. The Arts Lab's programme began to focus increasingly on film to the exclusion of other media. In 1982 West Midlands Arts sponsored a move to combine the Arts Lab with Aston University's own Centre for the Arts as a venue focussing primarily on cinema and photography, and in 1983 the Arts Lab's premises reopened as a new Arts Centre called the Triangle Media and Arts Centre. Funding for this was removed in 1987, however, and the cinema finally closed in 1994.
Theatre and performance
The Arts Lab's theatre programme was controversial from its start in 1969, with a nude open-air performance on the Arts Lab's roof by the theatre company Sweetness and Light attracting headlines in the Birmingham Post. By 1971 there was a regular programme of visiting theatre companies - mainly radical performance artPerformance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
groups such as the People Show
People Show
The People Show is the longest running English experimental theatre company, based in the East End of London.Founded by Jeff Nuttall and Mark Long in 1966 and performing its first show in the basement of Better Books in London's Charing Cross Road, the People Show was London's first performance art...
, Pip Simmons Theatre Group
Pip Simmons Theatre Group
The Pip Simmons Theatre Group was formed in 1968. Pip Simmons, the founder, served both as writer and director, but he was open to the ideas of others in the company, much of their work being devised pieces...
and John Bull Puncture Repair Kit - together with performances by the Arts Lab's own theatre company Zoo.
A regular Theatre Workshop was established from 1973, and the following years saw a series of plays written specifically for the Arts Lab including John Dowie
John Dowie (humourist)
John Dowie is a British comedian, musician, and writer. He began performing stand-up comedy in 1969.-Career:Dowie was among the inaugural acts on Tony Wilson's Factory Records label. In 1978 he contributed three comedic songs to the first Factory music release, A Factory Sample, along with Joy...
's Stillsmith, Gareth Owen's Confession of Jon-Jak Crusoe and his rock operetta Rupert, Bruce Lacey and Jill Bruce
Bruce Lacey
"Professor" Bruce Lacey, born 1927, remains one of Britain's great eccentrics. After completing his national service in the RAF he became established on the avantgarde scene with his performance art and mechanical constructs. He has been closely associated with The Alberts performance group and The...
's Stella Superstar and Her Amazing Intergalactic Adventures and most notably David Edgar
David Edgar (playwright)
David Edgar is a British playwright and author who has had more than sixty of his plays published and performed on stage, radio and television around the world, making him one of the most prolific dramatists of the post-1960s generation in Great Britain.He was resident playwright at the Birmingham...
's Summer Sports, later revived as Blood Sports and still widely performed.
Between 1972 and 1976 the Performance Group - based at the Arts Lab but touring internationally - produced a range of shows that combined dance, film, text, poetry, electronics and ambient music; declaring "Total Theatre, Mixed or Multimedia, Compound Theatre are all terms we use in this connection", and from 1976 the Writers' Theatre Company provided an outlet for the professional production of work by young local writers. The Arts Lab was also notable as a comedy
Stand-up comedy
Stand-up comedy is a comedic art form. Usually, a comedian performs in front of a live audience, speaking directly to them. Their performances are sometimes filmed for later release via DVD, the internet, and television...
venue, with Stewart Lee
Stewart Lee
Stewart Lee is an English stand-up comedian, writer and director known for being one half of the 1990s comedy duo Lee and Herring, and for co-writing and directing the critically acclaimed and controversial stage show Jerry Springer - The Opera...
crediting Victoria Wood
Victoria Wood
Victoria Wood CBE is a British comedienne, actress, singer-songwriter, screenwriter and director. Wood has written and starred in sketches, plays, films and sitcoms, and her live stand-up comedy act is interspersed with her own compositions, which she accompanies on piano...
and John Dowie
John Dowie (humourist)
John Dowie is a British comedian, musician, and writer. He began performing stand-up comedy in 1969.-Career:Dowie was among the inaugural acts on Tony Wilson's Factory Records label. In 1978 he contributed three comedic songs to the first Factory music release, A Factory Sample, along with Joy...
's work at the Arts Lab as being one of the earliest roots of the later alternative comedy
Alternative comedy
Alternative comedy is a term that originated in the 1980s for a style of comedy that makes a conscious break with the mainstream comedic style of an era, and typically avoids relying on a standardised structure of a sequence of jokes with punch lines. Patton Oswalt defines it as "comedy where the...
movement.
Cinema
The Arts Lab's cinema programme was established by Tony Jones – the first film shown being Medium CoolMedium Cool
Medium Cool is an American film written and directed by Haskell Wexler and starring Robert Forster, Verna Bloom, Peter Bonerz, Marianna Hill and Harold Blankenship. It takes place in Chicago in the summer of 1968...
by Haskell Wexler
Haskell Wexler
Haskell Wexler, A.S.C. is an American cinematographer, film producer, and director. Wexler was judged to be one of film history's ten most influential cinematographers in a survey of the members of the International Cinematographers Guild.-Early life and education:Wexler was born to a Jewish...
, which had never before seen in the UK – and it continued after the programmes in most other media went into decline from 1980 onwards. The reputation of the Arts Lab's Tower Street venue as "the world's most uncomfortable cinema, the silence only broken by the accompaniment of some thrasher on the piano and the timpani of scurrying rats" was partly explained by the fact that the seating had been bought second-hand from a local cinema. In addition to its regular programme the Arts Lab held an annual Film Festival from 1972, focussing on particular themes including film makers such as Kenneth Anger
Kenneth Anger
Kenneth Anger is an American underground experimental filmmaker, occasional actor and author...
, Josef von Sternberg
Josef von Sternberg
Josef von Sternberg — born Jonas Sternberg — was an Austrian-American film director. He is particularly noted for his distinctive mise en scène, use of lighting and soft lens, and seven-film collaboration with actress Marlene Dietrich.-Youth:Von Sternberg was born Jonas Sternberg to a Jewish...
or F. W. Murnau, or 1976's focus on Polish Cinema
Cinema of Poland
The history of cinema in Poland is almost as long as history of cinematography, and it has universal achievements, even though Polish movies tend to be less commercially available than movies from several other European nations....
. Jones left the Arts Lab in 1978 to join the Cambridge Film Theatre.
Music
The Arts Lab's music programme was defiantly aimed at "presenting contemporary music in Birmingham on a regular basis, regardless of the support it may or may not receive", starting off with a then-unusual all-Bartok concert by the Lindsay String Quartet. 1970 saw the foundation of the Arts Lab Sound Workshop by Jolyon Laycock, which produced a series of experimental sound performances throughout the 1970s involving improvisationMusical improvisation
Musical improvisation is the creative activity of immediate musical composition, which combines performance with communication of emotions and instrumental technique as well as spontaneous response to other musicians...
, electronic music
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
, amplification effects
Audio amplifier
An audio amplifier is an electronic amplifier that amplifies low-power audio signals to a level suitable for driving loudspeakers and is the final stage in a typical audio playback chain.The preceding stages in such a chain are low power audio amplifiers which perform tasks like pre-amplification,...
and liquid light shows
Liquid light shows
Liquid light shows or psychedelic light shows surfaced in the mid 1960s and early 1970s in America and Europe.Leading names were Glen McKay’s Headlights The Joshua Light Show/Joe's Lights/Sensefex located in NY), Tony Martin Liquid light shows or psychedelic light shows surfaced in the mid 1960s...
, in regular collaboration with artists such as Cornelius Cardew
Cornelius Cardew
Cornelius Cardew was an English experimental music composer, and founder of the Scratch Orchestra, an experimental performing ensemble. He later rejected the avant-garde in favour of a politically motivated "people's liberation music".-Biography:Cardew was born in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire...
, David Panton, Trevor Wishart
Trevor Wishart
Trevor Wishart is an English composer, based in York. Wishart has contributed to composing with digital audio media, both fixed and interactive...
and various ensembles associated with the University of Birmingham
University of Birmingham
The University of Birmingham is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Birmingham Medical School and Mason Science College . Birmingham was the first Redbrick university to gain a charter and thus...
, often touring through Europe and North America. Notable premieres included Wishart's Menagerie and Audio Movies.
The Arts Lab also developed a reputation as a centre of improvised rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
, running from the psychedelia of Bachdenkel
Bachdenkel
Bachdenkel were an English rock group which came to life in and around the King's Heath area of Birmingham in the late 1960s, evolving out of a combo called "U No Who"....
in the late 1960s, through the Arts Lab's own Amphioxus jazz-rock ensemble of the mid-seventies, to later collaborative performances at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery
Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery is a museum and art gallery in Birmingham, England.Entrance to the Museum and Art Gallery is free, but some major exhibitions in the Gas Hall incur an entrance fee...
.
Art, comics and poster art
The Arts Lab had a printing operation from its establishment in 1969, set up by Bryan Brown and Simon Chapman whose work was influenced by the psychedelic imagery of the West Coast of America. It initially used silkscreen printing to produce posters for Arts Lab events, and raising funds by producing posters for local Student Unions and music promotors. The posters operation was later taken over by Bob Linney and Ken Meharg for the Arts Lab – emphasising simultaneous colour contrasts and the dynamic integration of hand-painted text with manipulated photographic imagery – were especially notable, being the subject of an international touring exhibition by the British CouncilBritish Council
The British Council is a United Kingdom-based organisation specialising in international educational and cultural opportunities. It is registered as a charity both in England and Wales, and in Scotland...
between 1981 and 1985, and an exhibition by Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery
Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery is a museum and art gallery in Birmingham, England.Entrance to the Museum and Art Gallery is free, but some major exhibitions in the Gas Hall incur an entrance fee...
in 1998.
In 1970 the Arts Lab obtained an offset
Offset printing
Offset printing is a commonly used printing technique in which the inked image is transferred from a plate to a rubber blanket, then to the printing surface...
litho
Lithography
Lithography is a method for printing using a stone or a metal plate with a completely smooth surface...
press on loan from a local cash and carry operation (in return for printing the company's price list for free) and in 1972 bought a second hand press of its own. Initially intended to print flyers and price lists on a commercial basis, the take-over of the printing operation by Hunt Emerson
Hunt Emerson
Hunt Emerson is a cartoonist living and working in Birmingham, England. He was closely involved with the Birmingham Arts Lab of the mid-to-late 1970s, and with the British underground comics scene of the 1970s and 1980s...
in 1974 saw the Arts Lab move into comic art, producing a series of publications under its own Ar:Zak imprint. Starting with Emerson's own Large Cow Comix – which also featured work by Kevin O'Neill
Kevin O'Neill (comics)
Kevin O'Neill is an English comic book illustrator best known as the co-creator of Nemesis the Warlock, Marshal Law , and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen .-Early career:...
and Bryan Talbot
Bryan Talbot
Bryan Talbot is a British comic book artist and writer, born in Wigan, Lancashire, in 1952. He is best known as the creator of The Adventures of Luther Arkwright and its sequel Heart of Empire.-Career:...
– and eventually branching out such varied publications as Steve Bell
Steve Bell (cartoonist)
Steve Bell is an English political cartoonist, whose work appears in The Guardian and other publications. He is known for his left-wing views and distinctive caricatures.-Early life:...
's Big Foot; David Edgar
David Edgar (playwright)
David Edgar is a British playwright and author who has had more than sixty of his plays published and performed on stage, radio and television around the world, making him one of the most prolific dramatists of the post-1960s generation in Great Britain.He was resident playwright at the Birmingham...
's anti-Nazi Committed Comix and Suzy Varty's Heroine (the first British women's comic), Ar:Zak was to become an important part of the history of underground British comics, a position reinforced when the Arts Lab held KAK – the first Konvention of Alternative Komix in 1976. In 1984 Pogus Caesar
Pogus Caesar
Pogus Caesar is a British artist, television producer and director. He was born in St Kitts, West Indies, and grew up in Birmingham, England.-History:...
's first exhibition of photographs "Instamatic Views of New York" was displayed at The Triangle. During the early 1980s Caesar also extensively documented the people and events that happened at The Triangle, these images are held in the OOM Gallery Archive.