Faces and Places by Janice Rider & Shaun Morris
- Fred McGrail
- Jul 20
- 5 min read
Updated: Jul 21
Freddos, welcome back! Two blog posts in the space of a few weeks, it looks like she's BACK in the game. I love bringing you guys insightful stop by's into the art exhibitions I've visited in and around Birmingham. Always with a goal of showcasing the diverse talent found within various pockets around the city. This time around, local artists Janice Rider and Shaun Morris put together this community driven exhibition and requested I come along to put my 50p in, I take delight in initiatives like this so I was honoured to be asked to attend.
Janice and Shaun are both a part of the art collective UASB, the United Artists of South Birmingham. The two are part of roughly 300 artists who regularly put on shows in the Back Room Gallery at the Kitchen Garden Café in Kings Heath. It's a great location where artists can reach different audiences that otherwise might not intentionally go to art exhibitions within 'professional' settings due to various reasons like intimidation, accessibility, and a fear of misunderstanding. A café is brilliant neutral ground.
The co-curated show Faces and Places features a collection of land and townscapes by Shaun and series of portraits by Janice. Shaun draws inspiration from urban and post-industrial environments around the Black Country and Birmingham. He focuses on overlooked spaces like car parks, bus stops, canal towpaths, and areas of shared public spaces that shape our lives. He also works with portraiture and still life, following the same approach with these as he does his landscapes, finding the intersections between place, memory and the every day experience.
Alongside are Janice's portraits, a series of paintings that took form during the pandemic through a Sky Arts campaign where celebrities modelled live on screen so that artists at home could paint for 4 hours every Sunday. The show titled 'Portrait Artist of the Week' was an interactive show that invited viewers to paint and draw from their own homes. Each week a contestant from the previous flagship show 'Portrait Artist of the Year', painted the celebrity live whilst audiences followed along. This allowed for artists like Janice to regularly practise from their homes all over the world. Throughout her work, her overarching theme explores human connection through drawing, painting, mixed-media, and installation.
Janice says: "I have an almost primal need to depict portraits, often using blind drawings as a starting point. They become my friends and I want people to meet them. I draw strength from viewing them and can’t live without looking at them".
When I arrived, it was my initial reaction to the painting of (Judge) Rob Rinder that made it stand out to me - is that a floating dog head? Stupidly thinking it was a nod to the surrealist movement but later came to realise that it was a hung portrait of his dog. A portrait which was displayed behind him as he posed for 'Artist of the Week'. It makes OBVIOUS sense to me now given that I have a deeper understanding of her practise. Funny how sometimes as artists, our brains can be so overly arty thinky. Like hun, it was purely a dog portrait hung on a wall. This human element within her paintings ties in with her overarching themes of human experience and shared human connection. I don't know a dog owner that doesn't have some kind of homage to their beloved fur baby somewhere in the house, this brings a sense of familiarity with her work, a level of comfort.
Was it because of her chosen colour palette that caused my brain to jump to this humorous and inaccurate conclusion? A dream state, end of October spooky one at that. Additionally, I thought, are these somber cool tones representative of his deeply ingrained melancholy facial expression? I mean, Judge Rinder is somewhat known for looking intensely deep 99% of the time and for the most part appears sad or stern on his show due to his resting facial expression. The day of my visit, Janice mentioned to me that this so happened to be one of her favourites and that it wasn't intentional for her to capture the expression in his face but it so happened to translate through the paint anyway.
Thinking about it, it's interesting to think about her themes of connection and shared human experience and how at the time, unthinkable amounts of people were at one point all connected in a shared experience together. A whole group of people simultaneously at home all working with a shared goal of creating, almost like an accidental massive body of work which was unknowingly connected. Work that was created from these celebrities that were coincidentally also posed in their homes, model and artist all united in this shared worldwide experience.
Shaun says: "I do like a quote from Hamlet via Andrew Wyeth that is a guide I hold in my head.... he tells the players that arrive to the castle in act 3 'not to exaggerate but to hold up a mirror to nature. Don't overdo it, don't underdo it. Do it just on the line.' That is a line that feeds into my approach to painting".
I was fortunate enough to exhibit with Shaun at the West Midlands Painters exhibition a few years back. He has such a distinctive way of painting and utilises a colour palette which has become familiar and recognisable across his entire practise. It wasn't until I arrived at Faces & Places where I made the connection! This group exhibition brought together a large selection of West Midlands based painters to showcase their work in Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter, it's great to see Shaun still active in Birminghams ever-growing art scene.
The themes surrounding Shaun's work focus predominantly on his interest behind ordinary places and objects, particularly how painting can uncover histories that are often forgotten. What's hard to forget though is his technique, you can see prominent brush strokes, areas that appear blocked and devoid of noise. All of these elements work as an amalgamation towards this intersection of abstraction and realism. There is just enough given to us to make sense of it all, his paintings feel romantic. As if to compliment these spaces that we all use and underappreciate, a way to give respect to them. His painterly technique feels like a haze, a magical dreamlike reminisce of a romance movie where the protagonist meets their love interest at a bus stop or late night super market car park. Truly beautiful pieces.
I'll let you guys get back to your lives now, but just to tie off, I think their bodies of work sit nicely together, they compliment one another. Opposing sides of the scale in subject matter but both strongly rooted in their painting techniques. The exhibition is on until the 28th July so there's plenty of time to head over there and grab a bite whilst you peruse the art.
The Back Room Gallery
Kitchen Garden Café
17 York Road, Kings Heath
B14 7SA
Also, if you know of any exhibitions going on in Birmingham and around, please let me know as I'd love to come and write a blog post on it. Until next time guys.
