June Digbeth First Friday: UoB x GU – ‘Matter Out of Place’ Launch

Simon & Tom Bloor (both born Birmingham, 1973) are artists who make works for and about public space, developed from their shared experience of growing up in a post-industrial city and its legacy of regeneration. Addressing the histories and fabric of the built environment they view the urban landscape half through rose tinted spectacles and half a cynical gaze. Running throughout their practice is a playful optimism about the relationship between the built environment and those who use it.

Past solo exhibitions and public artworks include Istla, Holmi Park, Tartu, Estonia (2024), Pallet Stack, Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry (2022), Bluecoat Platform, Bluecoat, Liverpool (2021), THE CITY IS WHERE WE’RE GOING NEXT, Baltic, Gateshead, (2019), Structure for the City Observatory, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh (2016), Urban Studies, The Gallery, De Montfort University, Leicester (2016) and Loose Parts, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2013)

Sireen Martin’s work explores the point of intersection where the digital domain merges with the physical and metaphysical space. Her work takes on the form of abstract landscapes and sculptural works, often merging organic, naturalistic forms with man-made structures. Through her practice, she uses fictional worlds to explore the ways digital spaces shape reality and spirituality as well as how the coexistence of digital and physical environments could be reimagined, often speculating on the possibilities of future worlds and systems.

Sarah Silverwood is an artist based in Birmingham, originally from The Forest of Dean. Sarah’s drawing practice works across animation, textiles, ceramics, sculpture and print.  Combining her interests in making, storytelling and working with other people, she creates artwork for exhibitions, the public realm and the home.

Sarah often revisits narratives that have become fixed by familiarity, and through drawing, reanimates them. She is continually researching making techniques and experimenting with materials, developing the practical application of drawing in response to the ideas she is working with.

Current projects include a film commission with Animate Projects (2025-26), Artist in Residence at Warwick Arts Centre (2025-26), new public art works with Hospital Rooms (2024), Eastside Projects (2025), Meadow Arts (2025) and Fermynwoods (2023). Recent solo exhibitions include Love Bugs at Chapter, Cardiff (2021), Daphne at Aspex Portsmouth (2020) and The New Art Gallery Walsall (2019), and Crowd Show at NN Contemporary (2018). Sarah was artist in residence at The British Consulate in Chicago (2014) and The University of Birmingham (2013), and recipient of the 2019 Feeney Fellowship.

Natasha Taheem is an artist working across drawing and printmaking. Her practice explores desire, expectation and social structures through bold graphic works and expressive ink drawings. Her visual language is playful and warm, holding tension, humour and resistance as a way to navigate lived experience.

Stuart Whipps often makes work about things he doesn’t understand and doesn’t know how to do. Recently this includes restoring a 1979 Mini with the assistance of former British Leyland workers, training to make geological thin sections at the University of Birmingham, and propagating Begonias at West Dean in Sussex.

He has exhibited his work across the UK and internationally and is the recipient of a number of awards. He works predominantly with photography and video with occasional forays into sculpture.