The Material Encounters Research Cluster is pleased to announce a talk by Jim Holyoak and Matt Shane with an introduction by Director of Midlands Art Centre Deborah Kermode at Birmingham School of Art.

Taking their exhibition title from part of a Tennyson poem, Canada-based artists Jim Holyoak and Matt Shane make an immediate statement with their large-scale installations. Their work is made in a marathon fashion, showing the poetic and mysterious side of their drawing practice as it expands across entire walls over the course of an exhibition.

Working together, Holyoak and Shane create worlds within worlds, where beached whales grow cities from their backs and creatures lurk in the lush undergrowth. The artists respond to each other’s marks, sketching animals (real, imagined and extinct), landforms and architecture, gradually fleshing out landscapes with pencils,inky brooms, brushes, stencils and atomisers.

The finished drawings represent a meandering conversation and a shared dream world between two travelling companions. This exhibition marks the 20th collaboration between Jim and Matt and showcases sections of three of their large installations, as well as correspondence art, ephemera and a selection of small-scale works.

The artists will be in residence in the gallery during the first 5 weeks of the exhibition, creating a new drawing that will grow from the other exhibition pieces and weave its way across 12 metres of the gallery space.

They will be working at MAC Tuesday to Saturday, between 24 September – 26 October 2019, where you can drop by to meet them.