About:
I work collaboratively as BAZ, General Public and formerly chris+keir. Occasionally I work on my own too.
Contact:
e: chrispoolman@gmail.com
t: 07792 736125
Other sites:
www.generalpublic.org.uk
www.thehopproject.co.uk
www.bazbazbaz.com
www.balsallheathbiennale.com
BAZ:
BAZ (Matt Westbrook & Chris Poolman) is a self elected art-world think-tank based at Grand Union studios & project space in Birmingham. Working with a combination of events, performance and writing, BAZ use humour to fictionalise and archive the idiosyncrasies of regional art scenes. Previous work has seen the creation of a pop up Artist-led Polytunnel Beer café, a 24 hour application writing nightclub, an artist-curator dating show and a transport system based on the Austin Allegro's 'Quartic' steering wheel. By using structures and formats that encourage audiences to interact and shape the direction of the work, BAZ hope to initiate an open level of critique between the wider public and artists. BAZ are passionate supporters of all things Birmingham. Bored by misconceptions and ‘Second City’ status they are engaged with an ongoing project to unite all the 31 ‘Birmingham’s’ across the world in to one global ‘Magic City’, celebrating its twenty first century ‘Magic-ness’. BAZ, like Sting, believe everything Birmingham does is Magic and want the world to know about it, especially people in Coventry.
General Public:
General Public (the collaborative working name / company name of artists Chris Poolman & Elizabeth Rowe) devise daring and humourous propositions that invite communities to participate in re-imagining their local areas. Between 2011 and 2013, they developed a two-year multi-faceted project in Balsall Heath, the inner city suburb of Birmingham where they lived, called the Balsall Heath Biennale. The biennale is captured in a triplet of publications - an A-Z colouring in book, newspaper and book featuring essays by Derek Horton and Saskia Warren (these publications are available to purchase here). The biennale involved them occupying a range of roles - artists, curators, spiritual advisors - and this model of working has informed their subsequent projects. By developing methodologies that focus on the particularities of locality - the idiosyncrasies of specific locations such as Balsall Heath, Longbridge, Handsworth - they attempt to offer an expanded definition of the often clichéd category of ‘community art’. Indeed, they are interested in the role that they as artists might fulfill in these spaces in a genuinely useful (or occasionally useless) sense.
chris+keir:
chris+keir (with Keir Williams) worked together between 2009 and 2011. Their interest lay in how humour and failure (& a total lack of acting ability) could be used as a performance strategy.