Foreign Exchange

Before lockdown I spent a lot of time photographing public sculpture in Birmingham and the Black Country for an Art Fund project creating a database of all the public sculpture across the UK.  Yesterday I got a message asking me if I would go and do some shots of a temporary installation called Foreign Exchange, in Victoria Square in Birmingham.  My interest was piqued so I went to have a look at it this morning.  I loved it!  So thought provoking!  You can see a plaque in extras which gives you some of the background information but this has been created around the original statue of Queen Victoria in Victoria Square.  Many of these statues were sent out around the Empire  and this idea , I think, calls to mind the ways in which the world opens up and how eventually things change over time and we exchange our relative foreign-nesses.  This is all part of the festival being celebrated around the Commonwealth games which start in Birmingham at the end of the month.  In extras you can see the original Queen Victoria in her new garb and you can see wider views of Victoria Square which now has the fountain restored and working, and also the Gormley Iron Man has been returned following work on the Tram system.  It is all beginning to look wonderful!  But you know me:  Proud to be a Brummie.