Centrala presents a group exhibition of film, photography, sculpture and print by eight LGBTQI+ artists from Central and Eastern Europe now living in the UK, curated by London-based Polish artist & curator, Zula Rabikowska. Featuring Arti Siudem, Janina Sabaliauskaitė, Siarhei Yazlavetski & Aleh Razhkou, Byuka Makodru, Yuri Dvizhon and Sebi Bruckner.
Spanning Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Romania, Ukraine and Hungary, the exhibition brings together artists who have built lives in the UK after leaving places where being openly LGBTQI+ holds real risk. Stories of migration, borders and escape are interwoven with love, celebration and belonging.
Drawing on personal archives, documentary and staged photography, film, folklore and collaborative projects, the works explore queer and trans identity, forced migration, grief, displacement and belonging. Alongside these experiences, the exhibition celebrates chosen family and sisterhood, lovers and friends, queer myth-making and new ways of imagining family, community, love and care.
Together, these voices create a space to reflect on queer and trans experiences, migration and a more compassionate future.
This September 4th on Digbeth First Friday, Centrala will be launching the newly established Repair Cafe with a clothing swap and repair demonstration by talented staff Sara, alongside our open bar and a funky, downtempo, techno and global club filled DJ set by the brilliant local DJ and founder/promoter of Messy, 0121pri aka PRI !!
Further information about how the clothing swap works + our exciting newly launched Repair Cafe can be seen on our Instagram and website.
PRISM Photography Network presents their new exhibition ‘Canals’ at Centrala, launching for August Digbeth First Friday on 7th August, 5-9pm.
PRISM is curating a new photography project that celebrates the beauty and culture of Digbeth and the Birmingham canals. The project unfolds through two complementary approaches. Three lead photographers will guide small groups on canal‑side photowalks, tracing routes from the city centre through Digbeth to Spaghetti Junction, with the support of Nick Cleaver from the Canal & River Trust. Additionally, a group of visual artists are creating a more intimate response to Digbeth and its communities through photography, moving image, recorded interviews and poetry.
Bringing together works by Alicja Rogalska, Jana Shostak, Radu-Mihai Tanasă, Anna Knapp & Amir Jan, and Małgorzata Dawidek, the exhibition examines migration not as a singular narrative, but as a complex social, political, and deeply personal condition. Through video, the artists engage with questions of displacement, borders, identity, labour, language, visibility, and belonging, while reflecting on how migration is represented and understood within contemporary public discourse.
The exhibition creates space for multiple perspectives and lived experiences that often remain absent from dominant narratives surrounding migration. Moving between documentary, speculative, and personal approaches, the presented works challenge simplified representations and invite audiences to consider migration through intimacy, memory, resilience, and everyday realities.
The exhibition also continues Centrala’s long-term engagement with migration through art and collaborative practice, highlighting the importance of creating cultural spaces for discussion, reflection, and exchange around one of the most urgent issues shaping contemporary society.
LUNA, in collaboration with Centrala, launches Care & Defiance, their first print exhibition on Digbeth First Friday 01/05 at 5pm.
Curated through an open call, the selected artists explore the multidimensional experience and challenges of womanhood, from balancing and switching roles, to the intersectional living of tender and tough. To understand the true duality of woman(hood), the exhibition looks at the world of the contemporary female gaze through its many facets.
The selected artists exhibiting include: Alishah Iqbal, Caitriona Dunnett, Cheyenne Hall, Editoriat, Ellie Smith, Kara, Laura Gale, Puffin Alwarey, Safa B. Malik, Sylwia Ciszewska-Peciak and Vicky Hodgson. In addition, two national female photography collectives, POST photo collective and UK Black Female Photography Community, will exhibit works alongside a curated selection from the Lisel Haas Archive in partnership with Bertz Associates.
Opening launch: 5pm
Artist talk: 6-7pm
After party: 7pm onwards.
What do we remember most vividly — and what do we desperately try to forget? How can art help us resist the manipulation of memory and rebuild shared realities across borders, cultures, and lived experiences?
These urgent questions lie at the heart of The Art of (Not) Forgetting, an ongoing artistic and research-based project by Berlin-based visual artist, essayist, and memory researcher Olga Bubich.
The exhibition brings together a selection of photographic portraits and personal texts created in close dialogue with Belarusian women and LGBTQ+ individuals. Through intimate conversations and collaborative storytelling, Bubich traces the fragile terrain of memory — where personal recollection intersects with political violence, displacement, silence, and survival.
A gathering of Birmingham based postfeminist, postpunk artists creating anti-art and anti-music. Poetry, protest, provocation, performance, projections and a dj.
It’s free, take it or leave it.
@crowdillonparkin
@bychelseamildenhall
@carlabusuttil
@mac_margo
@phoebe_court_
@victoria.d.harding
@mozspins
&
Bapz on Crack: Gutter Guerilla
@tammywoodrow
@evelynn_rocks
@sumi.virk
@chairmanpauu
Noise & Detail is a collaborative zine showcasing various pieces of work by the two photographers John Convery and Julie R. Kane. Though the first issue focuses on music photography centred around Centrala, it is likely that this project will develop to showcase other pieces of work by these photographers.
The first issue of this project will be available to purchase on the evening and a selection of the works will be exhibited in the downstairs gallery.
The launch also includes a drop in Zine Club which will give attendees the chance to read through some established zines and try their hand at making one of their own using materials provided.
PHOTOGRAPHS is a solo exhibition by renowned music photographer Steve Gullick, presented at Centrala.
The exhibition showcases a selection of Gullick’s most iconic images, documenting some of the most significant figures in alternative music from the 1990s and beyond.
Alongside the exhibition, in our downstairs venue we are hosting a gig with The Breedling and Tenebrous Liar.
Opening night Schedule
6pm – 8pm: Steve Gullick: Photographs Exhibition Opening (Upstairs Gallery)
8pm – 11pm: The Breedling / Tenebrous Liar (Downstairs Venue)
Free Entry
After the catwalk, the night explodes into an unmissable afterparty at Centrala. Expect a raw, high energy collision of sound, vision and resistance. Oldbort sets the tone with a blistering punk DJ set to get the floor shaking. The wizard Leon Trimble transforms the space with an immersive audio visual journey that bends light and sound into something otherworldly. In solidarity with imprisoned Pussy Riot member Diana, artist Andreea Pislaru channels the group’s iconic defiance through a live performance that merges protest with performance art. Closing the night, Black Country legend OLDZEDONG brings fire with his unique brand of communist hip hop, spitting truth to power with razor sharp flow. This is not just an afterparty, it is a declaration of freedom, fury and joy on the dancefloor.