After a month of letting the work simmer down this broth is ready to serve. Join us in a place beyond time and memory where even the rocks have forgotten. Singularity represents the first year’s development or WAYFINDER with the help of BOARC / Summerhall Arts / Hospitalfields / STRYX and Heather Phillipson.
Live performance at 6:30pm, artists talk at 7pm.
Check Stryx’s website for Alex’s performances, workshops and a book launch throughout October.
The first of our mid career artists Alex Billingham will be exhibiting LODESTONE, an open studio event for September Digbeth First Friday. This marks the start of her residency period which will culminate in October.
Join her in the temporary residency space of Stryx. Pulling together the first year of Wayfinder: a 5-year project exploring memory / Hagstones and the gravitational pull of black holes. This will be part artist studio, part work in progress – a glimpse into Alex’s working methods, and another tantalising chapter in the Hot Plate residency!
Stryx is offering you a second chance to pull a chair up to the table! Join us for the final group exhibition of this year’s residency programme, bringing together new work by Tegen Kimbley, Gugan Gill, Maya Davis-Stokes and Hadis Ensafi.
Working across photography, painting, installation and publishing, the artists explore ideas of place, identity, perception and lived experience. The exhibition reflects the diverse approaches developed during the residency, from Kimbley’s portraits of Digbeth’s local community, to Gill’s contemplative, garden-inspired bookwork, Davis-Stokes’ expressive paintings examining distortion and power, and Ensafi’s immersive installation engaging the senses through light, sound and material.
HOT PLATE: Soup Pt VIII offers a shared space for reflection, highlighting practices rooted in experimentation, process and evolving perspectives.
Stryx presents the final group exhibition of this year’s residency programme, bringing together new work by Tegen Kimbley, Gugan Gill, Maya Davis-Stokes and Hadis Ensafi.
Working across photography, painting, installation and publishing, the artists explore ideas of place, identity, perception and lived experience. The exhibition reflects the diverse approaches developed during the residency, from Kimbley’s portraits of Digbeth’s local community, to Gill’s contemplative, garden-inspired bookwork, Davis-Stokes’ expressive paintings examining distortion and power, and Ensafi’s immersive installation engaging the senses through light, sound and material.
HOT PLATE: Soup Pt VIII offers a shared space for reflection, highlighting practices rooted in experimentation, process and evolving perspectives.
Join Tegen, Gugan, May and Hadis for their artists talks from 5:15pm. Booking via event link.
HOT PLATE: Soup PtVIII is now well underway with our early career artists having completed their Meet the Artists exhibition. Now the kitchen gets busy! Mid career artists Alex Billingham and Lexi Strauss will be providing mentoring throughout May in preparation for the final group exhibition.
For the private view there will be a live performance from Gugan Gill, involving a small set-up of synths, in collaboration with musician Vato Klemera. The sound work developed alongside her residency, exploring background music for the books she’s been making, as a way to transport audiences while they read and engage with the work.
Meanwhile we will be treated to a special appearance from Lexi Strauss! Over the past 12 years, Lexi has explored the concept of a multi-breasted entity through painting, costume and clown performance. This short performance features one of six different characters in this series.
HOT PLATE: Soup ptVIII Artist Residency and Development Programme, is the newest iteration of the established Soup residency, providing a combined approach to the growth of local artistic talent.
Featured artists:
Maya Davis-Stokes
Hadis Ensafi
Gugan Gill
Tegen Kimbley
Alex Billingham
Lexi Strauss
We are pleased to announce the first project of our new residency program for 2026 – Hot Plate: Soup ptVIII !
Soup ptVIII Artist Residency and Development Programme, is the new iteration of the established Soup residency programme, providing a combined approach to the growth of local artistic talent.
Here’s your chance to meet the early career artists who will be showcasing their current practices before they embark on further group and solo exhibitions.
*Chef’s Kiss*
Featured artists:
Maya Davis Stokes
Hadis Ensafi
Gugan Gill
Tegan Kimbley
Come and explore Stryx’s VR archive exhibition, together with an exciting introduction to the upcoming Mothership Residency Program.
The exhibition includes a VR experience offering full access to the Stryx exhibition archive, along with videos that introduce and explain the Mothership program. A collaborative film made by all the mother‑artists from the first cohort is featured, alongside new work from a selection of artists who took part in last year’s program.
The gallery is a recreation of the actual physical gallery space, complete with changing exhibitions, created by Psicon Lab (Ben Neal). You will have the chance to explore the VR space on our headsets, for an unforgettable immersive experience.
At Home is a Stryx Studio holders show that brings together an ever – diverse group of artists working across painting, film, installation, and textiles.
Set in the beating heart of Digbeth, the exhibition explores ideas of place, belonging, and making from within shared creative studio environments, from studio holders in Digbeth and our Jewellery Quarter gallery.
Through a range of material approaches and voices, At Home reflects the energy of the studios themselves—intimate, experimental, and rooted in the cultural pulse of the area.
THREADWAYS shares the outcomes of two Level 5 BA Fine Art projects responding to two distinct sites and sets of conditions.
‘Threads’ worked with Birmingham Crochet and Knitting Guild to develop responses that explore textiles through a political, technological, social and historical lens.
‘Waterways’ responded to the the canals that thread through Birmingham, working with the communities, histories, ecologies and metaphorical possibilities of water and waterways.
With thanks to The Birmingham Knitting and Crochet Guild, IKON Gallery Slow Boat, The Canal and River Trust and Brasshouse Community Centre.
Intersections brings together four artists whose practices converge through shared themes of material exploration, identity, and dialogue across disciplines.
The exhibition reflects on how creative processes intertwine, revealing moments where personal experience, cultural influence, and artistic methodology meet.
Through painting, installation and mixed media, Alena Alice, Suminder Virk, Sarmite Lasmane, and Tammy Woodrow explore the intersections of their own and each other’s practices. The works in this exhibition engage with the spaces between that form and idea, tradition and experimentation, self and collective.
Intersections invites audiences to consider how connection and exchange shape artistic practice and how dialogue between artists can generate new ways of seeing.
@alena_alice_artist @tammywoodrow @sarmarugs @sumindervirkartist
