Digbeth Lambs
A creative residency @ Cheap Cheap Gallery, April 2023
Around the corner from the gallery, hidden behind brick and steel, is Digbeth's last working abattoir. Tens of thousands of sheep are driven there each week and slaughtered (in God’s name). Primarily, their bodies become human food, but they also become products to keep us warm, coagulate lipsticks, glue roads, fertilise plants, create power, and more.
The three week residency built on a long standing personal connection and interest in the abattoir, the workers, and the sheep in vans who line up outside each day. It facilitated conversations and creative responses to questions about work, death, food, faith and our relationships with animals. Many of the people who visited joined me in making artworks for display either in the gallery or on the street.
Most of the materials used in the space were 'foraged' from the area - flowers picked from outside the abattoir, furniture and boards salvaged from the street, a drum made from the skin of a lamb who was slaughtered there. At the end of the residency, the artworks were put out on the streets, or given to the workers or people who contributed.
The three week residency built on a long standing personal connection and interest in the abattoir, the workers, and the sheep in vans who line up outside each day. It facilitated conversations and creative responses to questions about work, death, food, faith and our relationships with animals. Many of the people who visited joined me in making artworks for display either in the gallery or on the street.
Most of the materials used in the space were 'foraged' from the area - flowers picked from outside the abattoir, furniture and boards salvaged from the street, a drum made from the skin of a lamb who was slaughtered there. At the end of the residency, the artworks were put out on the streets, or given to the workers or people who contributed.
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RESEARCH QUESTIONS
Nothing is more natural than death, nor more profound – but does this change with industrialised killing? Does the invocation of God’s name make the (halal) abattoir a holier place? Can compassion make us naïve or hypocritical? Does our violence defile us? Is death the end, or the release and transformation of energy? CONTRIBUTORS
FEATURED ARTISTS Haseebah Ali Trevor Appleson Lauren Goodey Neoliberalizard +Josh Allen, Alisa B, Jakob, Kate T, Otis D, Blossom LOCAL BUSINESS Pak Mecca Meats Bullring Rugs The Lombard Method AM Pakistan Catering SPECIAL THANKS Becky Sexton, Robert Alexander, Tom Dinosaur Kilby, Georgia Stevenson, Ashley Walker, Eliz-anne Williams, Dr Bashir, Grace Reynolds, John Reynolds, Shaun Hill, Nasib, Elle, Mahmood, Dean Wellings, Humza, Bill, Jessie Watson Brown, Jahzera Khan, Ben. Everyone that visited. Late aunty Angela (via my sis LL), whose inheritance paid for the material costs associated with this project. Thank you. And last but not least, the lambs and sheep. no jobs in the arts - interview
Featured artist in ISSUE 8 - Social Practice |
