We caught up with Matthew Brotherson, the talented illustrator and competition winner whose large-scale artwork is displayed in a new city development as well as winning a tidy cash prize

Matthew Brotherson responded to a call out for Birmingham City University (BCU) students and faculty members to enter a competition to create a piece of artwork that would be displayed in the communal space of Grainger’s new Silver Yard development in Exchange Square. The call out came from his tutors over the summer, of which Matthew says: “I didn’t have much of a plan for how I’d be spending the summer, but I figured that I might as well give it a go. I had nothing to lose.”

The brief sparked by a collaboration between BCU and developer, Grainger asked artists to create a piece of artwork which visually portrayed the question, what does Birmingham mean to you? Matthew began by making random shapes on Adobe Illustrator not adding faces to them at that point. He says because he doesn’t drive, his journey to and from BCU allowed him to observe many unique faces. He says: “Each night I would work on the piece adding some faces. I just used black lines, carefully adjusting the thickness of each line to create depth in the features because it created an amazing contrast against the orange hues of the shapes.”

ICONIC BULL

Matthew is born and bred in Birmingham and used the piece to celebrate the wonderful diversity of our city while using the shape of the famous bull as inspiration. He says: “I took the facial features I’d collected and placed these features onto the iconic statue’s face, making each one unique. So, the overall theme of my piece was diversity.” Matthew submitted a smaller version of his work along with a synopsis for the original judging process.

The judging panel consisted of award-winning Birmingham artist and creative director at Rebel Creatives, Amrit Singh as well as Fiona McDonald, head of Onboarding, and Lewis Morris, senior resident services manager at Grainger, plus Dr Jemma Browne, head of Birmingham School of Architecture and Design at BCU.

Given the calibre of submissions the judging panel expanded the scope of work to include two winners – Matthew and John Hall, exhibitions manager at BCU. The artists started liaising with the Grainger team to upscale the work and prepare it for the allocated space. Matthew recalls: “When I first received the e-mail to let me know I was a winner I couldn’t quite believe it and went straight to tell my mum who was over the moon. I could barely sleep I was so happy!”

On having his work displayed on this scale Matthew says it’s crazy: “To think that many people have seen my work blows my mind because although I’ve had small-scale exhibitions at BCU, I’ve never had a piece be in a building that isn’t connected to the university before. It’s been a very exciting time for me.”

VIP UNVEILING

Matthew says that long term he’d love to find a studio space to rent in Birmingham from which to create and sell his work. He says: “I am looking forward to exhibiting my works because I am now much more confident and proud of the art I create thanks to the Silver Yard Arts Project. Alternatively, I would love to be commissioned by a well-known company to create something for their brand. Whatever the case may be in the future, I hope that when people see my art, it evokes the same kind of inspiring feeling that I experience when I see others’ work.”

The winning artwork was revealed at a VIP unveiling held at the Silver Yard for residents, family and friends, fellow students and local stakeholders, to celebrate the winners’ achievements. Lewis Morris, resident services manager at the Silver Yard said: “As our second development in Birmingham, we wanted to try something new to really celebrate the city within our newest development. Working closely with Birmingham City University and their talented pool of budding art students, we had so many amazing entries that we picked not one but two winners, in our aim to support talented up-and-coming artists. We are pleased the artworks now have pride of place in our amenity spaces for our residents to enjoy.”