Through experimental writing and editorial workshops with artists Anna Barham and Kevin Hunt, Ikon Youth Programme (IYP) at Ikon Gallery have been rethinking how they might critically examine an artist’s practice with the written word. Continually re-processing their thoughts, feelings and feedback whilst interpreting the work of Angela de la Cruz, this co-authored text comes full circle to suggest new ways of thinking about and responding to contemporary art in Birmingham.
STutter →
stop, utter, toward hundreds, up folding, pop behind the sanity
← STutter
The ‘object language’ of a lot of Angela de la Cruz’s work is in folds and stretching and stops. Plastic pulled taught like skins, or draped in sagging waves. ‘Shutter (Red)’ (2017) conjures a broken blind. Displacement causes flat red rectangles to veer into each other, to collapse into concave drips and clamour together. Bumping up in peaks and troughs.
Like a large black jumper tightly pulled over a square red body, de la Cruz’s ‘Reach (Red / Black) Two Parts’ (2002) feels baggy and worn. I’ve never really liked woolen jumpers, the sleeves are always too long for my short arms. I wonder if the artist (like her works) wears her jumpers baggy?
Upright (chair). Lost a character there. A chair losing a leg, but still looking up, like ‘Upright III (Leg Chair)’ (2002). Climbing. Standing. Sitting. Missing a ‘g’ and an ‘a’ – Le Chir. Standing. Sitting. Lost a leg or an arm or a toe. Upright on its tippy tippy toes – high high heels. Heal – healing – coping (making artwork as a way of coping/healing). Voice – through – art (making art as voice). Fall from who we are – fall – down – literally (physically falling versus paintings falling). The art of coping and healing. HEELing.
Scar(t)
red = memory-injured.
pain = permanent-vision.
possibility = overcomming-remains.
Arise.
Think of atoms reaching elsewhere, e.g. ‘Bloated III (Blue)’ (2012). Chirpier, e.g. ‘Shutter (Red)’. Upright, e.g. ‘Transfer (White) with Armchair’ (2011). Resisting the arm-chair at first. Now on the armchair; the atom slightly out of its own orbit.
Chair in two parts, e.g. ‘Limp (Brown)’ (2000). Chirp, e.g. ‘Upright Piano’ (1999). Feeling blue, the piano is bloated in multiple parts (minor and major). Two parts too: (blue or red). The body, still in parts, reaching elsewhere, but still… there. Orbiting. A still life, stutter, stutter, stutter.
Hair-renderingly, the scalp of her work ‘Bloated III (Blue)’ decays away. Bold in ways that pulls stress in strands. Imagining the body. Raw emotion entangled with inert and artificial bodies too. Furnished feelings consume rigid formations in ‘bubblied-blood’. De la Cruz’s lived experience is retold uncomfortably through her sculptures and paintings. Intimate descriptions are exposed in clinical areas, furnished by feelings yet to be dissected. Sensory. Fragile. Unmet.
Angela de la Cruz: Upright, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, 25 March – 6 September 2026.
Ikon Youth Programme (IYP) is a creative development programme for emerging artists, writers, architects, photographers and designers aged 16-21. Participants work collaboratively, co-leading on programming activities with regional and national artists through workshops, shared resources and ongoing knowledge exchange.
With support from Freelands Foundation, IYP on Slow Boat is a six-year programme (2021-27) delivered aboard Slow Boat, a heritage canal boat. Through workshops, exhibitions and live events, the programme creates opportunities for young people, artists and communities to connect, learn and experiment together across the region’s waterways.
This exploration is supported by Ikon Gallery and Freelands Foundation.
Published 27.08.2026 by Kevin Hunt in Explorations
639 words