Eastside Projects

An arti st- run spac e as publ i c gal l e ry

for the Ci ty of Bi rmi ngha m

hobbypopMUSEUM
Launch: 6-9pm Friday 7th May 2010
8 May – 12 June 2010

‘By melting our individual cores we will achieve a massive release of

beautiful energy.’
- hobbypopMUSEUM

Eastside Projects proudly presents a new solo exhibition by Düsseldorf and

London-based artist group hobbypopMUSEUM formed by Sophie von
Hellermann, Christian Jendreiko, Matthias Lahme, Dietmar Lutz, André Niebur
and Marie-Céline Schäfer.

hobbypopMUSEUM believe strongly that in artistic collaboration lies

something other than compromise, something uniquely valuable. As a group
they have created potent site-specific installations, fusing painting with
sound, performance and film, since 1998 when they formed in Düsseldorf.
Continuing to provoke through a careful balance of antagonism and sincerity,
romantic optimism and painterly faux-naivety hobbypopMUSEUM are injecting
Eastside Projects with ‘strategy and heart’ as the artists themselves have
described their own modus operandi.

For two weeks prior to the exhibition opening, all six members of the group
will be making new work within the situation of the gallery. hobbypopMUSEUM
installations can be seen as textures woven out of figures linked together by
iconographic and formal criteria. Their arsenal of figures spans histories of
painting, drawing, photo, film and sound to words, performance, sculpture
and architecture. Which form the figures take, depends on a basic
confrontation with the conditions of site and chemistry of the group.
Eschewing the socio-political agenda typically associated with collective
artmaking hobbypopMUSEUM stake their identity on the theatrics of
fantasised scenarios and the strong narrative trail or journey through their
exhibitions and happenings as a long-term ‘fight for ideas’.
This new commission is then a station on this journey, following on from
recent gatherings in San Francisco and Enschede, Holland. They travel, meet
up, disperse and reconvene for exhibitions all over the world, leaving a thread
of narrative behind discerned through their titles and slogans over the years –
hobbypop rockt das haus, keanu reeves & white cube, momus & morrissey &
melville, Baader-Meinhof, London Onion Development, Wind is When Empty
Coke Cans Start Singing, Theory of Everything, Welcome to Normal, Neo
Psychico and GAMMA GAMMA - the hardest working group in the art business!
hobbypopMUSEUM’s hometown of Düsseldorf is coloured by significant marks
in art history, from the academy where Beuys once preached his message of
"art-as-life-as-myth" to the city that nurtured the masters of postwar German
painting: Polke and Richter. A generation later hobbypopMUSEUM are
permitted to “play” with this legacy of divergent narratives, making
magnificent, elusive paintings that are simultaneously self-aware and self-
abnegating.

Eastside Projects 86 Heath Mill Lane, Birmingham, B9 4AR, UK

Contact 0121-771-1778 info@eastsideprojects.org www.eastsideprojects.org
Free Entry: Open Thursday 12-6.30pm, Friday to Saturday 12-5pm
Eastside Projects is a not for profit company Limited by guarantee reg: 6402007, in partnership with
Birmingham City University and Revenue Funded by Arts Council England West Midlands. Extra support
from Business Link West Midlands and Future Jobs Fund.