Beauty and the Beast Open Call
At Seventh Circle, we’ve always been fascinated by the unique, invisible rhythm of our home. Spend enough time in Digbeth or the Jewellery Quarter and you start to feel it, the red‑brick factories and Victorian warehouses that sit as silent monuments to our past alongside tall glass buildings. To many, they’re just backdrops. To us, they’re the “Beast” of Birmingham.
Inside and alongside those walls, a whole new ecosystem is at play. When these spaces are left to their own devices, nature begins its slow, gorgeous reclamation. It becomes a symbiosis, a dance between the industrial skeleton and the wild green heart that wants to take hold again.
Our next Open Call, Beauty and the Beast, is an exploration of this defining duality. The Interstice: Where the Grey Meets the Green
We’re fascinated by the interstice, that small, charged, often overlooked space where the grey of the city meets the green of the earth.
Birmingham is built on iron, brick, concrete, and a “thousand trades” heritage. It’s the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, shaped by canals, railways, and brutalist ambition. But those of us who grew up here know the other side of the coin.
Birmingham breathes.
Ten minutes from the city centre, you can find yourself in some of the greenest spaces in the UK. From the vast landscapes of Sutton Park to childhood afternoons in Cannon Hill, or the softened edges of St Paul’s Square, nature is always pushing back, reshaping, reclaiming.
This exhibition invites artists to explore that friction. We’re looking for:
• A buddleia stubbornly claiming its space on a Digbeth warehouse wall.
• Moss softening the hard edge of a concrete underpass.
• The tension between a skyline of cranes and a canopy of ancient trees.
• The resilience of the organic against the built environment.
And while the interstice is a powerful example of this duality, it’s not a limitation. Artists are welcome to respond on any scale, from sweeping cityscapes to intimate details, from conceptual interpretations to material explorations. The theme is the full Beauty‑and‑Beast spectrum, not just the small moments where the two meet. It speaks to the universal push‑and‑pull between the man‑made and the organic, the grit and the growth that shape every modern landscape.
The Brummie Spirit: Hard Edges, Warm Hearts
There’s a specific kind of resilience in Birmingham. We’re a proud lot. We’ll happily throw shade at the Ring Road, the potholes that could swallow a Fiat 500, the bin strikes that become a local personality trait, or the fact that Google Maps still can’t cope with Spaghetti Junction, the audacity, Bab!
People love to make assumptions about this city: that it’s grey, grim, or “just concrete.” They hear the accent and underestimate us. They see a headline and think they know the whole story. But anyone who’s actually spent time here knows Birmingham is far more than the clichés.
The people of this city are a lot like the theme itself. We might have hard edges, shaped by our industrial past and our ability to laugh through anything, but we’re also some of the warmest, most welcoming people you’ll ever meet. That’s the “Beauty and the Beast” in our DNA, grit on the outside, heart on the inside, and a refusal to be defined by anyone else’s assumptions.
More Than a Prize: The Featured Artist Award
When we launched our first show earlier this year, Renaissance, we saw firsthand how valuable gallery visibility can be for an artist’s practice. The Featured Artist Award builds on that momentum.
Rather than full representation, this award offers a dedicated spotlight within Seventh Circle: a focused feature, increased visibility across our platforms, and the chance to present a cohesive selection of work within the gallery. It’s an opportunity for one artist to deepen their practice, expand their audience, and experience what it’s like to work closely with a gallery team.
Join the Narrative
Artists are encouraged to interpret this theme broadly, visually, conceptually, materially, or metaphorically. We aren’t just looking for cityscapes; we’re looking for the friction between worlds.
