The Photography Collective and Birmingham Photospace have teamed up in association with Rhubarb Rhubarb, to bring us Contact. From 3-18 September the Rhubarb East Gallery will play host to a collection of seven emerging photographers working in the West Midlands.

Curated by Kathryn Kliszat from Light House, exhibiting artists are gwbenson, Ian & Mark James (Jimmy Photo), Hannah Rumsby, Jo Hallington, Jasroop Grewal, Rita Fletcher and Matt Murtagh.

The variety of styles and formats challenges the viewer to consider how contact is made between objects both animate and inanimate, between the past and present, between analogue and digital and between photographer and subject.

The exhibition will be open Thursday – Sunday, 11.00am – 5.30pm, and there will also be an Artists’ Talk on Thursday 9 September, at 6.30pm, allowing members of the public to meet the photographers and discuss the stories behind these powerful images.

The seminar, Photography Still Moving, is on today down in that London and will look at multimedia storytelling.

The International Review, titled Collision: Where Image Worlds Meet, is on from 30 July to 1 August at Aston Business School. Tickets are still available, as is the chance to have your portfolio picked over by experts:

This year the intention is to see where documentary and commercial practices cross over into the world of fine art, giving participants the opportunity to show their work to specialists from different sectors and reviewers the chance to look at folios that may not usually come their way

Thematically tied to the International Review is the upcoming exhibition for their Hungry Bursary 2010 award winners. That’s at Rhubarb East from 22 June to 21 August.

Meanwhile, their exhibition at the new Rhubarb East Gallery on Heath Mill Lane, The Uses of Enchantment featuring Vee Speers and The Jackson Twins, ended last week but seemed to go well – there’s a round-up of that here.

We are delighted to announce that finally, after 17 years of supporting photographic artists, both in the West Midlands, London, UK and in the USA, Europe and Asia, we are opening our own gallery. The space is dedicated to showcasing the successes of our year round programme of mentoring and support for artists at all stages of their development, and the international names who attend the annual portfolio review in Birmingham

Appropriately enough it’ll be in the Rhubarb building on Heath Mill Lane. The launch is at the end of next week.