BiNS flagged up a story in the Birmingham Mail the other day entitled “Fury over car art” about Bournville residents’ outrage over a wrecked Mercedes on display outside the Bournville Centre for Visual Arts.

The car references Crash, the novel by JG Ballard, and is part of an exhibition called Zodiac 3000 taking place at the International Project Space, transformed for the duration into the J.G. Ballard Centre for Psychopathological Research, “an institute built to interrogate the New Psychology explored in Ballard’s fiction”.

Unofficial Ballard website Ballardian.com has reported on this and they reproduce the exhibition’s press release. They’ve also picked up on the Mail’s article.

It’s a brave move by the IPS. As their exhibition curator, Andrew Hunt, tells the Mail “Ballard is fixated with white, middle-class suburbs, which Bournville is”. A willingness to upset the residents of an area well known for it’s Quaker-derived standards, and all in the name of art, must take some courage.

The exhibition continues until 31 May and the Centre is open Monday to Saturday, 12pm to 5pm (7pm on Wednesday).