File:Lip-sync sculpture at the BCU Steamhouse (52841693097).jpg

I headed up to the Birmingham City University Steamhouse (ex Belmont Row Works) to check out a new work of public art called Lip-Sync by the artist Holly Hendry.

Found this corner to be unfinished with workmen putting finishing touches to the area.

It was the Headquarters for the Eccles Rubber and Cycle Company, and it housed rubber manufactory, built in 1899. By 1918 it was occupied by the Co-Operative Society, which used the premises to make underwear. In 1931 the factory was making pianos, and by 1941 bedsteads.

Gutted by a fire in 2007. Left derelict until work began to restore it in 2020. Steamhouse was opened in 2022.

Lip-sync, a major new public artwork for Birmingham produced by Holly Hendry and commissioned by Birmingham City University (BCU) has been installed at its city centre campus.

Commissioned as part of the £70 million STEAMhouse project, and curated by Digbeth-based Eastside Projects, the large-scale sculpture draws on the history of the building as the headquarters of The Eccles Rubber and Cycle Company.

The work – which sits outside the striking new building at the junction of Cardigan Street and Jennens Road in Birmingham - also embraces STEAMhouse’s new function as a centre for collaborative innovation where immersive technologies and digital fabrication meet hands-on making, research, business support and community building.

Made from rolled, formed and laser-cut steel, with smaller hand-cast Jesmonite elements, the 4m-high Lip Sync’s surface features cartoonish, body-like shapes co-developed with students from Birmingham City University and pupils from Chandos Primary School in Highgate in a series of ‘exquisite corpse’ workshops where individual drawings lead from one to another to create a collective collage.