The Framers

Please join us as we show off our completed new gallery space, Studio 4 gallery with an exclusive print launch by renowned artist Lucy McLauchlan. The event will be at The Framers at the Custard Factory on the 31st May from 6-9pm, all welcome.

British born Lucy McLauchlan’s large-scale monochromatic paintings have covered multi-story buildings across Europe, gigantic billboards in China, windows in Japan, huts in The Gambia, Italian water towers, Norwegian lighthouse, Detroit car parks and abandoned NYC subway tunnels.

Implicit within her work is a deep respect for nature as she draws inspiration from her immediate environment; allowing it to inform and direct what is an intuitive and explorative process.

We will be hosting this exhibition throughout April, as part of flatpack film festivals 68 weekend, in our shiny new exhibition space on Gibb Street featuring a selection of posters, cuttings and images drawn from the programme. And some editions for sale.

Opening night as part of Digbeth first Friday, 6th April.

On 15 April from 12:00 – 16:00 the space will host a free Sunday Social drop-in workshop for all ages, where you can make your own stencil art and psychedelic posters.

flatpack festival

As you may have heard i’m moving to a new gallery and workshop here at the Custard Factory in the New Year. So it’s time to clear out the old gallery; spare stock, antique frames, odds and ends, big clearance sale! Starting this Saturday 25th to join in with the Digmas event happening across Custard ground floor. Come grab a bargain!

Some news of exciting developments with us here at the Framers. You may have heard the Custard Factory has new owners who are investing both in the building and the wider area. The corner where our workshop is currently set up is getting rather run down and tired and our roof is on its last legs, roof leaks are not the best for a picture framers! So the whole courtyard area is being repaired and re-developed.

This has prompted us to take stock and refine our business, so the current partners are separating the Framers into two companies.

I, Lawrence will continue with The Framers which will be moving in the new year, creating a new bespoke  gallery and workshop in Gibb Street Court yard, continuing The Framers 20 + years legacy at The Custard Factory.  The Framers will close for an extra week over the Christmas holidays to move into the new workshop and gallery, just round the corner from our current workshop, continuing and improving on the quality service and products we’ve developed over the years.

John and Richard are starting afresh and heading to the countryside, setting up as the Framing Studios at Beckets farm, just off the M42, south Birmingham. https://www.theframingstudios.com  for more information.

Please note new opening times starting from November 2017.

In the mean time it’s business as usual, I’m still in the current workshop getting on with all your Christmas orders, and will be open and working up to 23rd December. Watch out for big Christmas moving sale in the gallery as part of Digmas, starting on the 25th November.

Looking forward to the new start in the new year with exciting new projects and events in the gallery as well as new products and services in the workshop, keep an eye out for re-brand and web site update in the pipeline too.

Thank you for your custom and hope to continue offering our quality standard and passion in our work as we move on in the next chapter of our company.

We recently had the honour of framing over 100 photos for this amazing exhibition currently showing at the MAC in Birmingham. We’ve done a bit of framing for Vanley over the years but this was an amazing project to work on because of the scale and history of the images. Highly recommend going to see them for yourself,  there’s also a great book of these images published to coincide with the exhibition.

” Vanley Burke has photographed the Jamaican Community in Handsworth since the mid 1960s. His images reveal a great compassion for his own people, expressed in his image of the Africa Liberation Day crowds gathered in Handsworth Park.

The exhibition will contextualise the images through a collage of quotes from the press on the history of immigration to Birmingham. Nowhere can tell that story better than Birmingham and Vanley Burke is the photographer who was there and who knew he was living through a great moment in history.”

We get a lot of street art prints through our doors for framing, being friends of a few well known street artists and having framed for folks like Lazarides gallery, Scrawl Collective, Stolen Space Gallery, Fame and Pictures on Walls we have a good reputation for framing these prints. These are a couple of Faile prints we had come through a while back, love their work, check out boneyard project they were recently involved with.

A selection of rather nice screen prints from Keep Calm Gallery in London prints we now stock in our gallery

Another bit of framing for snap galleries, rather nice Limited fine art prints of Peter Blake’s artwork for Paul Weller’s album Stanley Road, signed by them both!

Currently setting up this exhibition we’ve framed for Snap galleries in London. Been a great show to work on, some amazing photographs and also featured in The Guardian!

We also framed these amazing Barbarella photos also being shown as part of the exhibition for Snap.

We just framed this rather sweet set of prints by Bold&Noble for a showcase at Twycross Zoo, who are planning on opening a contemporary gallery space. Sounds like a great idea and hopefully a really interesting upcoming program of exhibitions, it would be easy to go pretty obvious with a zoo gallery but if these prints are anything to go by it has potential to be a really interesting space.