Family Saturday

Join Birmingham artist Luke Routledge for a free creative workshop, designing and making your own miniature creatures out of plasticine.

Routledge has created the Strangelets, a band of creatures who travel together through a surreal landscape of colours and textures. Families are invited to enter this imaginary world, creating their own characters and weaving new tales in the artist’s ever-evolving multiverse.

The Strangelets (2024) are on display as part of Ikon’s current exhibition Friends in Love and War – L’Éloge des meilleur·es ennemi·es.

“Drawn in by the dance of musical notes, the various creatures of the party abandoned their tasks to gather and watch the bard perform. Whilst they watched and listened joyfully, amorphous artefacts of light appeared in the air, casting a soft glow upon the onlookers… The Haruspex swiftly rose with excitement and motioned for the group to follow him!” Luke Routledge

About the artist

Luke Routledge is an artist living and working in Birmingham. He uses animation, writing, drawing and painting to build an ever-expanding imaginary world in which his creations exist. His life-size sculptures are made from brightly coloured resin, clay, plaster, wood and fabric, built around metal armatures, then arranged in the gallery on an other-worldly, purple terrain. Routledge’s interest in the uncanny results in creatures that are at once both unfamiliar and relatably human.