Follow Liz Berry and Tom Hicks on a journey to the secret heart of the black country.
Black Country Type is an ongoing photographic project by the artist Tom Hicks. His colourful photography project has gained international attention and his work has been featured in international art magazines, including the US contemporary photography magazine NOICE.
Tom’s images focus on words, typography, handmade lettering and signs. He also photographs ‘types’ of architectural features and objects in the post-industrial landscape of the Black Country.
His work has been exhibited widely, most recently in a solo exhibition at Wolverhampton Art Gallery. He has also collaborated on two books with the poet Liz Berry: If Destroyed Still True (The Modernist, 2020) and The Dereliction (Hercules Editions, 2021). Both books are available from Ikon's shop.
Liz Berry is an award-winning poet from the Black Country and the author of The Patron Saint of Schoolgirls, Black Country and The Republic of Motherhood. Her first book of poems, Black Country, a ‘sooty, soaring hymn to her native West Midlands’ (Guardian) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, received a Somerset Maugham Award, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award and Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2014. Liz is a patron of Writing West Midlands and works as a tutor for organizations including the Arvon Foundation and The Poetry School.
