Having had two reasonable sites in the past, the Ikon has now moved into a superb site close to Birmingham's Broad Street area.

The Gallery is in a converted school, and the architect enjoyed more than a few million of lottery dosh to redesign and complete the superb conversion.

As well as the gallery space, there is a good little bookshop and a great cafe - which serves the best coffee in Birmingham!

The shows are often interesting, but suffer from the common complaint of public galleries, that they are very often conservative, and thus they tend to show the big names in the art world - because they are a safe bet - rather than support more contemporary and risky work.

They are also very aware of their "international" standing, so few local artisits get much of a look in - shame, because there is a lot of talent in the Birmingham area.

One of the most thought provoking recent exhibitions was that of "artist" Richard Billingham. Billingham photographed his dysfunctional family as references for paintings, but they were soon snapped up by the art world as images in their own right, and Billingham became hot property after his appearence in the Sensations show.

The Ikon show was part retrospective, part new video work, and certainly raised a lot of questions as to the current state of photography, its relationship to art, and how family snaps can become "art", with price tags measured in thousands of pounds.

His work certainly has nothing to do with art, as Billingham's intention had nothing to do with art when he was making the pictures, but it was well worth a visit, if only to see the overt pleasure and smug looks that the images brought to the middle class audiences faces!