Joe Lycett wants art exhibition to inspire others

A life-sized pink woolly mammoth, Ozzy Osbourne, and an old phone are among some of the subjects comedian and artist Joe Lycett hopes will inspire others to get creative.

Everything Must Go at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery was inspired by "things that are no longer with us", he said, describing his first major solo art exhibition as "a neon graveyard, full of colour".

"I want people to come in and go, 'well I could do that', and then go and do it, please, go and do it better," he said.

"It's so good for you and I really get cross when people go, 'oh I'm not really creative'. If you can put pen to paper, you're creative, you can make things."

Lycett has been working on the collection, which opens on Wednesday, over the past year.

He said it sprang from his love of painting animals, then became an "exercise in looking into grief", also honouring friends who had died.

Its centrepiece is the mixed media sculpture of Martin the mammoth, which has ceramic yellow toenails and a latex tongue.

He decided to make it one night "at 4am, which is when all my ideas come".

It was available to buy for £80, he joked, "but you do need to get it out yourself".

The Nokia 2210, an acrylic on canvas, depicts the comedian's favourite-ever phone, and features a message saying, Snobs?, referring to a legendary city nightspot.

He said he was inspired to paint Ozzy after attending his final show at Villa Park last July. "I was so moved by it," he added.

Elvis Presley, Napoleon Bonaparte and BBC Ceefax also feature, as does a clay sculpture of a dodo and a digital sculpture of Blind Date TV presenter Cilla Black, with her body being replaced with a parking meter.

Lycett has worked with other local contemporary artists on the collection, including his own mum, who took up painting watercolours after retiring as a designer at Cadbury.

"I asked her if she would do a collaboration with me, so we've done Morecambe and Wise. She did Morecambe and I did Wise," he said.

He said it was important to him the exhibition was in his hometown, not only because it was "really convenient" to get there on a new train line from Kings Heath.

"This place is amazing and so much of it is closed off," he said, referring to the 19th Century museum and art gallery.

"This building is grand because when it was built people believed in the arts and spent money on it, and that's because art has value for humans and we should be doing a lot more of that," he said.

Everything Must Go can be seen from Wednesday until 21 February next year, every day during school holidays and between 10:00 BST and 17:00 BST from Tuesday to Sunday.

Lycett's next focus is a new live TV show, The Lycett Arms, coming later this year to Channel 4, and he is also planning a tour for next year.

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