Coventry City of Culture 2021: New digital art gallery to open

The first major exhibition will be Machine Memoirs: Space

An immersive digital art gallery is to be launched in Coventry as part of the UK City of Culture celebrations.

The Reel Store will open at the former Coventry Telegraph building in the spring.

Its first major exhibition will feature images created using artificial intelligence to "reimagine" views of space captured by Nasa satellites and telescopes.

The gallery has been partly funded by the government's Getting Building Fund.

Following the opening of the Telegraph Hotel on the same site, work is taking place to transform the old reel store, once home to rolls of paper on to which the city's newspapers would be printed.

The main exhibition space includes 14 4K laser projectors and a sound system.

Titled Machine Memoirs: Space, by artist Refik Anadol, the first major exhibition is drawn from two million publicly available images of space taken by Nasa and the International Space Station, "capturing the deepest regions of outer space".

The Reel Store has been funded by the Getting Building Fund through Coventry and Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership, Midlands Engine and West Midlands Combined Authority.