In the Que: Celebrating The Que Club
In The Que: Celebrating The Que Club was an exhibition celebrating the legendary music venue, the Que Club. The exhibition was hosted at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery during the Birmingham 2022 Festival, coinciding with the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games.
A documentary, In The Que: Celebrating the Que Club is also available to watch. The film explores the legendary Birmingham club’s history, its iconic raves like House of God and Atomic Jam, and its significance to Birmingham’s music scene. It features interviews with DJs, promoters, clubbers, and staff who were part of the Que Club experience between 1989 and 2017.
Opening in 1989, the Que Club saw the likes of The Chemical Brothers, Altern8, Massive Attack, and David Bowie perform at the beautiful Grade II* listed Methodist Central Hall. Daft Punk even used Que Club for a live set of their 1997 album ‘Alive’, while BBC Radio One Essential Mixes recorded mixes with Carl Cox, Sven Väth, and Paul Oakenfold at the venue.
The exhibition included newly discovered photographs of 1990s rave culture taken by the fashion photographer Terence Donovan shortly before he died, displayed for the first time. The intimate shots of revellers lost in the sounds of the Que Club are thought to be some of the last photographs Donovan took.
Hidden in a drawer in Wolverhampton for 25 years, the images mark a very unusual shift in subject matter for the photographer, who made his name in the 1960s capturing ‘swinging London’ and supermodels such as Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton.
Donovan’s son had sent the pictures to Chris Wishart, a founder of the House of God club night. They lay in the drawer at Wishart’s house until Jez Collins, founder of the Birmingham Music Archive, turned up to interview Chris for the documentary.
“I interviewed him for an hour and a half and he didn’t mention Terence coming to the club or the photographs. But as we were walking out the door, he said ‘Jez, I think you might be interested in this.’ And I opened this drawer, and there was this box of Terence Donovan photographs. They were just stunning.”
Watch Jez Collins from Birmingham Music Archive sharing some highlights from the exhibition.