Judging the music by its cover

From iconic Pink Floyd albums to Jim Fitzpatrick's Thin Lizzy covers, an exhibition of album-cover fine art came via love of the artwork as well as the music, writes Tony Clayton-Lea

The initial delight of seeing some of the most iconic album covers in rock music in an art gallery in Birmingham is offset by a blend of doubt and shock - what in the name of Pink Floyd is such a marvellous collection doing in Brum, home of the Balti Triangle, the Bullring and Ozzy Osbourne?

Disquiet and puzzlement aside, it's a reasonably valid question; shouldn't a collection such as this - an exhibition that was scheduled to run for four weeks, but which is now ongoing thanks to its soaraway success - be located in New York or London? "We live here, and that's the reason why it's in Birmingham. It really is as simple as that," says St Pauls Gallery's managing director, Symon Bland, who, along with his business partner, Neil Robinson, came up with the idea of the exhibition.

"Plus," adds Symon, "per capita, music magazines sell more in the midlands than anywhere else in the UK, so the interest is very much there from a ground-roots level."

The album art collection has grown since its inception several years ago. A previous exhibition in a previous gallery in downtown Solihull consisted of about 15 pieces. In St Pauls, there are up to 60 album covers. "As we've added to the portfolio," explains Symon, "we knew we'd have to do an exhibition one day."

Quite a number of the album covers (exhibited under the title of Storm Warning) are culled from the work of Storm Thorgerson, the British-born graphic designer who, through the graphic-art company Hipgnosis, designed many famous album covers and who was, to all intents and purposes, in-house album cover designer for Pink Floyd. Most of his Pink Floyd designs - in limited edition, signed prints - are showing at St Pauls Gallery.

Alongside this work (featuring, among others, the art work of Atom Heart Mother, Animals, Wish You Were Here and Dark Side of the Moon) are covers for Dream Theater, the Cranberries, the Mars Volta, Muse, Audioslave, Offspring, Biffy Clyro, Yourcodenameis:milo and Catherine Wheel.

Thorgerson's designs incorporate surreal elements, with objects placed out of their traditional contexts to create a dream/nightmare hybrid that has obvious nods to Salvador Dalí. Computer twiddling is something that Thorgerson frowns upon, which means that his artistry depends on simple concepts such as pixel-sharp photography and hard work (a typical example is physically dragging 700 beds onto a beach for the album cover of Pink Floyd's A Momentary Lapse of Reason).

The exhibition isn't exclusively devoted to Thorgerson, however: artwork by Sir Peter Blake (Paul Weller, Band Aid/Live Aid, but no Beatles, alas); Jim Fitzpatrick (Thin Lizzy's Jailbreak and Black Rose, with more to come); and David Bowie album cover art (The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and Hunky Dory, with more to come) adorn the walls.

"It opened in October for four weeks," Symon says, "but because of the interest it will probably become a permanent exhibition. The longer we keep it going, the more people are interested in it. It's almost the opposite way around - you'd think people would come in a rush to see it in the first few weeks and then drift away. But it's people hearing about it on the grapevine, I think, that is having that extended effect."

The exhibition came about, says Bland, through the love of the art, not necessarily the music. "With fine art, especially with prints, you need the work authenticated by the artist," says Symon. "That won't last forever, as the ability to get not just the artist's signature but to have the work countersigned by the likes of David Bowie, Eric Clapton or whoever depends on them being alive.

"We're interested in work that is iconic, and we're trying to build a back catalogue of these images not just for the money but also for historical value. I'd love a museum to have a set, for instance. I can't see any reason why not." Will such an exhibition travel? "Our biggest market is America, so we'd obviously like to take it there, as an entirety. Logistically, it could prove difficult, but if there's a will there's a way, and so on. It hasn't been discussed yet, because at the moment we're just interested in creating new editions."

Storm Warning is billed as being the world's biggest exhibition of album cover fine art. Is that true? Symon nods his head. "There was something similar in the Tate in Liverpool recently that made out it was the biggest exhibition of album covers. "And it was, but it was actual album covers just placed into frames. Anyone can do that."

• Storm Warning continues at St Pauls Gallery, 94-108 Northwood Street, Birmingham. Tel: (0044) 121-2365800;  www.stpaulsgallery.com