It might be next season's "must-have" bathroom accessory - a tassel-effect shower curtain in canary yellow.

It is indeed a shower curtain, but on closer inspection you discover it's made out of 30 pairs of domestic rubber gloves machine-sewn together and that it's a piece of art work rather than a trendy retail item.

The young, emerging Birmingham-based artist behind the creation is Emma Bowen, who specialises in using everyday objects - from crayons and cotton buds to brooms and carpet - in her sculptures and installations.

Much of her work is site-specific, which often requires the finished product to be completed in a short space of time. Her first solo exhibition, to be staged in Birmingham next month, will be the culmination of research undertaken during a month-long residency at Lee Bank Business Centre in Holloway Head, talking to the people who run more than 30 companies based there.

The centre is also the home of Birmingham Artists, whose Periscope project space will stage 25-year-old Emma's exhibition from December 13 to 15.

"I'm really interested in the business centre because although it's a communal building it has a feeling of being closed off," she says.

"I'm fascinated by its corridors, which always seem very quiet, but off which are intriguing hubs of activity. Many of the business units have sub-units within them, such as Birmingham Artists, which has studios, Periscope and the region's only print workshop for artists.

"So my idea for this exhibition is to investigate those spaces. I'm going to spend time in the building meeting people who work there and finding out what really goes on behind closed doors. The installation I make will be a response to how the building and the spaces within it work."

Emma, who graduated from Central St Martins College of Art & Design in London two years ago, is the kind of young artist Periscope was set up to help, as there is a dearth of space in Birmingham and the West Midlands for artists to practise.

Yet the three-year project, which is in its final year, was threatened with collapse when Birmingham City Council announced in June it was withdrawing its £50,000 a year grant to Birmingham Artists with less than a month's notice after 21 years.

The group, whose members include nationally and internationally recognised artists, has since won a reprieve until December, but its future remains uncertain.

Stephen Earl Rogers, Periscope's co-ordinator, says: "In the three years we've been running, we've done a lot to showcase the work of up to 200 artists, many of whom would otherwise have had limited opportunity to develop and practise their work within the West Midlands.

"When we heard the grant was being pulled, we had three projects still to run, so if we'd not won a temporary reprieve we wouldn't have been able to finish the programme and fulfil our promise to the artists."

Periscope's penultimate event was last Thursday's Kipple Night, featuring the artist duo Eagle & Feather, aka Julian Butler and Stephen.

"Kipple" is a term invented by sci-fi author Philip K Dick, who defined it as meaning all the detritus that builds up in our lives, such as plastic toys from McDonald's, newspaper giveaways, accumulated collections of items once bought but no longer needed or wanted.

"One of the great repositories for this Kipple is charity shops and, at this point in history, the VHS video is a fine example - a gold standard for Kipple," explains Stephen.

For the show, the two artists scoured charity shops and amassed a collection of "absurdly peripheral and esoteric videotapes, selected for their distinct peculiarity".

Says Stephen: "It's an attempt at alchemy. Taking base material and transforming it, by various means - editing, manipulating, combining and reducing - into something that is imbued with new qualities - humour, drama, pathos and poetry - and turning Kipple into non-Kipple, at least temporarily."

* Emma Bowen's installation will open with a private view on December 13, 6pm-8.30pm, and run until December 15 at Periscope, Unit 19, Lee Bank Business Centre, Chapman's Passage, 55 Holloway Head, Birmingham. Open noon-5pm each day. Call Birmingham Artists on 0121 643 6040 or visit www.periscopeprojects.org