When I Dare to be Powerful International Conference will bring filmmakers, artists, writers and activists together with conceptual thinkers and cultural theorists to answer pressing questions relating to voice as an agent of change.
The conference period begins on 26 April with a series on online talks and podcasts, and runs through to the one-day conference on 21 June 2023 – book a place here.
In Conversation with Ather Zia on Writing as a Powerful Tool to Amplify Female Voices in the Kashmir Conflict
Wednesday 26 April 2023
7 pm – 8 pm (BST), online
In Conversation with Jasmine Qureshi on Voice in Environmentalism, Queerness, and Trans Rights
Wednesday 10 May 2023
7 pm – 8 pm (BST), online
In Conversation with Jeff VanderMeer on Nonhuman Voices
Wednesday 24 May 2023
7 pm – 8 pm (BST), online
In Conversation with Tracey Lindberg on Indigenous Voice in Literature
Wednesday 7 June 2023
7 pm – 8 pm (BST), online
In Conversation with Ally Zlatar on ‘Voice’ as an Authentic and Vulnerable Artistic Expression and a Therapeutic Power
Wednesday 3 May 2023
In Conversation with Olivia Lopez Calderon on Cultural Identity and Dissonance
Wednesday 17 May 2023
In Conversation with Ja’Tovia Monique Gary on the Importance and Burden of Locating Self within the Filmic Space
Wednesday 31 May 2023
For all the information, please visit the conference website
This conference is made possible by generous funding and support provided by Midlands3/4Cities, New Art Exchange, NTU Postcolonial Studies Centre and Bonington Gallery.
Emily Andersen
Somewhere Else Entirely
25 March – 13 May 2023
Exhibition preview: Friday 24 March, 6-8 pm
“When I’m not writing poetry everything is okay, life’s fine, but it is not entire. Something is missing.” – Ruth Fainlight
This spring Bonington Gallery presents Somewhere Else Entirely a new three-screen video installation by the acclaimed photographer Emily Andersen featuring the American-born poet and writer Ruth Fainlight, who has become one of Britain’s most distinguished poets.
Ruth Fainlight was born in New York City in 1931 and moved to England when she was 15. During a lifetime dedicated to writing she has produced numerous collections of poetry, short stories, and translations. In 1959 she married the writer, Alan Sillitoe, and her many literary friendships included Sylvia Plath, Jane and Paul Bowles, and Robert Graves.
Andersen’s work is an intimate portrait of Fainlight, now aged 91, presenting fragments of the poet’s life. Taking inspiration from Renaissance triptychs and their depiction of different elements of the same subject across three panels, Somewhere Else Entirely captures Fainlight at her home in London, making notes, on her walks, and in the seaside town of Brighton where she spent her teenage years. Each image is carefully framed with a photographer’s eye for composition and detail – Fainlight walking along the corridor, her green cardigan against green foliage, the booklined walls – and intentionally moves at a gentle pace, sometimes almost appearing to be a series of still images.
In Somewhere Else Entirely Fainlight talks off-screen, revealing fascinating insights into her life, her creative process, and how she is ‘in the hands of the poem’. Her intensely visual poetry and fiction touch on themes of time, memory, and loss – and in her voiceover, she movingly recites her poem ‘Somewhere Else Entirely’ composed after the death of her husband.
Andersen has been a photographer for four decades. Her work includes interiors, architecture, and landscape but she is best known for her award-winning portraiture, capturing well-known faces including Nico, Peter Blake, and Helen Mirren. Somewhere Else Entirely is Andersen’s first completed video portrait and is inspired by her decade-long friendship with Fainlight. The exhibition also shares its title with Fainlight’s 2018 poetry collection which features Andersen’s photographs on the cover.
The 11 minute long, three-channel video, will be shown on a 10.5m wide curved screen within the gallery space. To accompany the exhibition there will be an in-conversation with Emily Andersen and Ruth Fainlight, and an evening of performative readings, using the work to reflect on the reciprocity of words and images, and the process of biography.
The launch of Somewhere Else Entirely in Nottingham is significant, as Fainlight’s husband Alan Sillitoe was famously from the city, and the couple met in a local bookshop. Andersen is Senior Lecturer in Critical and Visual Practice of Photography at Nottingham Trent University.
Emily Andersen
Somewhere Else Entirely (2023)
Funded by Bonington Gallery and Nottingham Trent University
Bonington Gallery is part of Curated & Created, NTU’s extra-curricular and public arts programme.
Emily Andersen is a London-based artist and graduate of the Royal College of Art. Her work has been exhibited in galleries including: The Photographers’ Gallery, London; The Institute of Contemporary Art, London; The Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; The Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh; The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham; Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art; Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai; China Arts Museum, Shanghai; BOOKMARC Gallery, Tokyo; and LOWW Gallery, Tokyo, Japan.
A number of her portraits are in the permanent collection of The National Portrait Gallery, London. She has won awards including the John Kobal prize for portraiture. Her third book Another Place was published in 2023. She is a senior lecturer in theory and practice of photography at Nottingham Trent University.
Contact Sarah Ragsdale: sarah@sarahragsdalepr.co.uk
A conversation between Bonington Gallery’s director Tom Godfrey and artist and curator Cedar Lewisohn over email during October 2022.
Tom Godfrey: Hi Cedar, initially it’d be great if you could offer an introduction to your practice, including the mediums you utilise and the ideas you explore.
Cedar Lewisohn: I’m an artist, writer and curator. Curating is really my main ‘day job’, but for this conversation I’ll focus on my visual art, studio practise. But to be honest, all areas of my work feed into each other.
In the studio – my work is often centred around drawings, which I translate into wood carvings, books and publications. Recently, I’ve used the wood carvings as the basis to make a virtual space and moving images. The subject matter for the past five years or so has focused on reappropriating images from various museum collections. Often images related to African, ancient Egyptian or Mesopotamian collections in those museums. The idea of mixing the very analogue process of the wood carved images, and turning that into a virtual space really appealed to me.
TG: What constitutes your research – what types of things do you like to read, watch or listen to?
CL: I’m always researching in some way or another. I’ve spent lots of time over the past few years visiting historic museum collections, and sometimes speaking to curators, finding out about the history of objects, and how they came into the collection. I had no idea the debates about contested museum objects would explode into the public consciousness in the way they have over the last year or so, in the wake of Covid and Black Lives Matter.
In terms of what I read or watch, it’s very, very varied. I tend to listen to lectures and audio books. I like highbrow things as well as total trash. In my digital library right now, I’ve got Black Skin White Masks by Franz Fanon, Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis, and I just really enjoyed David Olusoga’s Black and British: A Forgotten History. In terms of music, I flick between a bit of drill, like 67, lots of reggae and dub, like Scientist, also lots of bands I’ve been into over the years, like Autechre or Slowdive. I mean this list could go on for a very long time. It just depends on my mood and the day.
TG: As you mention above, your overall practice encapsulates several different strands, including artmaking, curating and writing. Can you talk about what it’s like to work across these different areas – what overlaps, connections or separations may exist?
CL: To be honest, everything just feeds into each other, and it just makes sense for me. Curating is very collaborative, and really the area of curating I’ve mainly been involved with is in institutions. I enjoy bringing art projects to audiences and doing projects at scale. There are lots of negotiations and relationships, but when it works out, it’s extremely rewarding. I worked on a project called Dub London a couple of years ago, and that really got me into the history of Jamaican music and soundsystem culture. I never really knew the difference between, say rocksteady and ska before. But I’m really into rocksteady now.
As part of that research, I became more interested in Patois and the language used in the lyrics of the music. So, in the first lockdown during the pandemic, I did a course on Patois with a Jamaican poet and teacher Joan Hutchinson. It was fascinating to learn about the history of the language and the meaning behind many phrases in Jamaican English. So that is where the title for the exhibition at Bonington comes from.
With my studio practice, in essence, it is quite a tactile process. It’s physical and centres around things I make with my hands. The research I do for curatorial projects often feeds into my studio practice. I mean, all the time I spend in historic museums looking at objects and re-drawing them, could be seen as a form of curating. I also do lots of different types of writing, from short stories and fiction to straight up writing about art and culture. Recently, I’ve been doing what I call ‘Rants’. They are short texts that are quite funny, and a place to vent. I have all these ‘notes’, that I was planning to use in longer texts. Again, it’s almost a curatorial thing, if I was visiting an artist’s studio, and they had all this writing, in the form of a few sentences, my advice to them would be, just show the texts as they are. So, I decided to take some of my own advice.
TG: I’m interested in the immediacy and boldness you employ when manoeuvring between the different medias in your practice. For example, going from a woodcut to a VR experience, and the ease at which you appear to move between these different platforms. Can you talk more about this please?
CL: I aways do a lot of things at once. So, it’s often about how the projects fit together conceptually. With the VR piece, it’s made using hundreds of scans of my woodcut prints. So, the idea is partly to creative a digital experience that is also quite handmade or analogue. It’s partly a daft idea that I’ve followed through with but I do think there is a difference between handmade moving image work and digital animation. If you look at early Disney animation for example, when the individual cells are hand drawn and coloured, they have an energy and beauty that is lost when the process is digitised. So, I wanted to take this idea, of bringing back the handmade to the virtual space. Obviously, it’s not very practical. But who wants practical art?
TG: I like what you say above “…if I was visiting an artist’s studio, and they had all this writing, in the form of a few sentences, my advice to them would be, just show the texts as they are. So I decided to take some of my own advice”. It seems as though you’ve been able to internalise some of the objectivity that being a curator often affords. This is usually applied to other people’s work, but here it seems that you are able to look at your work through the eyes of a different position. Is this fair to say, and what does being a curator bring to your art, and what does your art bring to your curating?
CL: I love making art and I love organising art projects. These are separate disciplines that relate to each other but are far from being the same thing. I think most artists have to have a certain self-criticality and ability to self-edit. I also think artists can often be great curators. For me, having quite a lot of institutional curatorial experience, this does feed into my studio work. Some of my research processes, looking at historic museum collections and objects, could easily been seen as a curatorial practice. In terms of my art influencing my curating… Sometimes it seems like 90 per cent of curating is bureaucracy – so it takes an artist to cut through and just say, “here’s a crazy idea, let’s do it…” Which does loosely fit my curatorial approach.
TG: Without giving too much away, could you talk a little about some of your ideas and thinking for the exhibition at Bonington. The title ‘Patois Banton’ appears to highlight the ease you have in mixing together different reference points in a respectfully irreverent and generative way.
CL: During one of the [Covid-19] lockdowns, for some reason I decided to do Patois lessons. Because my heritage is Jamaican, there is something slightly ridiculous about this. Imagine an English person wanting to have lessons in how to speak Cockney. But still, I couldn’t speak Patois, so I did some lessons. I found an amazing tutor in Jamacia, and we did the classes online. Joan Hutchinson, the tutor, is a poet in her own right, and takes the subject really seriously. It was great to dive into the subject. It was quite academic, looking the history of words, grammar, all sorts. But also, folk stories, songs, and lots of meaning behind these things. There is so much Patois used in the English language, in music and conversation. But people often don’t know the history and context of these words. ‘Banton’ is a word people might, or might not be familiar with, it just means storyteller, something like the griot, in West African tradition. So, Patois Banton seemed like a good title for the show.
TG: Some of the source imagery that you use for your drawings, I’m thinking of the Black Drawings that you produced whilst on residency at the Jan Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, are dense monochrome renderings of paintings by European Expressionist painters (although I think you include a Basquiat in this series). What is it about this group of artists that you have chosen to reference, and, by reducing these works to a singular form of execution is there any potential commentary/criticism being paid towards the established and widely adopted, western-centric/European cannons within art-history?
CL: The Black Drawings series was an exploration with the European fascination with so-called ‘Primitivism’ from the first part of the 20th Century.
The series came about quite spontaneously but due to having time and freedom of being on a residency at Jan Van Eyck Academie, I was able to fully explore. Before starting at the JVA around 2014, I saw a Hannah Höch exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in London. Some of her collages which included images of African women intrigued me, so I took a few photographs. Obviously, the Höch images inspire lots of questions around cultural appropriation, depictions of the black body by white artists and so on. It started a train of thought about huge numbers of Modernist artists, who had done the same thing. So, when I was in Maastricht at the JVA, I spent a lot of time visiting museums and collections in that region, places like Cologne, Brussels, Aachen, Liège.
I kept seeing more and more work, sometimes by quite surprising artists, who you would not associate with African imagery, such as Fernand Léger, or Francis Picabia, Lots of German Expressionists, The Blue Rider Group. They all had works with African influences. So, I just re-drew them, but almost entirely in black. It was my way of re-appropriating the works, or “stealing them back,” as I used to say at the time.
It was not a super critical attack on the artists I was looking at. I was not trying to “take them down”. I actually love many of the artists’ work I was looking at. It was more about pointing out this massive influence of African imagery on Modernist aesthetics.
TG: I like your reference to early animation, that would turn hand-drawn cells into cinematic films. It would be great if you could go into a little more detail about the relationship between your lino-cuts and VR experiences. It feels that the ‘gulf’ you present between these mediums is wider than early Disney, and I guess these chasms will only grow as technology develops.
CL: The link between early animation and the digital space is something I’ve been thinking about fairly recently. I was doing some curatorial research a few years ago into early film and moving image, which is what perhaps first sparked my interest.
When we look at early hand drawn animations, there is a certain magic in the movement of the images, that to me, seems lost when the process is digitised. It’s the analogue v. digital debate, I guess.
With visual material, I do think there is a certain aura that we subconsciously recognise when the human hand has made something. With AI art and image production, this is an area I think more and more people will become concerned with. If AI can an make any image or object that that can be imagined, what is the actual point of having a human do it? Humans are kind of a pain in the arse, in comparison to a nice subservient AI programme. AI programmes don’t need lunch breaks, they don’t ask for pay rises and so on.
So ultimately, I’m trying to think about analogue virtual spaces, that have to be handmade by me. It’s a slightly ridiculous proposition at this point, but with the virtual space that uses woodcut and lino prints in the exhibition, we can see a type of prototype of what I’m thinking about.
TG: Finally, I’d like to hear more about your use of the book format. Due to their scale, the experience of looking and ’reading’ becomes a very physical and shared experience. By showing drawings in this way, the viewer(s) can only experience 1-2 images at a time, and not the full series in one go around the walls of a gallery. As a comparison, Andy Warhol’s ‘Shadow Paintings’ come to mind for how they are shown at DIA Art Foundation, but they could almost be pages from a book – or maybe cells from an animation.
CL: Books and printed publications have been something I’ve always enjoyed as an alternative display space. Again, it’s mixing curatorial and studio practice. Playing with the scale of the books adds a level of drama and spectacle that I really enjoy. When you have these massive books, just the act of looking at them and turning the pages becomes a performance. It turns the act of looking into a physical experience. It also slows down the way it’s possible to view the images and pages. So, it asks a lot from the viewer. But books suit me as a medium. Books are somewhat undervalued as a medium right now, but I have a long-term self-belief that the appreciation for the medium will increase.
Catch Cedar’s exhibition Patois Banton in the gallery from 21 January – 11 March 2023.
Cedar and Jamaican writer and teacher Joan Andrea Hutchinson will be holding a free in-conversation event to discuss Jamaican Patois on Thursday 16 February.
Cedar Lewisohn
Patois Banton
21 January – 11 March 2023
Launch: Friday 20 January 6–8 pm
Bonington Gallery, Nottingham Trent University, Dryden Street, Nottingham. NG1 4GG
Patois Banton is a new exhibition by artist, writer, and curator Cedar Lewisohn, on show at the Bonington Gallery, Nottingham Trent University, from 21 January 2023.
The exhibition will be Lewisohn’s first UK solo exhibition outside of London and follows his critically acclaimed exhibition The Thousand Year Kingdom at the Saatchi Gallery and group exhibition Untitled at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, both in 2021. As a curator, Lewisohn produced the landmark Street Art exhibition at Tate Modern in 2008, and more recently the Dub London project at the Museum of London. He is currently the Curator of Site Design at Southbank Centre, London.
Lewisohn’s work uses drawing as the starting point for a practice that encompasses woodblock and lino prints, publications, performances, moving images, sound, VR experience, and the written word.
Over the past decade he has been researching and drawing objects relating to ancient African and Mesopotamian civilizations within museum collections, including the Benin Bronzes, which have become a touchstone in the discussion around global museums’ restitution of looted heritage.
In his prints Lewisohn mixes his depictions of works from ancient civilizations with symbols of contemporary British youth culture, such as sound system culture, dancehall, drill music and urban landscapes, to explore current social, ethical, and political issues. The mix of African, Jamaican and British histories, locations, myths, and hidden stories is central to Lewisohn’s work.
The exhibition’s title is a fusion of two words that offer further insight into Lewisohn’s practice and preoccupations. During the pandemic, Lewisohn took lessons in Patois – the English-based creole language spoken throughout Jamaica – from academic and poet, Joan Hutchison. He is interested in the migration of Patois back to the UK through its use in reggae and dancehall lyrics, and its integration into the slang of young urban Britain. Banton is the Jamaican word for storyteller. Combining these words highlights Lewisohn’s concern with Jamaican heritage from both a personal and historical perspective, and his desire to explore its ongoing influence on modern-day British culture.
The exhibition will present a range of large and small-scale works, some not exhibited before. It will include works from his acclaimed book The Marduk Prophecy – shown alongside a newly commissioned publication, and an interactive virtual space that explores Lewisohn’s fascination with mixing the handmade – in this case his woodblock prints – with digital technology.
To accompany the exhibition Bonington Gallery will publish a new compilation of poetry by the artist. ‘Office Poems’ features a selection of poems exploring the humour and mundanity of office life. Each poem will be published in English and Patois, with translations by Joan Hutchinson.
Bonington Gallery is part of Curated & Created, NTU’s extra-curricular and public arts programme.
Lewisohn (b. 1977, London) has worked on numerous projects for institutions such as Tate Britain, Tate Modern and The British Council. In 2008, he curated the landmark Street Art exhibition at Tate Modern and recently curated the Museum of London’s Dub London project. In 2020 he was appointed curator of Site Design for The Southbank Centre. He is the author of three books (Street Art, Tate 2008, Abstract Graffiti, Merrell, 2011, The Marduk Prophecy, Slimvolume, 2020), and has edited a number of publications. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally for over twenty years and belongs to a number of collections. In 2015 he was a resident artist at the Jan Van Eyke Academie in Maastricht. Lewisohn has been included in numerous group exhibitions and had solo projects at the bonnefantenmuseum in Maastricht (2015), Joey Ramone, Rotterdam (2016), in VOLUME Book Fair at ArtSpace Sydney (2015) and Exeter Phoenix, (2017). Most recently he had a solo exhibition at Saatchi Gallery entitled The Thousand Year Kingdom in 2021 and participated in the group exhibition UNTITLED: art on the conditions of our time at Kettles Yard, Cambridge where his work was named by The Guardian as “the highlight of the show”.
Sarah Ragsdale sarah@sarahragsdalepr.co.uk
In response to our exhibition Stephen Willats: Social Resource Project for Tennis Clubs, NTU students on the Typography Optional Module created a typeface and re-imagined our exhibition invite. Over two half day sessions, they each created a typeface and type layout for the invite – we are excited to share some of their designs!
Click on them to see them full size
In response to our exhibition Andrew Logan: The Joy of Sculpture, NTU Students on the Typography Optional Module created a typeface and re-imagined our exhibition booklet and invite. The students had half a day on each exercise and came up with some fantastic responses!
We are excited to share a selection of them below:
Use the links below to have a look at their leaflets:
The Lace Archive housed in the School of Art & Design at Nottingham Trent University (NTU) is unique in many respects; it goes beyond what might ordinarily be expected of a repository of textiles. Loose hand and machine made lace samples sit alongside products of a bygone era. The collection provides an opportunity to examine beautiful fabrics and samples of lace while unveiling insight into inter-related issues such as the social context, education and the design process. Established at the beginnings of art school education in the UK in 1843, the archive offers testimony of the teaching process in the Victorian era demonstrating a particular focus on the lace design process; from technical resolve and ‘draughting’ to commercial product application. The archive, a result of benefactions from past industries, demonstrated the support and belief in the need for a school of art and design based in Nottingham. The archive continues to grow and develop with contemporary additions and donations. It captures the rich and valuable heritage of Nottingham lace and the city’s unique and central position in the development of this now global industry.
Lace Unarchived reveals the legacy of the Art School, established in 1843, and its impact on generations of lace designers who worked within the region and across the globe. ‘Stories’ from the archive include Harry Cross’s drawings from the Battle of Britain panel, and NTU alumnus William Pegg’s shift from award winning designer of lace to expressing his socialist beliefs through this medium. Student work from the early 20th century reveals the pedagogic process in the Art School, while hand and machine made lace and work expose the hidden process behind developing a lace fabric – designing and draughting.
NTU’s recent collaboration with high street retailer Oasis highlights the archival design inspiration through to the final collection and includes the limited edition dress designed by fashion student, Robert Goddard.
This rich and unique heritage of NTU’s Lace Archive is juxtaposed against collections and collaborations from contemporary commercial manufacturers of Nottingham lace: Cluny Lace, England’s remaining manufacturer and situated in this region; Morton, Young and Borland (MYB) Scotland’s last lace manufacturer from the Irvine Valley, and Sophie Hallette, from Caudry, France, one of a handful remaining in that region. These companies work alongside designers to produce high quality, beautiful and evocative creations, and manufacture their lace on Nottingham technology invented in this region some 200 years ago.
Mal Burkinshaw in collaboration with Sophie Hallette Lace, photographed By Stuart Munro
On exhibition is a coat produced by Burberry, who selected Cluny Lace for their recent lace inspired collection, and whom have continued to produce these lace trench coats due to their commercial success. From Sophie Hallette, who work alongside a number of fashion designers, we highlight the collaboration with Mal Burkinshaw, Director of Fashion at Edinburgh School of Art. Mal has created a series of jackets in response to body shapes and garments from paintings in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. He uses lace to evoke craftsmanship and status through a dialogue between past and present fusing the modern classic jacket with the renaissance. Timorous Beasties, renowned for their challenging and dynamic conversational wallpapers and fabrics have experimented with lace since 2005. Their fabric, produced by MYB, Devil Damask, demonstrates their mastery of this process and utilizes a playful approach to image and shadow. Sarah Taylor, Senior Research Fellow at Edinburgh Napier University and Sara Robertson,Tutor at the Royal College of Art, have collaborated with MYB and Mike Stoane Lighting to develop light emitting lace woven in the tradition of Scottish Madras.
Artists James Winnett and Matthew Woodham (please note this link contains strobe effect) have been commissioned to produce work for this exhibition. James Winnett has reinvented found lace patterns sourced from salvage yards, originally produced in Nottingham and Ayrshire by painting into and onto them to explore the relationship between industrial and artistic labour. Matthew Woodham has created a sculptural video piece with monitors which will feature digitised archival items accompanied by the fabricated and the real stories of these pieces.
2018 is a special year for Nottingham Trent University as we mark the 175th anniversary since our founding college opened its doors in 1843. That college, the Nottingham Government School of Design, was the fourth to open in the UK to serve growing demands for innovation and skills in an industrialising society and protect our global position from the new wave of emerging manufacturers. The focus that characterises NTU today – to develop the knowledge, skills and innovations that our economy and society need – has its roots in these origins 175 years ago.
Lace Unarchived is a timely reminder in Nottingham Trent of the University’s part in this story. Nottingham Lace technology spurred an industry which, when combined with an art school, flourished and remains an important catalyst to innovation and creativity.
The exhibition runs until Thursday 23 March, visit the exhibition page for details about associated events.
Mal Burkinshaw in collaboration with Sophie Hallette Lace
‘Silhouette en Dentelle’ – Series 2013-2017
Sophie Hallette Lace, hand appliquéd onto tailored jackets in nylon netting.*
Mal Burkinshaw’s series of jackets were produced in response to the body shapes and garments of sitters in the portraits of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery’s Reformation to Revolution Gallery. Sources of inspiration include Margaret Graham, Mary Queen of Scots, James VI & I, Lady Arabella Stuart and Lady Agnes Douglas.
The use of lace directly relates to the centuries of continuous craftsmanship involved in making this delicate material, which was a signifier of wealth, status and hierarchy in the Renaissance. Black lace, in particular, was favoured but is rarely seen in portraiture of the time. This work thus reinstates and celebrates the wearing of black lace during the Renaissance.
In collaboration with renowned lace producers Sophie Hallette, his work creates a dialogue between past and present notions of “normalised” body shapes through a metamorphosis of silhouette and scale, by fusing the modern classic jacket with renaissance fashion.
The jackets were designed in sequential scale, and do not conform to specific UK size measurements and are designed to be non-gender specific, asking viewers to question their perception of beauty relating to body size.
The jackets are the result of over 800 hours of embellishment. Mal used a large light box, collaging intricately cut motifs of lace, which were subsequently appliquéd by hand onto contemporary ‘high-performance’ netting. The process of creating each piece was both reactive and instinctive; in a sense each jacket has been ‘painted with lace’.
The practice led garment research technique departs from the usual practice of fashion design that involves draping fabric on the mannequin (an ‘idealised’ model body) and working to traditional garment sizes. Instead, garments are developed that are, while recognizably clothing, independent of the body, acting as artefacts in their own right. In Beauty by Design, this way of working was brought to bear on garments depicted in renaissance paintings.
These garments, boned, corseted as they were, distort the body shape of the wearer in distinctly un-modern ways, bringing into question, over time, our own conceptions of beauty. Burkinshaw reinterpreted these garments in transparent fabric, further dramatizing the tension between the shape of these clothes themselves and the bodies that might wear them. The work is designed to open multi-layered contemplative questions relating to body image, beauty, gender, identity and sexuality.
*presented for Lace Unarchived as a video projection
In Lace Unarchived we have a few items for visitors to handle and look at more closely.
This book is typical of the type used by lace manufacturers to showcase their range of laces.
You can see the design registration number and a few other details on some of the samples. You can also easily find a number of pieces which are based on the same motif but the design has been expanded to create wider edgings, insertions and possibly even all over designs.
Taking a closer look at some of the designs you would see the variety of fillings and background patterns, even in the smallest and simplest design. Some of the samples show that the lace was being made with coloured threads as well as in white. There are also some examples of the lace being cut (by hand) to make more interestingly shaped pieces.
This is Chantilly lace, made on a Pusher machine. The picot edging was actually made separately and applied by hand.
Most of the pattern is created with areas of slightly denser lace (similar to half-stitch in bobbin lace) outlined but thicker threads. Larger holes are also used to help create the patterning.
The outlines have been run in by hand after the lace was removed from the machine. How do we know this? The outlining threads do not pass between the twisted threads of the lace, instead they run in and out of the holes in the lace. The circular spots in the net are also a giveaway; you can see that the cut ends of the thicker thread begin and end in the same place, if they were added on the machine there would be tufts at either side of the spot where the threads had been cut
MACHINE MADE LACE INSERTIONS
Insertion lace has two straight edges for inserting between two pieces of fabric, in a garment for example. This piece shows how the insertions are made in one piece, or ‘web’, up the bed of the machine. The strips of are joined with just one or two threads; these can be withdrawn to release and separate the strips for use as insertions. This would have been one of the jobs carried out either as home-work or in the Lace Market area of Nottingham.
Although this lace was designed as an insertion, pieces like this were occasionally used as fabric for garments.
The Cluny Lace Company Limited is the last independent Leavers lace manufacturer in the United Kingdom. The Mason family have, for nine generations, been closely connected with lace making since it was first produced by machine during the industrial revolution. After extensive training abroad and at university, the ninth generation now carry out day-to-day management of this progressive company. The Cluny Lace Company’s plant of sixteen traditional Nottingham Leavers lace machines include four of the widest ever built by John Jardine.
Throughout the last one hundred and sixty years Cluny Lace has continued to build up a data bank of thousands of lace patterns. By combining the best of old traditions with the newest technology, the firm is able to produce a wide range of exquisite and unique designs, concentrating on the Cluny and Valencienne styles. Burberry chose Cluny lace from which to make their range of lace trench coats in 2014 and the association has continued, due to the popularity of the style.
The Cluny lace range is unique in the world and is based on sixteenth-century Genoese patterns housed at the Musee de Cluny in Paris. Whilst the Valencienne range is a collection of the best patterns made by the Nottingham lace trade over the last century. Both ranges are made from long staple Egyptian Cotton and are dyed and finished in France. All patterns are stocked in Black, White, Cream and Off-White.
Light-emitting Lace is designed and presented as a new version of previous award-winning work Digital Lace (ISWC 2014) and made at MYB Textiles, a world leading lace manufacturer in Ayrshire and the textile Illuminator at Mike Stoane Lighting, Edinburgh. The cloth and lighting system combine to create new modular light-emitting fabric panels which can be created as bespoke lit designs or as existing archive designs from MYB Textile’s collection. Digital Lace is presented here as three woven, hand etched optical fibre panels.
The cloth is manufactured on a Vamatex loom which has been specially adapted to create their unique Scottish Leno Madras Lace. Using different pattern structures and yarn combinations it is possible to integrate polymer optical fibre to create different qualities of shadow and light. The woven fabric is designed to retain the lace-like quality and the aesthetic effects of an open structured transparent cloth, whilst offering surprising new qualities such as shiny lustre and shot effects which create interesting optical effects and ultimately, soft lit pattern. The cloth can also be etched to create additional lighting effects. The Illuminator is designed to light the selvedge of the cloth, where the loom cuts the cloth and the polymer optical fibres naturally align. The lighting system is designed to maximise the weaving capacity and design potential of the Vamatex loom.
The research was twice awarded by the Textile Future Forum Challenge Fund (University of Dundee, 2016 and Edinburgh Napier University, 2017) as part of an initiative to accelerate collaboration between industry and academia in order to fast-track sector innovation. The research aimed to develop the production capacity for weaving optical fibre as light-emitting lace, to manufacture smart textiles within a traditional Scottish textile manufacture infrastructure, and develop a lighting system as a fully integrated component of the woven product.
A selection of news and events stemming from the Lace: Unarchived Exhibition
29 March 2018
Harry Cross was born in Nottingham in 1875 and and studied at the Nottingham School of Art between 1887 and 1890 – by 1891 Harry was recorded as being a lace designer.
Harry designed the well-known Battle of Britain lace panel during the latter part of the Second World War. He had by that time retired and was ‘brought out of retirement’ by the company Dobson & Brown specially to undertake this work. It’s thought that he started in 1942 and the design took two years to complete. The design was done in 11 sections and as each was completed it was passed to the Draughtsmen to enable a start on their part of the whole process.
It is thought that this project was undertaken to retain the high skills of the staff in a lace factory which was producing work focussed on the war effort and not work to their normal high standards. However, by hearsay the son of the Manager had been a pilot involved in the Battle of Britain and had been killed. If this is true it seems a reasonable explanation to produce a memorial lace panel at huge cost and effort.
Only thirty-eight panels were woven and were presented to King George VI, Winston Churchill, various RAF units, Westminster Abbey, the City of London, the City of Nottingham, airmen from the Commonwealth and several others. The design and weaving of the panels reputedly took over 3 years to complete and required 40,000 jacquard pattern cards, 975 bobbins and 41,830m of cotton for each panel. It is reported that all of the designs, drafts and jacquards were destroyed at the end of the production run.
However, thankfully Harry kept tracings of this design and between 1961 and 1970 when Harry Cross was in his 90s, he was able to replicate the original design. His family recollect that unfortunately his room could not accommodate his treasured easel so his work was then done on the dining table. The design was initially done as the original i.e. black on white paper but he decided this could be improved and used paint, pastel and gilding to colour and complete the painting. Certainly he visited the Nottingham School of Art to talk with students in the time he was busy on the painting and show one completed section at least. A small article and photograph was published in the Evening Post after this visit.
Harry’s family have kindly loaned these historic and wonderful drawings to the Nottingham Trent University lace archive. The eleven sections have now been digitally scanned and have been digitally printed on fabric at almost full scale to be displayed at the Lace Unarchived exhibition in Bonington Gallery. Two of the painted panels are included in the exhibition, clearly showing his expertise and flair for decorative design. The textile panel and paintings sit beautifully against the contemporary artworks and historic lace in the exhibition.
On the night of the exhibition special late opening, Harry’s granddaughter Barbara Cross was presented with a smaller fabric version of the panel. It was a pleasure to have her represent her Grandfather at the event.
29 March 2018
Lace Unarchived featured two new artworks from artists James Winnett and Matt Woodham.
James Winnett
This series of new work has been produced using twelve mid 20th century lace patterns, sourced from an architectural salvage yard in Glasgow and originally produced in Nottingham and Ayrshire. In some, water has been used to loosen the original pigments and extend the geometric designs across the paper. In others, gold has been added, highlighting certain motifs to shift notions of provenance, value and authenticity. Re-presenting the industrial artefact in this way, Winnett explores processes of historicisation while interrogating the interplay between industrial and artistic labour. James’ work for Lace Unarchived has been incredibly well-received by visitors. He believes the collection on show includes some curtain lace draughts from Nottingham, which may have travelled to Scotland when a number of curtain lace factories relocated there in the 20th century.
James Winnett is a Glasgow based artist who works primarily in public art, sculpture and video. Recent exhibitions and commissions include: The Capelrig Stones, East Renfrewshire Council, 2017; Settlement, Project Room Glasgow; Green Year Artist in Residence, Glasgow City Council, 2015-16; The Cuningar Stones, 2014-16; 100 Flowers Commission, New South Glasgow Hospitals, 2015; Year of Natural Scotland Artist in Residence, Cuningar Loop, 2013-14; Glasgow Life Visual Artist Award, 2013.
James’ work can be found here: www.axisweb.org/p/jameswinnett
Matt Woodham
Matt Woodham is an artist, designer and creative technologist with a background in psychology & neuroscience. Through his research, and fascination for knowledge gained from empirical evidence – he strives to uncover the systems and patterns underpinning our physical and natural worlds. His research often addresses the common dynamics between different systems, such as the transfer of signal, waves, energy and information.
With a focus on the aesthetic qualities of both digital and analogue mediums, he designs and builds experiences, products, installations and audio-visual content. He aims to adjust perceptions and communicate ideas, exploring solutions to complex social problems.
He believes that the interdisciplinary space between art, science and technology can provide the possibilities for inducing both wonderment and socio-cultural advancement. Using science as the ground, technology as the tool and art as the expression.
Lace Unarchived commissioned a sculptural video piece responding to the lace archive. Matt designed a curved cabinet for 24 CRT monitors which feature digitised archival items accompanied by fabricated and real stories behind them. Matt took photographs of items from the NTU Lace Archive, and from them created a dynamic work which has been a focus of much interest in the Lace Unarchived exhibition space.
Matt’s website is: www.mdoubl.eu
29 March 2018
During the Lace Unarchived exhibition, we have been pleased to officially launch the lace archive at NTU as the ‘Michael Orchard Lace Archive’.
Michael Orchard was the owner of several lace businesses in the Nottingham area - Orchard & Clarke, Floral Textiles, Orchid Laces and Walter Fletchers, The Warper. He studied lace design at People’s College Nottingham in the 1950s as part of his 7-year apprenticeship. He started his own business at the age of 22 and went on to design and manufacture home textiles for his own factories and design lace for intimate apparel for all of the top lingerie brands including Triumph, Berlei, and Wacoal. With clients from all over the world, but particularly in New York’s Garment District, he also taught the next generation of American textile manufacturers who would send their sons over to him for six months to a year to learn all aspects of the trade.
Michael’s son, David Orchard, has, as part of a memorial to his Father in recognition of his contribution to the lace industry and heritage of Nottingham, kindly chosen to donate Michael’s collection of over 30 lace history and design books to NTU in the hope that they will continue to educate aspiring designers. He has also donated funds to support a research fellow to work with the archive to support our ongoing work to evaluate the collection from a conservation perspective to ensure that the it continues to be accessible to future generations and that they continue to benefit from this important resource.
Trying to reduce our ‘RT’ by building acoustic panels in the gallery this week:
The Bonington Blog is live… and what better way to start it than featuring the freshly painted murals, designed by artist Jon Burgerman?
Over the summer our technicians have been busy painting an exciting and vibrant new permanent artwork at the entrance to the Bonington Gallery. We invited alumnus, Jon Burgerman to design a series of large-scale murals that aim to reflect the creative processes, enjoyment and energy of the School of Art & Design.
Jon Burgerman is an English-born artist, living in Brooklyn, New York. His work oscillates somewhere between fine art, urban art and pop-culture, using humour to reference and question his contemporary milieu. Jon exhibits internationally and his work is also in permanent collections at the V&A Museum and the Science Museum in London. Burgerman studied BA (Hons) Fine Art at The Nottingham Trent University, graduating in 2001 with First Class Honours.
Check out Burgerman’s website: www.jonburgerman.com
Burgerman also designed some artwork for the corridor, which you’ll be able to see when you come and visit the Gallery!
