In September 2012 Nottingham Trent University welcomed the World Event Young Artists 2012 (WEYA), an exciting programme of exhibitions and events as part of the vibrant and globally significant Nottingham finale to the 2012 Cultural Olympiad. This directional and unique event brought together 1,000 artists, from 100 nations, over a period of ten days and was the first of its kind in the world. It was hosted by a number of key partner institutions offering world class venues, of which Nottingham Trent University is proud to be a part.
For full details including event listings and galleries please visit the World Event Young Artists (now UK New Artists) webpages.
5 Curators. 5 Exhibitions of moving image.
Curator: Professor Duncan Higgins, Nottingham Trent University
Northern Russia has been described as being shrouded in a rare serene stillness and beauty undermined by the decaying presence of evil. Unloud looked at this idea: a place of limits, a frontier or an extreme situation incorporating the extremes of climate, geography and nature, faith, brutality, beauty and fantasy.
Curator: Dr Anna Ball, Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, Nottingham Trent University
A lost homeland, a dispossessed population, a missing film archive: images of absence haunt Palestinian national consciousness. Bringing together works by leading film-makers and video artists, this exhibition explored the dynamic relationship between presence and absence in moving images from or about Palestine.
Curators: Geoff Litherland and Jim Boxall, School of Art & Design, Nottingham Trent University
Chromista are water organisms that photosynthesise, taking advantage of any light that breaks through the surface. Likewise the films that were selected for Chromista exploit the physical surface of the projected image; light and imagery is abstracted to create works whose process of creation dictates the final image.
A showcase of work from the narrative to the abstract, each day focussed on a different artist. A group of Nottingham Trent University School of Art and Design alumni film-makers were invited to screen one of their own works and two further short films which have either influenced or compliments their chosen piece.
Curator: Jenny Chamarette, Department of Film Studies, Queen Mary, University of London
Water has the capacity to distort and magnify light and sound: it bends and reshapes these elemental parts of the moving image to create something altogether different from what we might usually experience. In this programme drawn from moving image artists, filmmakers and public information broadcasts, water is both an inspiration and a distraction, for viewers and filmmakers alike.
Fuelled by a continued resurgence of lace in contemporary culture and art and design practice, Lace:here:now was a season of events that took place in the city that was once at the heart of the lace manufacturing industry – Nottingham. In recognition of the value of lace and its importance to the identity of Nottingham and beyond, Lace:here:now celebrated the heritage of Nottingham lace and demonstrated that lace still inspires, fascinates and excites.
For full details, visit the Lace:Here:Now webpages.
Students from the Textiles, Fashion and Decorative Arts courses at Nottingham Trent University were inspired by its lace archive to produce drawings, textiles, products and investigations. Using the rich heritage of the archive to form the starting point, they explored the concept of lace, exploring materials and the use of heritage to inform design thinking for a new generation of designers.
In the second instalment of our year-long Formations programme, delivered in partnership with Nottingham Trent University’s Postcolonial Studies Centre, we are pleased to announce our November and December events, under the thematic banner – Formation: Land, focusing on land, agriculture, landscape, and place. We will consider dispossession, migration, and ways the human and land interact, and we invite you to think about recent innovative writing about how humans are connected with the living environment and our heritage.
Wednesday 18 November 2020, 7 pm – 8.30 pm
Focusing on the context of Indigenous-settler relations in Canada, this talk considers the ways in which settler-colonialism damages the land and peoples’ relationships to it through exploitation and policies of assimilation, dispossession, and forced relocation aimed at erasing Indigenous identity. Drawing from Lee Maracle’s novel, Celia’s Song, and from Indigenous philosophies of relationality that posit a complex system of relations between peoples and more-than-human beings (animal, plants, ecosystems), Valentina explores how restoring sustainable relationships to the Earth is crucial for establishing and maintaining peaceful relationships between Indigenous peoples and settlers in Canada.
Click here to watch via our Youtube
Tuesday 8 December 2020, 6.30 pm – 8 pm
Interviewed by Bethan Evans, AHRC Midlands 4 Cities funded doctoral candidate at NTU.
In this event, Jenni discusses the significance of reading for understanding place (Cuba, Nigeria, the UK, and India), and some of the fascinating publishing and reading locations explored in the book. You can purchase a copy of the book here.
Click here to watch via out Youtube
Wednesday 25 November 2020, 6.30 pm – 8pm
Join a session with Eve Makis exploring urban and rural landscape writing. Learn how to evoke a landscape using your senses, taking inspiration from the works of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Elif Shafak. All levels welcome.
Eve Makis is the author of four novels, a life-writing guide, and an award-winning screenplay. She teaches fiction on the MA Creative Writing course at Nottingham Trent University, where she is writer in residence for the Postcolonial Studies Centre.
All participants will get the chance to have their work edited and included in a planned NTU anthology.
Wednesday 9 December, 9.30 am – 4.30 pm
Join us for a conference curated by a collective of second year NTU English students, centred around Elizabeth-Jane Burnett’s The Grassling.
The title of the conference, ‘Longing to Belong’, raises questions surrounding our relationship with the term ‘belonging’. It focuses on writers from the diaspora, as we believe that their relationship with belonging is a unique and under-represented experience. Featuring three guest speakers; Eve Makis, Panya Banjoko and Helen Cousins.
Click here to watch via our Youtube
Thursday 10 December 2020, 6.30 pm – 7.30 pm
Eve Makis will be interviewing Alex Wheatle about his recently published YA fiction book, The Cane Warriors.
A prolific writer, Alex has had success in many forms including lyrics, poetry, short stories, plays and novel writing for adults and children. His work has been influenced by Brixton, where he grew up, his Jamaican heritage, and his experiences of living in the Shirley Oaks Children’s Home. He developed a hearty reading habit during his time in prison after the Brixton riots and has never looked back. Alex’s latest Young Adult novel, The Cane Warriors, published to critical acclaim in October, is based on the true story of a slave uprising on a sugar cane plantation in Jamaica in the 1700s. In 2008, Alex was awarded an MBE for services to literature and later won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize for his book, Crongton Knights.
Alex’s life story was filmed as part of the mini-series, Small Axe, created and directed by Steve McQueen (director of Twelve Years a Slave) and shown on BBC One last Sunday.
Click here to watch via our Youtube
To launch our year-long Formations programme, delivered in partnership with Nottingham Trent University’s Postcolonial Studies Centre, we are pleased to announce our October events, under the thematic banner – Formation: History, Critical Responses to Black History Month.
Thursday 15 October 2020, 7 pm – 8.30 pm
Join us for an interview with Sharon Monteith, Distinguished Professor of American Literature and Cultural History at NTU, as she tells us more about SNCC’s Stories: The African American Freedom Movement in the Civil Rights South (University of Georgia Press, October 2020).
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee would have commemorated 60 years since its founding in 2020 in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis. This book coincides with that anniversary and uncovers the organisation’s narrative culture and activist literary history. Join Sharon Monteith in conversation about SNCC and her book with Panya Banjoko, poet, director of Nottingham Black Archive and NTU doctoral researcher.
Click here to Watch via our YouTube
Tuesday 20 October 2020, 6.30 pm – 8pm
Join a writing session with Eve Makis exploring identity and the meaning of resilience, taking inspiration from seminal works by Maya Angelou. All levels welcome.
Eve Makis is the author of four novels, a life-writing guide, and an award-winning screenplay. She teaches fiction on the MA Creative Writing course at Nottingham Trent University, where she is writer in residence for the Postcolonial Studies Centre.
All participants will get the chance of having their work edited and included in a planned NTU anthology.
Find out more and book your place here.
Wednesday 28 October 2020, 7 pm
Dr Leila Kamali invites audiences to learn about her major film and education project relating to the work of the great African American writer John Edgar Wideman. In this event, Leila discusses Wideman’s work in relation to decolonisation, exploring the ways that the visual images in his writing signal his construction of a decolonising gaze.
Dr Leila Kamali is a literary scholar with specialisms in African American literature, Black British literature, diaspora, transnationalism and cultural memory. Her research investigates the relationship between memory, trauma, language, and tradition, in order to discover ways in which literature resists contemporary forms of racism and builds new forms of citizenship.
Click here to watch via our Youtube
Nottingham Black Archive was founded in 2009 by Panya Banjoko with the aim of researching, collecting and preserving Black history, heritage and culture in Nottingham, from the earliest time to the present day. The collection consists of artefacts donated by the community and interviews collected through project work. Today, the archive holds a growing collection of oral histories, photographs, articles, and books dating back to the 1940s.
In 2012, Nottingham Black Archive began to document the experiences of those who came from the Caribbean to England during the Windrush period. Journeys to Nottingham is a collection of narratives, photographs, and ephemera from people who travelled from the Caribbean to Nottingham during the Windrush era. It is a snapshot of why they came, what they did, and where they worked on their arrival to the city.
Beyond the materials featured in this exhibition, there are full oral history interviews which are housed within Nottingham Black Archive and serve as a record to mark the journeys of people from the Caribbean to England.
Panya Banjoko is a UK-based writer and poet whose work has been published in various anthologies. Banjoko is currently completing a PhD at Nottingham Trent University that focuses on Politics in Poetry and the Role of African Caribbean Writers and Networks in the 1970s and 80s. She has performed widely, including at the 2012 Olympic Games, coordinates a Black Writers network, and is a patron for Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature.
With the launch of the CAMPUS Independent Study Programme, we will be hosting a series of talks by the CAMPUS faculty exploring alternative modes of education, decolonial practices, Black studies, and anti-fascist movements.
Elvira Dyangani Ose’s internationally acclaimed curatorial work is committed to the histories and legacies of colonialism in contemporary African art.
Elvira Dyangani Ose was recently appointed Director of The Showroom. Dyangani Ose was Senior Curator at Creative Time, a New York-based non-profit public arts organisation. Currently a lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, Dyangani Ose is a member of the Thought Council at the Fondazione Prada and is an independent curator. She was Curator of the eighth edition of the Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary art (GIBCA 2015) and Curator, International Art at Tate Modern (2011 – 2014). She also recently joined Tate Modern’s Advisory Council.
If you would like to attend this event please RSVP to confirm your attendance.
CAMPUS is a year-long and city-wide independent study programme in curatorial, visual and cultural studies, based on collaborative knowledge production and innovative research practices. It is a free-to-attend programme of monthly closed-door gatherings and free public talks. Taking place in different locations in Nottingham (Nottingham Contemporary, Primary, Bonington Gallery, Backlit), CAMPUS welcomes participants from different backgrounds who wish to engage in conversations about contemporary debates and further explore interdisciplinary practices. CAMPUS is a space of encounter between researchers, practitioners, activists, scholars, institutions and organisations.
“In 1978, prompted by my interest in people’s attitude to photography, from beyond the primitive notion of your soul being stolen when you have your photograph taken, to whatever was the contemporary notion, I mailed an image of myself to the 84 people who at that time shared my surname in the London Phone Directory, hoping that having this in common would serve as an introduction. I asked for a photograph in return, with their name on the back so that I would know who was responding, and a very large percentage complied, but most were also accompanied by incidental information. There were exceptions; a letter saying that there were no photographs in existence of Doris Jewell, an octogenarian living in Barnes, but I was welcome to go and take one.
This outcome led to me producing ‘London Jewells’, a poster size, four-colour lithographic letter containing a montage of all the photographs received and a précis of the written response. I mailed this poster out to my original list, but omitting the names that the Royal Mail had returned to sender as ‘’unknown at this address’’. This secondary mail out solicited a mixed response, photographs and “wish I’d taken your original letter more seriously” from some of those who had not initially responded and “thanks” from those that had.
I then repeated the process but this time with a similar number of Jewells in the USA, utilising the Los Angeles and Miami phone directories. The response was markedly different, not in volume but by the amount of lithographically produced photographs in the form of Christmas and model agency cards etc., and also far more information on lineage with family trees going back to Bishop Jewell of Salisbury in the 16th Century.
I then framed and exhibited all this material at the 1983 Summer Show at the Serpentine Gallery in London.
In 2009 a publisher enquired of me if I had any plans for another book. I was considering returning to the ‘Jewell’ concept but this time making contact via the internet rather than the postal service; with the development of the world wide web and digital photography, our personal attitudes to portraiture had moved on, the days of Doris Jewell living a long life without a single image of her existence seemed a thing of the past. However, instead I initially ran a Google search of ‘Jewell’ for images, this subsequently also led me to video and audio material baring my surname. The items collated in alphabetical order became Jewell, a Film By Dick Jewell April-August 2010 (133mins), rather than a book it imitates the aspect of multitasking on a computer screen.
My iPhone flower portraits alongside the vitrines, seemed fitting, not only as a traditional subject for wallpaper but in our focus on genealogy when considering the juxtaposition of similar sized subject matter.”
Dick Jewell, 2019.
Location: Bonington Atrium and multiple venues across Nottingham
Uniting 250 artists from 25 countries over 7 days, UK Young Artist (UKYA) City Takeover (Now UK New Artists) will span multiple venues across Nottingham, immersing visitors in an array of extraordinary, innovative and contemporary work, from visual arts to performance; music; applied arts; literature; digital arts and moving image.
One of the largest biennials of national and international artists in the world, UKYA City Takeover will be discerning and cutting-edge. Presenting an exemplar survey show of contemporary art, performance and music being made today. Expect to encounter art and performance in cultural spaces as well as unusual places. From caves to cafes; markets to museums; studios to the streets – the City Takeover weaves a rich tapestry of venues across Nottingham.
Bonington Gallery is delighted to host installations, drawings, sculpture and photography from visual artists: Grace Stones, Jodie Wingham, Lucie Blissett, Luisa Turuani, Nika Kupyrova and Won Hee Nam.
Check out the full programme over on the UKYA City Takeover website.
