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For the third and final event from our Plants Beyond Empire series, Claire Reddleman and Sophie Fuggle will explore how plants have become aligned with human ideas about time, seasons and cycles.
 
Many plants have been co-opted into colonial and capitalist ways of understanding time. Reddleman and Fuggle will begin by taking up the case of the Ginkgo Biloba – often described as a ‘living fossil’ due to the fact it has remained unchanged for over 80 million years.

Drawing on Claire Reddleman’s research, and its arrival in Britain in the 18th Century, they will consider the ways in which the ginkgo has become an important presence in the British landscape. The speakers will then look at the castor bean, a very different plant, which has been used by humans for at least 24,000 years. In the late 19th century, the castor bean’s best-known product, castor oil, started to be used as a lubricant for car and aircraft engines. It enabled greater speed and fluidity, and joined fossil fuels in the service of capitalism’s quest for ever faster, ever more efficient movement. Donna Haraway, Anna Tsing and others call this era the ‘plantationocene‘, to identify how capitalism, colonialism and labour have, often destructively, shaped the natural world.



Plants Beyond Empire is a new series of conversations starting in February 2024, as part of our Formations programme, in partnership with the Postcolonial and Global Studies Research Group. The events will explore a range of creative and community interventions aimed at understanding complex human-plant entanglements within postcolonial Britain and beyond.

Photo credit – dendrologista by Claire Reddleman. Map credit – 1725 Kaart van de provincie Utrecht, François Halma, collection of Universiteitsbibliotheek, Utrecht

Join Katharina Massing and Jen Ridding for an online talk exploring how Birmingham Botanical Gardens is working with local communities and visitors to highlight its colonial connections and diversify voices within plant interpretation.

Birmingham Botanical Gardens was founded in 1832, originally as a site of botanical and horticultural research and later with a greater emphasis on leisure and wellbeing.

Similar to many Botanic Gardens, its collection is linked to colonial expansion and trade. These links can be observed throughout the site, for example through the economic plants in the glass houses or the ornamental plants from China at the Wilson border, named after the ‘plant hunter’ Ernest Henry Wilson who brought plants over to the UK. 

Katharina Massing and Jen Ridding will look at how the garden is working with local communities and visitors to highlight some of these colonial connections and diversify voices within plant interpretation.

Taking place online via YouTube.


Plants Beyond Empire is a new series of conversations starting in February 2024, as part of our Formations programme, in partnership with the Postcolonial and Global Studies Research Group. The events will explore a range of creative and community interventions aimed at understanding complex human-plant entanglements within postcolonial Britain and beyond.

Photo credit: Birmingham Botanical Garden (2024). Photo courtesy of Katharina Massing

Join us for the launch of three new exhibitions:

Osheen Siva: Karuppu
The first UK exhibition by multidisciplinary artist Osheen Siva is entitled ‘Karuppu’ (கருப்பு – meaning darkness/black in Tamil). Taking a cue from Afrofuturism, Siva’s work brings together science fiction, mythology, heritage, their love of comic books, and the vibrant, joyful colours of South India.

Bonington Vitrines #24: Shahnawaz Hussain: My Nottinghamshire Perspectives in Watercolour
An exhibition of paintings by self-taught Nottingham-based artist Shahnawaz Hussain, which capture key buildings and landmarks across Nottingham and the wider county.

Peepshow: An Illusion Cut to the Measure of Desire
As part of this year’s Light After Dark Film Festival, we are pleased to present Peep Show, an innovatively staged exhibition of archival film curated by feminist collective Invisible Women.

Book free tickets

Enjoy music in our Atrium from electronic DJs MOAN and AJA.

Bonington Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of paintings by Nottingham based artist Shahnawaz Hussain which capture key buildings and landmarks across Nottingham and the wider county.

Based in Nottingham, Shahnawaz Hussain is a self-taught artist who has been practicing and making art for the past 8 years.

Mostly working in acrylic, oil and watercolour; Shahnawaz travels across Nottinghamshire visiting locally significant buildings and landmarks that either possess a Nottingham Civic Society plaque or are otherwise connected with a famous Nottingham personality or lost industry. Some paintings also depict places and locations that are personal to the artist, such as his house.

In his experimental artworks, form, colour and texture are interwoven and applied via a broad range of perspective techniques, in turn exploring meaning, scale and depth-of-vision to reveal in great detail the underlying nature and composition of his subjects.

Shahnawaz has a particular interest in buildings from the ages of high architecture, particularly those from Victorian, Georgian, Tudor, Arts and Crafts and Baroque styles.

Having lived in Nottingham for most of his adult life he has observed the evolution of the city and wider county over many years, witnessing heritage architecture being irreplaceably lost, or used for purposes different to what was originally intended.

Shahnawaz is an Alumni Fellow at Nottingham Trent University, graduating in 1999 in MSc Multimedia Engineering. His personal website can be visited here, and more information about his practice can be read via this downloadable PDF document created by the artist.

Join artist Rebecca Beinart for a free online talk where she will share stories and work-in-progress from her long term research into plant-human relationships, medicine and porous bodies. 

During this talk she will share a short film made in collaboration with Usha Mahenthiralingam and Freddy Griffiths. The work explores the Island site in Nottingham – that once housed the Boots pharmaceutical factories and is currently under redevelopment – and spills out into histories of plant medicine, land, bioprospecting, pharmaceutical production, and thinking with plants and fungi.

Plants Beyond Empire is a new series of conversations starting in February 2024, as part of Bonington Gallery’s Formations programme, in partnership with NTU’s Postcolonial and Global Studies Research Group. The events will explore a range of creative and community interventions aimed at understanding complex human-plant entanglements within postcolonial Britain and beyond.

**No audio between 04:36 and 07:46, presenter repeats the start of her talk after the screening of the film later in the event. At 22:42 the speaker cut out, which has been cut from the video. This causes a small pause that lasts 6 seconds**

Photo credit: Film Stills, Freddy Griffiths. Courtesy Rebecca Beinart.

Alongside our current exhibition, history is a living weapon in yr hand, join us for a free online In-conversation event between our current exhibitor Onyeka Igwe and Dr. Jenni Ramone, Associate Professor of Postcolonial and Global Literatures at NTU.

Together, they will explore topics related to Igwe’s wider practice and the ideas, research and development that informs both the exhibition and Igwe’s 2023 film, A Radical Duet, that is central to the installation.

On the evening there will be the opportunity to pose questions.

Presented alongside Onyeka Igwe’s solo exhibition history is a living weapon in yr hand, discover a selection of materials selected by the artist, that highlight key women who embraced creative activities to challenge imperialism and imagine new Pan-African realities.

In looking into the history of Pan-Africanism from the 1930s up until Howard Macmillan’s famous Winds of Change speech in 1960, many famed and celebrated men emerge as having spent time in the UK before rising to prominence in Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia as political leaders. The women are lesser known and celebrated, but figures like Amy Ashwood Garvey, Katherine Dunham, Una Marson, Sylvia Wynter and Funmilayo Ransome Kuti played their part using music, poetry, dance and theatre to challenge imperialism and imagine new Pan-African futures. 

Exhibition launch

Join us for a first look round the exhibition on Friday 12 January from 6–8 pm.
Book your free ticket


Images by Jules Lister

Join us for a free, accessible tour of history is a living weapon in yr hand led by Onyeka Igwe (artist) & Elaine Joseph (audio describer), and accompanied by a BSL interpreter.

General access information to the building can be found here
Accessibility information for the exhibition can be found here

Book your free place now

Join us for a free tour of history is a living weapon in yr hand by Onyeka Igwe, led by Gallery Director Tom Godfrey.

Free, open to all

Book your free place now

Join us for an afternoon of live drawing, performance and video art in a specially devised event by Venture Arts, a Manchester-based visual arts organisation working with learning disabled and neurodiverse artists to create and showcase exciting new contemporary visual art.

Free, drop in from 12pm – 5pm.

Bonington Gallery is proud to host a VA Collectives event alongside John Beck and Matthew Cornford’s exhibition, The Art Schools of the East Midlands.

Experience artist Leslie Thompson create a large-scale drawing live in the gallery space.  A specially devised performance piece by Greater Manchester-based artist Jackie Haynes will also be presented.

Visitors will also be able to watch videos from Narratives, a six month collaborative residency in Venture Arts’ Conversations Series, which ran in partnership with Manchester Jewish Museum, Castlefield Gallery, The Lowry, Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre and Project Artworks.  The residency brought together 12 artists, some from Venture Arts and some via an open call, to develop shared ideas and create new artwork over 6 months, exploring personal histories and cultural heritage.

The VA Collectives are a series of events, performances, gatherings and happenings that aim to bring artists together to explore themes of relevance to their work, the arts and the world around us. The VA Collectives are the brainchild of Venture Arts, a Manchester-based visual arts organisation working with learning disabled and neurodiverse artists to create and showcase exciting new contemporary visual art.

Both the videos and the resulting drawing by Leslie Thompson will remain in the gallery over the closing weekend for visitors to enjoy.


Videos that will be presented in the gallery:

Beyond the Shelf (2022) Millie Loveday

Falling – A Memory of Her (2022) Horace Lindezey, Dominic Pillai & Alice Merida Richards

The Dying Fly (2022) Jackie Haynes

The Julie Channel (2022) Sarah Boulter


Images by Adam Grainger and Alex Jovčić-Sas

Artist bios

Thanks to independent curator Abi Spinks for programming and supporting the development of this event in response to The Art Schools of the East Midlands by John Beck & Matthew Cornford.

Header photo credit: Leslie Thompson by Sarah Boulter, 2022.